Related articles and links |  1 of 5

Christians, both conservative and liberal theologically, are showing an increased boldness in taking on corporate America's internal policies, charging they are unethical, antifamily, or anti-Christian.

Through the use of product boycotts, shareholder campaigns, and public shaming, Christian activists aim to motivate corporate executives to be more family-friendly, scrupulous, and responsible.

Two decades ago, concerned Christians focused their efforts on getting sexually explicit magazines off the shelves of convenience stores. Today, religious activists have stepped up their efforts by taking on some of America's largest corporations. These moral conservatives have also broadened their emphasis, going beyond such products as books, films, cigarettes, and alcoholic beverages to companies' internal policies and business practices.

OFF THE SIDELINES: No effort by Christians to focus on corporate responsibility has received greater attention than the growing boycott of the Walt Disney Company.

Herb Hollinger, a spokesperson for the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention—which in June voted to censure the entertainment giant—says, "Our people are sensing that, for whatever reason, there's been a decline in the civility and morality of America as a whole.

"So we're starting to get more active, like we maybe should have a long time ago. It's prompting more and more Southern Baptists to say we can't sit on the sidelines anymore."

However, as more Christians are moving off the sidelines, corporate executives are defending their turf:

—Disney executive Michael Eisner has commented that it is "foolish" and "extreme" for Christians to boycott the company because some of its products and policies are perceived as antifamily and anti-Christian. Eisner claims Disney is the world's largest creator of family-friendly entertainment.

—Cypress Semiconductor's founder, T. J. Rodgers, based in California's Silicon Valley, after receiving a letter from a Roman Catholic nun urging that women and minorities be added to the board of directors, sent a blistering public rebuke of the nun's letter to all the firm's shareholders.

—Briggs & Stratton, a Milwaukee small-engine maker whose president is Catholic, has filed a libel suit against the liberal National Catholic Reporter for suggesting that the firm's practices were counter to instructions from Catholic bishops on economic justice.

MEANINGLESS BUZZWORD? Corporate responsibility, dismissed as a mere buzzword by some business leaders, is broad and difficult to define.

Both social and economic issues are involved. But, warns Ron Sider, head of Evangelicals for Social Action, a significant weakness in corporate-responsibility campaigns is their one-sidedness.

Sider says religious conservatives overly focus on sexuality, while liberals focus on labor practices and worker rights.

Sider reasons that corporate morality and economic justice concerns are not mutually exclusive. He says, "We surely ought to be concerned about all of those things and not just one side of them."

From the economic standpoint, corporate responsibility is violated by deteriorating employer-employee relations, excessive corporate profits, and concentrated wealth. From the social perspective, corporate responsibility involves questioning the underlying values associated with a corporation's policies, products, and services, and their relationship to the common good.

Calls for corporate responsibility are often countered with the assertion that a corporation's sole purpose is to generate profits for its owners and shareholders. And companies that seem from one vantage point to be acting compassionately (by adding domestic-partner benefits for homosexual employees, for example) are pronounced guilty of being antifamily by conservatives.

next page... |  1 of 5

share this page

October 28 1996, Vol. 40, No. 12