Stop calling Hobby Lobby a Christian business
The craft store is exalted by the conservative faithful. But it conducts business in a way that flouts Christian values.
"We're Christians," Hobby Lobby's president Steve Green proclaims, "and we run our business on Christian principles."
That is music to the ears of many conservative Christians, who rallied around Hobby Lobby when the retail chain argued at the Supreme Court that ObamaCare's contraception mandate unlawfully burdened their religious beliefs. But a closer look at Hobby Lobby's actual business practices reveals this claim to be as hollow as a flute. Turn over just about any trinket in a Hobby Lobby store and you'll find a gold oval stamped with "Made in China," a country that is one of the worst offenders of human dignity, unborn infant life, and economic justice anywhere in the world.
*snip*
The Bible is replete with calls for economic justice. Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you leverage your profits to support an economic system that blatantly perpetuates injustice?
China is also the 20th worst in the world for child labor. Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you support underage labor? Jesus, after all, taught that taking one's own life is preferable to harming a child.
And what of China's one-child policy, which disincentivizes having daughters to the point that it fuels an underground abortion industry? Data shows that 13 million abortions are performed in the country each year. About 35,000 infant lives are terminated in China every day, and 336 million abortions have taken place there over the last four decades. According to Steven Mosher of Population Research Institute, "most of those abortions have the character of a rape. That is, they were performed on women who were ordered, or even physically forced, to submit to the knife."
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, then, that China accounts for 19 percent of the global population, but 56 percent of the world's female suicides. Approximately 500 women take their own lives in China every day.
Though China somewhat relaxed its controversial 35-year-old policy recently, Max Fisher of The Washington Post has noted that the policy still leads to forced abortions — in addition to sterilizations and infanticide — and always will.
*snip*
The craft store is exalted by the conservative faithful. But it conducts business in a way that flouts Christian values.
"We're Christians," Hobby Lobby's president Steve Green proclaims, "and we run our business on Christian principles."
That is music to the ears of many conservative Christians, who rallied around Hobby Lobby when the retail chain argued at the Supreme Court that ObamaCare's contraception mandate unlawfully burdened their religious beliefs. But a closer look at Hobby Lobby's actual business practices reveals this claim to be as hollow as a flute. Turn over just about any trinket in a Hobby Lobby store and you'll find a gold oval stamped with "Made in China," a country that is one of the worst offenders of human dignity, unborn infant life, and economic justice anywhere in the world.
*snip*
The Bible is replete with calls for economic justice. Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you leverage your profits to support an economic system that blatantly perpetuates injustice?
China is also the 20th worst in the world for child labor. Can you call yourself a "Christian business" when you support underage labor? Jesus, after all, taught that taking one's own life is preferable to harming a child.
And what of China's one-child policy, which disincentivizes having daughters to the point that it fuels an underground abortion industry? Data shows that 13 million abortions are performed in the country each year. About 35,000 infant lives are terminated in China every day, and 336 million abortions have taken place there over the last four decades. According to Steven Mosher of Population Research Institute, "most of those abortions have the character of a rape. That is, they were performed on women who were ordered, or even physically forced, to submit to the knife."
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, then, that China accounts for 19 percent of the global population, but 56 percent of the world's female suicides. Approximately 500 women take their own lives in China every day.
Though China somewhat relaxed its controversial 35-year-old policy recently, Max Fisher of The Washington Post has noted that the policy still leads to forced abortions — in addition to sterilizations and infanticide — and always will.
*snip*
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