Last Wednesday I happily waited in a drive-thru line that wrapped around the building and into the neighboring parking lot. It was Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day and I wanted to show my support for the Christian-owned fast food chain. (By the way, I showed my support on Saturday too!)
The Chick-fil-A Controversy
Chick-fil-A president & COO, Dan Cathy
In recent years, more and more American corporations have sided with same-sex marriage. Companies like J.C. Penney, Kraft, Microsoft, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola have shown their support with advertising, donations, and employee policies. (See this AP article for more info.) But Chick-fil-A and its president Dan Cathy have continued to stand on biblical principles.
Chick-fil-A has been actively supporting pro-family, Christian groups with charitable donations for a long time, but just last month comments made by Cathy in a Baptist Press interview sparked a firestorm of controversy. Here is Cathy’s response to the reporter’s question about the company’s support of the traditional family.
“Well, guilty as charged,” said Cathy when asked about the company’s position. “We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. “We operate as a family business … our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized. “We intend to stay the course,” he said. “We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”
A multitude of media and gay rights groups strongly rebuked Cathy and Chick-fil-A twisting his remarks into “hate speech.” The mayors of Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco proudly declared the chain was not welcome in their cities. As the controversy heated up, Mike Huckabee declared August 1 to be “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day” and the country began to take sides.
Why are people mad at Chick-fil-A?
Why such strong feelings over a chicken sandwich? It shouldn’t surprise us that our culture applauds Starbucks for officially supporting gay marriage legislation while it condemns Chick-fil-A for supporting the traditional family. Jesus told us this would happen.
On the night He was betrayed, Jesus spent those last hours preparing the disciples for what lay ahead for them. Jesus warned them that since the “world” hated Him, it would also hate and persecute those who belong to Him (John 15:18-21). So, why did – and why does – the world hate Jesus? The world hates Jesus because His righteousness reveals its sin (John 7:7).
When we live holy lives that reveal the righteousness of Christ the world will hate us for the same reason – our lives expose the sin of the world. When Christians take a stand for Christ and firmly follow biblical principles, the world will respond with persecution. Jesus knew Chick-fil-A would be persecuted by mainstream society in America because it took a stand for biblical principles.
Maybe I’ll take a little heat for this post too. That would be alright.
Have you ever been ridiculed or condemned for taking a stand for Christ or for living out biblical principles?
You are right. People don’t like their sins revealed. Rather than come to God in submission and to ask for help in overcoming sin, they would rather ignore anything in His word that they don’t like or that they don’t agree with. It takes a strong person to remain true to Christian principles, regardless of our current culture’s opinions. I applaud Cathy for his integrity.
Blessings to you, Kathy!
Trusting Him, Joan
Joan, I also admire the entire Cathy family and their solid commitment to Christ and His righteousness. God has definitely blessed their obedience!
I expect to be ridiculed by a fair amount of people for having Christian beliefs, but something I really don’t understand is my family. They raised us kids as Christians (I did receive Christ as a child), but we stopped going to church when we were children. My husband and I started going back to church in our thirties and I finally got baptized (one parent did come to see this). The reaction has been strange to say the least. It was exciting for us to grow closer to God and realize all that had been missing in our lives because God wasn’t in the center like He should have been. The strange part is they don’t like to hear anything about our faith. They become very defensive about any “religious” talk. I have never tried to preach to them or tell them they need to get to church, etc., because I know they know. It’s just been disappointing that they can’t share in my joy, and I feel I can’t share my joy with them without making them angry. I never imagined going back to church would cause a strain with Christian parents. On the other hand, my husband’s parents couldn’t be more happy and will discuss just about any facet of religion with us. If I had children who got back to church and got back to God after all those years, I would be so relieved and overjoyed. Any thoughts?
