According to
this story in USAToday, in 2006 Starbucks is going to be putting more than caffeine in your double soy mocha grande. In addition, you have a chance to receive, absolutely free of charge, a spiffy God-infused quote from
The Purpose-Driven Life right on your cup.
With this move $tarbucks joins other corporate and small business entities in delivering Christian-based messages along with the goods, products, or services customers order. The story lists In-N-Out Burgers of California, the retail clothing chains Forever 21 and XXI, Alaska Airlines, and Hobby Lobby as businesses which have chosen to feature an overtly Christian message with every purchase or trip.
A sociologist at UCLA has this to say about the phenomenon:
"Americans are more accepting of overt religiosity these days, and corporations are good at figuring out how to do it with a light touch, one that's not going to scare off unbelievers," says sociologist David Halle, director of the LeRoy Neiman Center for the Study of American Society and Culture at the University of California-Los Angeles.
Even if one accepts Mr. Halle's premise, the fact remains that religious freedom and freedom from religion remain one of the first and best-known hallmarks of captialist American society. In choosing to feature Bible-based messages, corporations run the risk of alienating not just nonbelievers, but those with different faith practices altogether.
And, given $tarbucks' international profile, do those same shipments of cups show up in New Delhi? Hong Kong? Tokyo? Istanbul? Does the Protestant Christian message play as well when the primary consumer is Muslim? Hindu? Eastern Orthodox? Shinto? Are Protestant America's ties to corporate capitalism going to do what Christian missionaries have been unable to manage for centuries? To wit, the Christian homogenization of world religions?
Somehow, that's doubtful. One has to wonder, however, just what the bigwigs at $tarbucks were thinking when they agreed to carry such an overtly sectarian message on their drink cups.