Living Catholicism: Withholding Funds: Christian Activism in the Modern World

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March 12, 2006

Withholding Funds: Christian Activism in the Modern World

We live in an odd world – particularly those of us in the U.S. Our culture is primarily (and overwhelmingly) Christian, yet the institutions around us spend lots of time and money attempting to be secular and unambiguously non-Christian. This means we are witnessing a gap in the values of individuals within our society and the values of our corporations and governments. How can we as Christians live moral lives and encourage companies to come back to Christian values? This article explores on a personal level how we can lead lives that honor God.

Corporation vs. Christians
Just to give an overview of how I personally see the problem, I want to point out why corporations make decisions that seem odd. Corporations understand their goals and, like people, move towards these goals. A public corporation in the U.S. actually has but one goal: increase the stock price. This sounds like an oversimplification, but it is not. Everything the public corporation does is oriented towards increasing the stock price (shareholders can remove those running the company). Some companies remain altruistic, but I would argue this is only for the rare company where stockholders expect it.

Wal-Mart, to take one example, is the largest corporation in the world. Their value comes from offering extremely low prices on everything. This drives their sales and profits, which drives their stock prices. Wal-Mart does a terrible job of protecting human rights overseas – we’ve all seen investigative reports that show how Wal-Mart’s policies lead to inhumane conditions for those making products to sell in Wal-Mart. Why? This is how you get the prices lower and sales higher, which moves the stock price up.

The modern corporation moves towards any advantage to increase stock prices. These decisions are very often the opposite of what a Christian choice would be. Some corporations, such as Chick-fil-a, are able to resist those trends. However, Chick-fil-a is not a public company (no stockholders) and thus the leader’s moral vision cannot be changed by outside parties in the name of profits. It would be almost impossible for Chick-fil-a to remain closed on Sundays, for example, in foreign countries (particularly non-Christian countries) if they were a public company.

The corporate structure lends itself toward abuses in the name of profits. The only reigns on this are the laws surrounding corporations and the ire of consumers, which keeps companies from going too far.

Shopping as a Protest
There are very few ways for us to encourage companies to adhere to cultural values. We can protest by carrying signs out front or writing letters and encouraging others to do the same. We can refuse to use the services or buy the goods that a particular store sells. We can tell others of the problem and encourage them. All of these methods put across a point of view, but few will actually change a corporate policy outside of large scale support. In other words, you typically have to get lots and lots of protestors to make this successful – at least if the company must embrace a Christian point of view.

Why do I say this? I think Ford is the perfect example. Ford, at the expense of alienating 1-2% of the population (homosexuals) alienated Christians (roughly ¾ of the population). They initially pulled ads from gay magazines after protests from Christian groups, but Ford quickly reversed course and actually increased gay magazine spending when homosexual groups objected. This is one of the oddest business decisions ever since it wasn’t simply rejecting the Christian point of view. Ford took this rejection to the next level by increasing spend in these magazines, suggesting to the world that they love gays more than Christians. This – along with the Disney “boycott” by Christian groups that took over ten years to remove Michael Eisner – shows the difficulty of changing corporate behavior by loud, visible protest. Not to mention the difficulty of getting Christians to actually make a sacrifice for something they believe in (lots of Christians would say they supported the boycott, but continued visiting Disney and watching their movies).

And yet, we all have obligations to use our money as Christ would. Should we support those companies which completely reject our values and work against them? At a personal level, shopping isn’t a protest but rather a vote of the individual conscience. Can you support a company that promotes pornography or abortion? Perhaps the deeper question is “How can you know?” And how much responsibility do we have to look into the companies we support and see their actions?

Christian Stewardship as Investigative Reporting
Obviously we can’t completely know. None of us has the time to analyze every store or shop we hit to understand where the money is going. If we shop at a small owner-operated grocery store, the guy could be supporting Planned Parenthood without our knowledge and there would be no way to tell.

Having said that, we do have news outlets and other Christians to help alert us to potential problems. And we are intelligent enough to remember the choices that companies make. This Christmas my children began to understand this a little better. Two of them wanted American Girl baby dolls for Christmas. And we initially planned to get the dolls for them. However, news broke that American Girl (the company) was funding abortion clinics with some of their proceeds. This ended any chance of us purchasing the two dolls and we explained to our children (on their level) why they would not get an American Girl doll for Christmas. As the lady in the linked article states well: “I have to have a clear conscience.”

There is no place, as far as I am aware, to get a report on how companies spend their money. We can only take the information we have available and apply it to our lives, even if that means personal sacrifice in order to keep our consciences clear.

Even if our silent protest can’t change a corporate policy, it does give that company a little less money to use towards these acts.

Reasonable Rejection: What can we Protest
The next question that arises is “What is reasonable cause to completely reject a company?” In other words, what actions that a company takes should cause us to stop shopping there and which should cause us to use less money there?

There are some causes difficult to avoid. Contraception is one. Virtually all pharmacies sell contraception along with gas stations and even grocery stores. If you find a company that refuses to do so then I would suggest you shop with them whenever possible. I personally attempt to avoid gas stations and other stores that sell pornography, but this is impossible 100% of the time (again, you have to know which local stores won’t sell it).

I also attempt to avoid any store giving money to abortion, particularly when they seem almost proud of it. This past week I learned that Wal-Mart will begin carrying abortion pills at all of its pharmacies. That link is to a press release Wal-Mart is touting on a main page in their website. We have decided to stop shopping at Wal-Mart unless in the case of an emergency. They’ve always been borderline anyway because of their treatment of international workers (and even U.S. workers vis-à-vis health insurance), but this put us over the edge.

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord
Corporations as a whole tend to have a problem with who they give money to. Part of this is a larger, cultural issue since many corporations allow employees to give through their paychecks, which makes large corporations into large contributors to specific, employee-chosen causes. The safest choice is always to support the local, small guy who can’t compete with Wal-Mart’s prices, but offers service, a smile, and doesn’t enable people to kill babies.

In the end this is a conscience issue. Can you give money to a company that supports abortion or gay marriage or contraception when we have so many opportunities to shop elsewhere? I think I’ll make it a point to start looking harder at companies and posting articles on the blog when I think one arises that demands our attention. Wal-Mart prompted this article with their stance on “emergency contraception” (what a deceptive name for an abortion pill), but our culture is becoming more and more anti-Christian in a way we can no longer ignore. It’s time to choose, who will your house serve?

God bless,
Jay

Posted by jay at March 12, 2006 2:05 PM