Southern Baptists vote to boycott Disney

Christian Century, July 2, 1997

Messengers (delegates) to the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly June 18 to boycott the Walt Disney Company, including its theme parks, Disney stores and the ABC television network, which is owned by Disney. The resolution, adopted by a showing of hands with some opposition, also encourages Baptists to stop patronizing "any company that promotes immoral ideologies."

Members of the largest U.S. Protestant denomination had threatened a boycott a year ago, but most of the 12,000 delegates to this year's meeting decided that a threat was not enough. Southern Baptists have grown increasingly frustrated with Disney, a company they once considered family-friendly but which in their view has adopted policies and aired programs that favor homosexual rights.

Not all Southern Baptists--including immediate past SBC president Jim Henry, whose 10,000-member church is just down the highway from Disney World in Orlando, Florida--favor the resolution. Henry, whose church services have aired on an ABC affiliate for more than 25 years, said Disney was "arrogant" in its response to Baptists' concerns, but he believes supporters of the resolution had not thought about all of its consequences. "How long does it last?" he asked after the resolution passed. "Who calls it off?" Henry was unable to address the convention before discussion on the proposal ended, but others addressed his concerns from the platform.

Rick Markham, pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Snellville, Georgia, cautioned his fellow Baptists about what approval of the resolution could entail. He argued that Baptists are responding to what they consider extreme actions by Disney with "another extreme" action, instead of focusing on evangelism. "If we approve this resolution, you have a moral obligation to go home, cancel your ESPN coverage, get rid of the A&E Channel, stop watching Lifetime television and never turn your TV to ABC, including Good Morning, America, and I'm afraid I'll have to tell my wife Regis and Kathie Lee are a thing of the past," he said. "If we are not willing to do that, we are no more than 20th-century pharisees who strain at a gnat while swallowing a camel."

But Lisa Kinney, a member of Keene Terrace Baptist Church in Largo, Florida, who stopped buying Disney products and visiting Disney parks after she became a Christian six years ago, said she doesn't see turning off her television as too great a sacrifice. "Do I think that my stand against them will change them?" she said of Disney officials. "No, I do not. I know that it has changed me. Will a Southern Baptist boycott change the Disney company? I don't know. But it will change us. It will affirm to us and the world that we love Jesus more than we love our entertainment." Her comments prompted many to stand and applaud. The resolution says, in part, "This is not an attempt to bring the Disney Company down, but to bring Southern Baptists up to the moral standard of God."

SBC President Tom Elliff, who was re-elected to a second one-year term June 17, compared supporting Disney to associating with a prostitute and called the company "a purveyor of pornography." The Walt Disney Company issued a two-sentence response to the boycott resolution: "We are proud that the Disney brand creates more family entertainment of every kind than anyone else in the world. We plan to continue our leadership role and in fact we will increase production of family entertainment."

The SBC's Christian Life Commission, the ethics and religious liberty arm of the 15.7-million-member denomination, has made available a three-page list titled "The Disney Company Family Tree," intended to educate Baptists about the wide range of properties affiliated with the company. The list includes film companies, TV stations, theme parks, publications and the Anaheim (California) Mighty Ducks of the National Hockey League.