Last week, Religion News Service columnist Jonathan Merritt wrote an article for This Week entitled, “Stop calling Hobby Lobby a Christian business.” The gist of the piece was that Hobby Lobby, a craft store that claims to conduct its business according to Christian values, shouldn’t be called Christian because of its dealings in China. China has a horrible human rights record, and by selling Chinese-made goods, Hobby Lobby is complicit in this evil. “Hobby Lobby reminds us why for-profit businesses should resist calling themselves ‘Christian,’” Merritt argued, “The free market is messy and complicated and riddled with hypocrisy.”
I began writing a rebuttal to that piece, but shortly after I began, the ERLC’s Dr. Russell Moore and Christian Post contributor Samuel James both wrote excellent responses that took the words out of my mouth. But this week, Merritt took his stance even further. Not only should we stop calling Hobby Lobby a Christian business, but apparently there are no Christian businesses from an evangelical perspective. This will no doubt come as a shock to the countless Christian business owners and customers across American.
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