Assuming this is accurate, it’s sad:
The new giving structure moves away from the multiyear commitments Chick-fil-A had with the Salvation Army and the FCA and focuses on annual grants, which Tassopoulos said will be reviewed and assessed each year. Future partners could include faith-based and non-faith-based charities, but the company said none of the organizations have anti-LGBT positions.
In other words, they might support faith-based organizations, but not Christian ones.
Et tu, Fil-A?
I suppose it was a matter of time. Market forces have a way of winning out eventually.
I’ve already instructed my wife that we will no longer be eating there.
Interestingly, I was recently directed via Front Porch Republic (which I suspect may not be popular here) to a reprint in Emergence Magazine of Wendell Berry’s ‘The Pleasures of Eating,’ in which he, in characteristic fashion, argues against industrial and fast food culture and back toward the process of deliberate cultivation, preparation, and consumption of our food (in fact, Pastor Chris Wiley might have appreciated the current of the essay drawing its reader along to the idea of a “productive household”). Ultimately: make what you can and buy as locally as possible what you cannot.
It may sound silly and perhaps even fatalistic to some of certain eschatological bents, but at this rate, I’m wondering if this is the eventual required course of all consumer activity Christians will undertake in the future: as local and non-corporately-sourced as possible for everything (food and goods otherwise).
The most discouraging aspect of this is that they are actually doing well. This year they became the third largest fast food chain (after McDonald’s and Starbucks), in spite of all the protests.
It’s not like they were trying to save a sinking ship. An argument could be made that their resistance to the LGBT hordes worked financially in their favor. That this move came about in this context makes things feel more ominous.
Sad. As with any war you have to bring greater firepower than your adversary to win. Chick-fil-A and much of Nominal Christianity™ has no firepower to outgun this force. It is like watching the mainline churches fall to liberalism. There seems to be a coalescing happening, where sides are gradually taking shape. Eventually it will become apparent that there is the kingdom of light goverened by the Christ of the Scriptures, and the kingdom of darkness.
In the meanwhile I generally shy away from boycott culture; it’s too close to Cancel Culture and seems more a tactic of the modern totalitarian Left. Chick-fil-A makes a good sandwich. I pay them 7 bucks or whatever, they give me a sandwich. It’s not charity; it’s a transaction. What they do with that 7 bucks is their business and the souls of the decision-makers bear it. Otherwise to be consistent it would be no Google, no Amazon, no Walmart, no Target, no McDonalds, no Apple, no online transactions whatever, and going entirely off-grid and living subsistence level (Much respect to those that do this, but not a prescriptive thing).
I think that this move was made because those in leadership at CFA did not like feeling uncomfortable personally. This is just a signing to the world that they aren’t really bigoted - “See!!!”
Its the only way that it makes sense to me. A lot of the support that CFA had was BECAUSE they would not give an inch to the LGBT rage machine. As a case study, I give you the CFA in Bloomington IN. Many of you know that Bloomington is voted in the top 5 LGBT friendly cities of the country every year. Yet the CFA in Bloomington is the top producing CFA store in the entire state. Why? Their stance against LGBT stuff certainly hasn’t hurt them in one of the most activist places in the country. Rather, I would posit that those who see the LGBT intimidation and activism for what it is make a point of going to CFA because of their historic refusal to cave or tip the hat to the pressure.
Now, those who support this stance likely wouldn’t go back and eat time and again if CFA didn’t have really good food and service. Given. But this stance is the reason that many make a point to try them in the first place. And another issue with this decision: who works at CFA? LOTS of Christian kids and more specifically, lots of conservative and homeschool Christian kids. This bites the very hands that work to make them successful. Stupid.
It simply doesn’t make sense financially or from a brand standpoint. They just got mentioned in a KANYE WEST song for goodness sake. Do you think that happens if they are like every other fast food restaurant? The only way that I can make it make sense is that the board members were tired of bearing the weight personally of standing against culture.
“Market forces” had nothing to do with this except insofar as “the market” will eventually eat the true, the good and the beautiful in order to grow shareholder value.
And my prediction is that the groveling has only just begun. This move will buy them precisely no good will on the Left and will in fact have the approximate calming effect that a bucket of chum has on sharks.