Shelly, I’m so glad you stopped by today. I am also so sorry your family has responded this way to your return to Christ and His church. Although I don’t understand their reaction, Scripture does say this will happen. Brother against brother and parent against child. Depending on our response to Christ, He both unifies and divides. Two passages came to my mind as I read your comment.First, I thought of 1 Peter 3:1-4. These verses specifically deal with Christian wives who have unbelieving spouses but I think the response applies to your situation as well. Peter told them to keep a gentle and quiet spirit so that they may be “won over” without words by their behavior. Shelly, just keep actively loving your family with God’s grace and gentleness. When they do ask about your faith answer with “gentleness and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). And while you wait for God to work in their hearts you can keep hanging on to the second passage God brought to mind – Philippians 3:10.
“I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in he death.”
When you are persecuted for your faithfulness to Christ, you will experience a unique fellowship with Him that believers don’t experience any other way. Suffering for His sake creates an intimate bond with our Savior. While you won’t rejoice in the ridicule by your family, you can rejoice and take comfort in the increased closeness with Him.
May God direct your words and fill you with His wisdom, discernment, and comfort.
Shelly you also mentioned that you stopped going to church as a family when you were young. If your parents haven’t returned to going to church they could be feeling convicted that you now are going or guilty about not keeping you exposed to Christianity as a kid. Why don’t you just ask them in a loving way? Pose the question so they don’t become defensive…Mom and Dad I was hoping you would share in my joy at my new found faith. Is there a reason why you’re not? Then just be silent to hear their response. Be sure to pray first.
Janet, thanks for the wise suggestion!
Kathy you did it again…another right on message that I have been experiencing myself right now in our extended family. It’s not always easy swimming against the tide but great is our reward in heaven–Matthew 5:11-12. I’m swimming upstream with you girlfriend!!
Hi Janet! Swimming against the tide builds some pretty strong faith muscles!
Strong faith muscles! I love that!!
Hi Kathy — some good points here! I think the part of this controversy that is most troubling to me is written in this blog: http://www.owldolatrous.com/?p=288 — he specifically writes the following:
“- In 75 countries in the world, being gay is illegal. In many, the penalty is life in prison. These are countries we can’t openly visit. In 9 countries, being gay is punishable by death. In many others, violence against gays is tacitly accepted by the authorities. These are countries where we would be killed. Killed.
– Two organizations that work very hard to maintain this status quo and roll back any protections that we may have are the Family Research Council and the Marriage & Family Foundation. For example, the Family Research council leadership has officially stated that same-gender-loving behavior should be criminalized in this country. They draw their pay, in part, from the donations of companies like Chick-Fil-A. Both groups have also done “missionary” work abroad that served to strengthen and promote criminalization of same-sex relations.”
I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this — if these organizations do truly support criminalization of such activity which can be punishable by death, does that change anything? I have no way of fact-checking his claims, but it certainly made me think about this in a way I hadn’t thought of before. Just curious as to what you think!
Hi Christy, thanks for stopping by. I read the blog you mentioned. It was respectful and thoughtful. Though I do disagree with his statement that Jesus didn’t talk about sexual behavior. Jesus confirmed the Law’s stance on sin. And while He very much extended forgiveness and grace, He called God’s people to repentance and obedience over and over.
I also searched for what I could find about the policy of the Family Research Council. Although I couldn’t find anything but mostly “pro-family” policy on the website, I did come across a transcript of one of their researchers interviewed on the MSNBC program “hardball” that made some troubling statements I cannot agree with.
My stance – which I’ve arrived at after a lot of study of the Scripture – is that while God clearly says over and over in both the OT and NT that homosexuality is wrong – the Christian’s job is to introduce people to Jesus and let God do the convicting. Of course, that’s different inside the church or dealing with other Christians. The Bible tells us to hold each other accountable and encourage each other in holiness. Also, when asked by anyone what we believe the Scripture to teach or when faced with a situation where a choice needs to be made, we should always stand on the side of God’s righteousness.
The intention of my post was really to applaud Cathy’s courage for taking a stand for biblical principles even though it’s difficult in this cultural climate and to encourage other Christians to do the same. The real issue is not homosexuality but Christians uncompromisingly living out God’s truth even when it’s hard.
I’m not sure I answered your question thoroughly, but I tried!