Respectfully, I Believe Dr. Moore Is Just Wrong About Boycotts

By: American Decency Staff

 

Russell D. Moore, the President-elect of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, recently wrote an opinion asking the question, "Should Christians Boycott Starbucks?" He answers his own question with a resounding, "NO"!

Starbucks has same-sex marriage as an openly proactive aspect of its core values. Dr. Moore mentions that a highly respected pro-marriage group is boycotting Starbucks because of that stance. He reflects that he believes it is not proper for Christians to do so, at least in this case. Many, including some of my supposed friends, have assumed that Dr. Moore is talking about AFA (American Family Association) in his article. He may be, I can't answer for him on that. But, I can catagorically state that AFA/AFR has never called for a boycott of Starbucks. With an action alert, we have informed the public about the testy exchange between the CEO of Starbucks and one of the company's conservative stock holders; the same exchange that Dr. Moore's article is based on.

I take issue with Dr. Moore's reasoning for why it is wrong for Christians to participate in a boycott of Starbucks, even though, again, I am not part of a boycott or of a group that is boycotting Starbucks. As of this moment, the ONLY boycott that the AFA is conducting is with Home Depot. You can read about that at "boycottTHEhomeDepot.com."

Moore accuses Christians who would participate in a boycott of Starbucks as, "exposing…our worst tendencies..", and of, "fighting like the devil to please the Lord." I suggest that Dr. Moore feels this way because he does not understand the total motivation for doing a boycott.

A boycott, in Dr. Moore's understanding, is nothing more than a battle of economic power. He sees using the tool of a boycott as a way of simply hurting the company economically as a method of bullying them into adopting "our" view. If we can muscle them with enough economic power to force them to stop what they're doing, that makes us the majority. So we are forcing them to adopt our "majority" view. That's his first mistake. He says that, "a boycott assumes that the rightness of a marriage definition is constituted by a majority with power….", since we are hammering that point away as the only right way to believe by our attempt to hurt them by our place in the "supposed" majority with economic power.

I will concede that if we were to boycott, we would be using the tool of economic strength to make a point. But not the point that Dr. Moore says we are trying to make.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/respectfully-i-believe-dr-moore-is-just-wrong-about-boycotts-93061/#q3KpHD7I327YzxCs.99 

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