See though, I’m not sure that “market forces” had anything to do with it. Someone who understands branding would look at CFA and realize that they had an incredibly strong brand and that this move would weaken the brand. A brand is what makes you stand out from the crowd; what differentiates you. This made them blend in, not stand out. Ultimately it weakens the brand.
a big yeah for non-corporate, locally-sourced milk and meat in worship
BTW, agree with Doug and Rod on this. Too bad Donald Trump wasn’t their executive type, in which case he would have doubled down just out of natural pugnaciousness.
I heartily “Amen” this, Pastor Tim.
Ok, “market forces” is probably the wrong term. I agree that this move is going to hurt them financially. Might as well just open on Sundays if they maintain this newest decision. Not that this will earn them any actual goodwill from the Woke.
It is worth noting, though, that the President has said it’s a business move:
“There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are,” Chick-fil-A President and Chief Operating Officer Tim Tassopoulos said in an interview with Bisnow. “There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”
Is it a good business move? Not a chance.
Is this really the reason? Probably not. At least not the only reason. I agree with Dreher’s point above.
But it does make secular sense to pander just enough to keep from getting banned from another major metropolitan airport. I’m sure the Executive Committee knows exactly how much that incident set them back from hitting their next growth target. I know the incident itself drove a lot of business toward them, but was it enough to make up for losing that location? I sort of doubt it.
This whole thing makes me wonder if the family is positioning to take the company public in a few years. The founder reportedly made all his kids sign a contract before he died in 2014 that they could never take the company public, but from what I’ve read it’s not certain whether that agreement could actually be binding.
Edit to add:
It’s already backfiring.
“In addition to refraining from financially supporting anti-LGBTQ organizations, Chick-fil-A still lacks policies to ensure safe workplaces for LGBTQ employees and should unequivocally speak out against the anti-LGBTQ reputation that their brand represents,” said Drew Anderson, GLAAD’s director of campaigns and rapid response.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/18/business/chick-fil-a-lgbtq-donations/index.html
Especially given the fact that I think they are generally running close to capacity at many of their locations. They’ve invested a lot in making their restaurants able to handle even more traffic, but there’s only so much you can do without opening new locations. And when you go to pick new locations, you don’t want to worry about investing a lot of time and money and wondering if you’ll get suddenly blackballed.
I can see the temptation to think this would help, but it won’t work. Like always, trying to find the line between the world and Christ and ride that line is a big disaster.
I think this kind of thing helps us see the state of things more clearly. Look at the lengths the darkness will go for a win. Really, the battle for a chicken sandwich restaurant seems downright silly. But that angle fails to see the seriousness of the enemy and where the battle is actually taking place.
CFA is just the current battlefield. What the enemy is really angry about is CFA’s Christ. They hate Him and they cannot abide that He has a say in the way CFA does its business (or, donations, or frankly anything). This Christ-hating social totalitarianism wants everything under its thumb. Everyone must bow the knee, even chicken sandwich restaurants.
I wish G.K. Chesterton was around for stuff like this. What that man could do with just the image of a Chicken Sandwich, I can only imagine. He’d write the hell out of it though.
You know things are getting serious when the pagans have more religious zeal for chicken than the righteous chickens do. Their doctrine of dominion puts us to roost. Perhaps soon they’ll be making sandwiches out of us. Quite a price to pay for refusing to ruffle feathers.
Nominated for post of the year. lol
What if a million Moms went to Sprite HQ and harassed them until they apologized for this ad? Citing that it’s NOT OKAY to sexualize advertisements to what amounts to a children’s drink. It’s pedophilia promotion at the end of the day.
You might get Sprite to move.
Maybe for a little while. But why did Sprite run that ad in the first place? They were bowing to the exact same social pressure that CFA was.
So I don’t think this is right. The cultural winds matter in these things, and a pressure tactic only really works if it is with the wind. Because then the threat is that you can add more and more individuals and make more and more noise, until mob justice has been accomplished.
Those moms would have a better chance changing CFA’s mind than Sprite’s, because they make up a substantial portion of the buying power keeping CFA busy.
The bigger your organization, the bigger it feels the wind?
corporations, denominations, mega-churches, …
Yes, we’ve reached Peak Beak.