By Will Hall, Message Executive Editor
ATLANTA (LBM) — Chick-fil-A has announced it will drop the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army from its foundation’s charitable giving program after completing multi-year commitments to both.
The move comes as the Christian-founded company has endured severe attacks from homosexual groups that attack the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army as anti-LGBT because both ministries champion marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman. According to public records, in 2018 the Chick-fil-A Foundation contributed $1.65 million to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and $115,000 to the Salvation Army.
The attacks on Chickfil-A include denials in recent years by airports and universities to prevent the company from opening stores on their respective premises. In reporting the change in its charitable giving policy, the Chick-fil-A Foundation announced its plans for “a more focused giving approach” in distributing $9 million in 2020 “to a smaller number of organizations working exclusively in the areas of education, homelessness and hunger.”
In an email to the Christian Post, a Chick-filA spokesperson stressed, “No organization will be excluded from future consideration – faith-based or non-faith based.”
The Fellowship of Christian Athletes has not commented publicly, but the Salvation Army issued a statement expressing sadness “that a corporate partner has felt it necessary to divert funding to other hunger, education and homelessness organizations — areas in which the Salvation Army, as the largest social services provider in the world, is already fully committed.”
Meanwhile, one of Chick-fil-A’s most vocal defenders (in the past), former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee, decried the restaurant chain’s change in charitable giving policy as “surrendering to critics and betraying loyal customers.”
On Twitter he reminded followers that he coordinated a national Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day in 2012 after the fast food favorite was “being bullied by militant hate groups.”
“Today, Chick-fil-A betrayed local customers for $$,” he wrote. “I regret believing they would stay true to convictions of founder Truett Cathy. Sad.”
