T he Rev. Flip Benham, an evangelical minister based in North Carolina, has a theory about why Wal-Mart issued disappointing November sales results on Monday.
He says it's because the world's biggest retailer has strayed from the principles of Sam Walton and Christianity.
He told me the Arkansas-based company has been "blackmailed" by the political left and the "radical homosexual agenda," and its capitulation has a predictable result: Flat sales.
Now Benham isn't a mainstream guy. He's a spokesman for Operation Rescue, the anti-abortion activist group that recently changed its name to Operation Save America as a way to dodge the high cost of lawsuits from harassed women.
And he and other activists have been out leafleting at Wal-Marts around the United States, including last weekend in Midland, Mich.
They're trying to rouse the retail giant from its godless ways. "The Left has always hated Wal-Mart," he pointed out, "but we don't hate Wal-Mart.
We see ourselves as friends who want to help."
It's been my experience that "helping" friends by criticizing them directly is often received by those same friends as a hostile gesture. (My guess is that friends would be especially annoyed by critical leafleting outside their homes.
)
But Wal-Mart has changed from the place where America shopped for cheap goods to the pinata of the culture wars.
Ravaged by labor groups and left-tilting writers and filmmakers ("How Wal-Mart is Destroying America -- And the World," by Bill Owens concludes with the author's comment: "The long and the short of it is, I hate-Wal-Mart."), the retailer is trying to please everybody.
This holiday season, the term "Christmas season" has been revived after a hiatus -- good news to previously offended Christian groups -- but deciding to sell a legal morning-after pill was a no-no to the same groups.
Last year, Wal-Mart got into trouble in Livonia when its plans for a brand-new, state-of-the-art store attracted opposition from just about everybody, touching off a racially charged battle.
Once, Wal-Mart used to charm its way into small towns and watch local merchants close their Main Street doors, as everyone for miles rushed to buy cheaper toothpaste and gold earrings at the big box stores.
Now, though, Wal-Mart is everywhere, a symbol of today's America, the nation where compromise is always somebody else's job.
To Benham, in Concord, N.C.
, Wal-Mart needs to get back on what he thinks of as a Christian track. Let 'em all fight it out.
Most of us, especially this time of year, are in the mood to shop for gifts, not ideology.
Wal-Mart has become a modern magnet for political propagandists of all ilks. And the retailer's challenge is to, somehow, get back to being just a store.
Copyright 2007 The Detroit News.
All rights reserved.
News RSS