For this Lent, the Rev. Jamal Bryant, the pastor of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta, didn’t urge the 10,000 members of his congregation to give up chocolate or coffee. Instead, he called for a 40-day “fast” from shopping at Target because of its decision to pull back on its commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion. Other influential African American congregations across the country followed suit, and now over 150,000 people have signed up to participate. They’ve joined activists who are boycotting a growing list of companies, including Walmart and Starbucks.
We usually think of churches as sources of spiritual guidance. That is true enough; I do need help trying to be a better father, husband and neighbor. I need to know how to love, forgive, overcome trauma and pursue God.
But that pursuit of God happens in the real world of economic exploitation where businesses crush unions, abandon commitments to invest in Black and brown communities and forsake diversity goals.
I didn’t need a pastor to tell me that businesses that made diversity commitments during the troubled summer of 2020 didn’t really care about my Black life, but churches must show what the Christian faith has to say about what’s going on the outside, in the world of flesh and blood. Actions like boycotts are a form of pastoral ministry for those who feel ignored or forgotten. They show that churches care about whole persons and the communities in which we live.
“It is one thing to make Target respect us,” the Rev. Charlie Dates, the pastor of Salem Baptist Church and Progressive Baptist Church in Chicago, told me. “It is another thing altogether to respect ourselves.”
Part of self-respect is remembering one’s own agency. In that sense, it does not matter whether Target accedes to the demands to stay true to its D.E.I. commitments in the short term. It matters that we remember the power of collective action, the sense of self that arises when we act on principle.
We aren’t powerless. No other organization gathers as many Black people weekly as the Black church. Since the boycott began, Target’s share price has declined by 18 percent. The boycott is certainly not the only reason for that or even a major one, given how unsettled the economy is. But it does feel that we are being heard.
This is not the first time the Black church has rallied the economic power of the African American pocketbook. The civil rights movement did not rely on moral persuasion alone: the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others lectured the nation about the sin of racism, organized marches and fought for voting access, but that is not the whole story.
Recall that the campaign for civil rights in Montgomery, Ala., included not just a legal challenge to segregation but also a 381-day boycott of the city bus system that started in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat and a legion of African Americans refused to ride at all. The 1963 protests in nearby Birmingham — famous for the water hoses and dogs that were turned on marchers — featured a boycott of businesses that refused to integrate.
Like the current boycott, the Birmingham boycott focused on the Easter season. Activists wanted to hit businesses when they earned a big chunk of their profits. According to one account, 85 to 90 percent of the Black population of the city participated, leading to a 12 percent decline in sales during a peak buying season. A key slogan was, “Don’t buy where you can’t be a salesman.”
Dr. Dates explained how a boycott could be a spiritual practice. “Jesus talked about money more in the Gospels than any other subject other than love. Jesus seemed to say to us that the pocketbook is the clearest indication of the health of the soul,” he told me. “We have the opportunity to use the very medium of which Jesus spoke to accomplish the most immediate change our nation needs.”
Dr. Bryant also linked the boycott to spiritual principles. He said: “Justice is biblical. Justice work is faith work because Jesus was often on the side of the marginalized.”
So much of our economy is built on exploitation that it can be difficult to know where to begin. (And we still have to shop somewhere.) That can lead to a certain moral despair where we separate our economics from our ethics.
The clergy members leading this movement want to remind us that it doesn’t have to be this way. The inability to do everything does not mean that we should do nothing. The way companies treat their workers and their customers reveals their values. When they tell you who they are, we must believe them and act accordingly.
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