Ed Vitagliano

AFA Journal news editor

April 2002 – Over the past quarter century, it has become increasingly clear to Christians who have even a passing interest in American culture that their faith is steadily being pushed to the perimeter of public life. 

That changed, at least for a little while, in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, when it seemed as if everyone in the U.S. was anxious to wave an American flag and sing “God Bless America.”

Even companies seemed anxious to wrap themselves in the red, white and blue of patriotic fervor. Dr. Pepper, for example, issued a soda can with the image of the Statue of Liberty. Around the top part of the can was part of a phrase from the Pledge of Allegiance: “One Nation … Indivisible.”

Dr. Pepper/Seven Up, Inc. explained, “Given recent national events, this patriotic packaging was designed by our graphics department to reflect our pride in this country’s determination to stand together as one, strong and indivisible, under any circumstances. The Statue of Liberty and the Pledge of Allegiance were chosen as two of the greatest symbols to represent that feeling.”

The message
However, even in the midst of that flowering of public patriotism and consciousness of God, there appeared here and there the shoots of a root of an anti-God and anti-Christ mentality.

Alert Christians, for example, noticed that the words “under God” had been deleted from the part of the Pledge of Allegiance that was included in the Dr. Pepper can design.

Contacting the company for an explanation, concerned believers received the following widely circulated, boilerplate E-mail response: “Given the size of a can and the limited amount of space available, the entire Pledge could not be printed on the can. Our graphics department felt ‘One Nation … Indivisible’ best represented the message we were trying to get across.”

It is certainly hard to believe that the Dr. Pepper company left such an important decision up to the graphics department. 

Besides, Dr. Pepper was not limited to the Pledge of Allegiance as a source of inspiration for its customers. Other words could have been chosen to include in the patriotic design of the soda can. Why mess with a hallmark of American sentiment?
Instead, it seems likely that, whether it was the graphics department or an executive higher up the corporate chain of command, someone made an editorial decision to edit the phrase by excising the words “under God” – as well as the sentiments which those words express.

So what exactly is the message that Dr. Pepper is trying to get across with its truncated phrase? Whether intentional or not, it seems that Dr. Pepper believes that America can be “One nation … indivisible” without the truth represented by the intervening words “under God.” 

A ‘lapse’ in judgment
Such squeamishness about God is becoming more common in an increasingly secular culture. The predominant post-modern worldview holds that there are no absolutes, or, actually, that there is only one absolute: All views are equally true. In such an environment, the corporate brain trust at Dr. Pepper apparently did not feel that it could, with any degree of certainty, defend the act of printing the words “One nation, under God,” on a can of its soda.

Dr. Pepper is certainly not alone. There appears to be a growing distaste in America’s corporate culture for any belief that smacks of moral certainty.

This was clearly demonstrated by the General Mills company in the summer of 2000. In a promotional campaign, General Mills included a compact disk (CD) containing a collection of computer games and other software in over 12 million boxes of its breakfast cereals.

The company had subcontracted the production of the CDs, and soon discovered that, included with the other software titles on the disks was a copy of the New International Version of the Bible – the most widely read translation in the world.

From the reaction of General Mills, one could sense that the news of the Bible’s inclusion on the CDs had sent a horrific shudder throughout its corporate leadership, as if the boxes of breakfast cereals had mistakenly included a copy of Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In a public statement accompanying the announcement that the 12 million boxes containing the offending CDs were immediately being recalled, General Mills said: “While inclusion of the Bible may be seen as added value by some, it is the company’s policy not to advance any particular set of religious beliefs. Inclusion of this material does not conform to our policy, and we apologize for this lapse.”

Certainly, if a company’s policy is to stay neutral on the issue of religion, then including a Bible on the CD might reasonably be construed as a “lapse.”

Less clear, however, is why a company would develop such a policy in the first place. Simply providing a service for some customers – after all, the overwhelming majority of Americans claim to be Christians – is not the same as advancing a religion.

In fact, General Mills does provide at least one religion-based service for customers. The company regularly pays Jewish groups for the right to label its food products “kosher,” since many Jews look for that seal to determine if food conforms to their requirements.

So why hyperventilate about tossing a copy of the Bible into a box of Cheerios, especially since the included CD contained a potpourri of different items?

