Seven years after Chick-Fil-A faced backlash due to founder Dan Cathy’s Christian beliefs, the fast-growing restaurant chain has announced that they will no longer partner with the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, two faith-based groups which the company has donated to before.

U.S. fast-food chain Chick-fil-A said on Monday it had stopped funding two Christian organizations, including The Salvation Army, that have come under fire from LGBT+ campaigners. 

The fast-food chain’s charitable arm, Chick-fil-A Foundation, donated millions of dollars over a period of years to The Salvation Army and to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), which opposes same-sex marriage. 

Chick-fil-A said on Monday it no longer funded these organizations and would instead focus its giving on “education, homelessness and hunger”. 

“We made multi-year commitments to both organizations and we fulfilled those obligations in 2018,” a spokeswoman for Chick-fil-A told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. 

The family-owned company said in statement that it would no longer make multi-year commitments and would focus on partnerships annually to “allow maximum impact”, which could include faith-based and non-faith-based charities. 

The spokeswoman declined to comment specifically on whether the protests had influenced the move but added the decision was “made to create more clarity”.

A statement from Chick-Fil-A reads:

Starting in 2020, the Chick-fil-A Foundation is introducing a more focused giving approach to provide additional clarity and impact with the causes it supports. Staying true to its mission of nourishing the potential in every child, the Chick-fil-A Foundation will deepen its giving to a smaller number of organizations working exclusively in the areas of education, homelessness and hunger. 

[…]

Since the beginning of the Chick-fil-A Foundation, more than $52 million has been donated to support education, entrepreneurship and leadership development. The Foundation has made these changes to create more clarity and to better address three critical needs facing children across the communities we serve. 

Additionally, the Foundation will no longer make multiyear commitments and will reassess its philanthropic partnerships annually to allow maximum impact. These partners could include faith-based and non-faith-based charities.

[…]

This giving strategy further honors principles set by our founder Truett Cathy, who believed that all people are worthy of care.

The timing and wording of their announcement seems odd to me. Why now? They faced harsher protests before. Of course, this now happens just as Chick-Fil-A struggled with its first expansion into international markets when their first U.K. location closed due to protests. US cities Buffalo and San Antonio fought the restaurants’ efforts to expand to their airports because of the company’s “legacy of anti-LGBTQ behavior.”

So how do we interpret this? Is it part of Chick-Fil-A’s virtue-signaling effort to appease protestors or is the company simply changing up their charitable partnerships? It’s unfair and inconsistent to accuse the faith-based company of being uncharitable with their associations if we are to be uncharitable with our reasoning. Were it not for the interesting wording within their press statement and executives’ response to press inquiries however, I might be less inclined to think it was an attempt to appease protestors:

“There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are,” Chick-fil-A President and Chief Operating Officer Tim Tassopoulos said in an interview with Bisnow. “There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”

[…]

“This provides more focus and more clarity,” Tassopoulos said. “We think [education, hunger and homelessness] are critical issues in communities where we do business in the U.S.”

The Salvation Army focuses on “education, hunger, and homelessness” for everyone, literally everyone despite the malicious reports to the contrary. Fellowship of Christian Athletes simply encourages faith-based fellowship, good sportsmanship, and community service. These are traits that should be encouraged in today’s era, not sacrificed at the altar of misrepresentation and identity politics.

Chick-Fil-A has never had a history of bigotry. The insistence that simply being a Christian and supporting Biblical precepts is a legitimate substitution for “bigotry” is a deceptive, anti-intellectual argument. The rage mob collects this as a victory, positive reinforcement of their anti-Christian bigotry, and uses it as a measure of their strength:

From one of their quoted executives, which I think adds much-needed insight:

But after years of “taking it on the chin,” as a Chick-fil-A executive told Bisnow, the latest round of headlines was impossible to ignore. This time, it was impeding the company’s growth.  

Was the association with other targeted Christian groups slowing Chick-Fil-A’s growth? Is that how it was interpreted within the Chick-Fil-A boardroom? If by disassociating with groups like the Salvation Army and FCA Chick-Fil-A is attempting to project a “we’re not that type of Christian” message, they’re only helping to confirm the smears — smears from which they were strongly defended against by Christians who now are left wondering how the company sees them, too. Some have asked online, “what’s next? Open on Sundays, too?”

A few people popped into my Twitter mentions stating (in response to what I’m not sure) that they wouldn’t support a boycott. I’m not keen such on hive-mind actions myself and I don’t think that evangelism begins or ends with a fast food chicken restaurant. Here’s a truth we need to remember: Christians in culture need to stop looking to any other savior but Jesus. The battle was already won. Never forget this. 

I know some feel betrayed by a company they went out of their way to support in the face of cultural attacks. Many Christians thought they had an ally in the fight for equal consideration and treatment of their faith. I also know that those lamenting Chick-Fil-A’s decision to stop associating with the Salvation Army will go out of their way to increase their donations in those red kettles this year. They will answer that call of need just as they answered the call to defend faith-based business seven years ago.

I pray that to offset the false and malicious narratives of the press that we present a face of grace along with our uncompromising principles. I hope too, that this doesn’t cause Christians to be timid in their response to defend good works and good people. 

These Tweets caught my eye. Some food for thought:

Amen.