Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Christianity Today: Deliver Us From Wal Mart?
On April 22nd, Christianity Today online, posted a article probing the idea that Wal Mart's labor practices may be un-Christian. This is huge, as the anti-Wal Mart campaign needs an ally such as the church. The ongoing debate about their labor practices is gaining steam, as many communities, such as Inglewood, CA, Queens, NY, and the southside of Chicago, are refusing to let Wal Mart come in and ruin the local businesses who are the backbone of the social fabric that is the local community. The dollars that are spent in these local businesses are kept in the locally, where with Wal Mart, they are sent right back to Bentonville, Arkansas. They are sent overseas to Chinese factories that pay substandard wages for long hours of back breaking work performed by children as young as 9 years old. This is unacceptable, even if the prices are the cheapest in town. In regards to cheap prices, Wal Mart rides it's suppliers so hard for cheap prices, that the wages at the suppliers are having to be cut, due to the demand for even cheaper product. So, it is not only the cut rate wages that Wal Mart pays their employees, but that it also forces its suppliers to do much the same to keep on supplying the mammoth operations of the company's thousands of stores.
While the article is a great step forward in bringing a long awaited pressure on Wal Mart to clean up its act, it stops short of condemning these practices outright. It instead asks the reader to not rush to judgement, though it follows its citations of Wal Mart's violations with scripture that condemns the very labor violations that it cites. This is problematic as it leaves it to some type of moral relativist argument that the company makes over and over again. I would ask that Christianity Today make a stand, which it has shown itself afraid to do in this article. The very moral relativism that the church itself condemns, is slyly practiced in subservience to the behemoth called Wal Mart.
While the article is a great step forward in bringing a long awaited pressure on Wal Mart to clean up its act, it stops short of condemning these practices outright. It instead asks the reader to not rush to judgement, though it follows its citations of Wal Mart's violations with scripture that condemns the very labor violations that it cites. This is problematic as it leaves it to some type of moral relativist argument that the company makes over and over again. I would ask that Christianity Today make a stand, which it has shown itself afraid to do in this article. The very moral relativism that the church itself condemns, is slyly practiced in subservience to the behemoth called Wal Mart.