Promoting diversity by rejecting religion
The standard corporate response in such instances is that the company does not want to offend people who hold different religious views – or who have no religious view at all.

Last year, for example, a similar brouhaha erupted when some of the nation’s largest retailers severed ties with KingdomBuy.com, an online shopping mall, after the retailers discovered that the company was Christian – and donated money to Christian organizations, including AFA.

KingdomBuy.com is called an “online mall” because it acts as an Internet conduit for major retailers who want to increase their sales via the World Wide Web. An online shopper can go to www.kingdombuy.com, for example, and purchase products from Wal-Mart, Dell computers, Hickory Farms, and over 200 other companies.

Through its “faith-based giving program,” KingdomBuy uses a percentage of its profits to support more than 9,000 churches and ministries. 

However, last May two of the nation’s largest retailers, JC Penney and Nordstrom, decided to cancel their association with KingdomBuy.com. Other companies, like CVS, Tabasco, and Avon followed suit. Brookstone, and FTD, which also had initially decided to drop the Christian online mall, changed their minds and reinstated the company.

Shasha Richardson, public relations director for Nordstrom, told AFA Journal that the company began a spot-check of its more than 5,000 affiliate partner websites to see if the proper Nordstrom logo was being used by affiliates. When the affiliate manager checked KingdomBuy.com’s website, its religious content was noted.

That content was what triggered Nordstrom’s decision, Richardson said. “We have a policy that we do not enter affiliate partnerships with websites that contain religious or political content. That could be anything – Buddhist, Christian, atheist, humanistic, any of that,” she said.

As is increasingly common, Nordstrom’s policy on website content reflects the professed desire of many companies to honor diversity.

Richardson said. “Our customers have so many diverse faiths and also because there are so many diverse opinions on all sorts of matters that we’ve found that, to honor that diversity, as a business we need to apply it consistently across the board,” she said. “And the choice is advertising with all religious affiliations and all political organizations, or none.”

It seems inconsistent, however, to honor diversity while isolating religious people as if they were oddballs. In fact, if Nordstrom truly believed in diversity, it should welcome all businesses to affiliate with it. It is a strange company whose devotion to diversity requires the exclusion of Christian companies.

As far as Nordstrom’s public commitment to a diversity of opinion, it results in a de facto rejection of Christian beliefs. To paraphrase the revolutionary leaders of the barnyard revolt in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, all beliefs are equal, but some beliefs are more equal than others.

Exclusionary religions need not apply
At the core of this apparent contradiction appears to be a growing animosity toward absolute values. At least two companies seemed to disdain Nordstrom’s pragmatic explanation for a blunter, perhaps more honest one – even though the sentiments bordered on bigotry.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car and J. Crew also dropped KingdomBuy, demanding last June that the Christian company remove its Internet links to their own companies. 

In an E-mail to KingdomBuy President Gary Sutton, Enterprise spokesman Travis Wools said, “Your site promotes negative and exclusionary ideas and beliefs toward particular group(s). Enterprise Rent-A-Car does not wish to associate itself with your site or organization.”

In a phone conversation between Sutton and Wools, the Enterprise spokesman noted KingdomBuy’s affiliation with Abiding Truth.com, a group that opposes the normalization of the homosexual lifestyle. Sutton said Wools accused Abiding Truth.com of being an “anti-gay” website.

J. Crew’s E-mail message was even more explicit in its antagonism towards Christian beliefs about homosexuality. Isabel Stewart of the J. Crew Affiliate Program said in her letter to Sutton: “I am writing to inform you that we are terminating your affiliate relationship with J. Crew. It has come to our attention that KingdomBuy.com contributes commissions to Abidingtruth.com, an anti-gay hate group. J. Crew does not want to be associated with any hate group, regardless of their religious affiliation. I hope that KingdomBuy will carefully consider every organization it contributes money to. Hate groups have no place in a true Christian organization.”

Stewart’s comments go way beyond Richardson’s, exceeding a professed concern for diversity and instead trumpeting the company’s bias against and animosity toward the explicit teachings of Christianity.

In either case, more and more corporations seem reluctant to be linked in any context with Christianity.

These companies would no doubt welcome Christians as customers; but they recoil from Christian businesses who dare to declare their beliefs in public.