Wal-Mart's management knows how to provide low prices to its customers, but just how much does it consider its greater moral and ethical obligation to ensure fairness and justice to suppliers, customers, and employees alike? Wal-Mart's powerful PR machine attempts to set forth the image of a benevolent, family-friendly force for good. To the contrary, Wal-Mart disregards basic human rights through its discriminatory business practices, exploits the environment through its large-scale win-at-all-cost mentality, and fails to address the health care needs of many of its employees.

The evidence that Wal-Mart is a contributor to the social problems of our world is quite clear. One can look around the world and see the ways in which Wal-Mart negatively tramples upon national economies from China to Chile. While we may take fleeing satisfaction in Wal-Mart's ability to usher in low prices for the everyday products we purchase, the corporate giant simultaneously ushers in an age of economic subterfuge in the long run. We in the faith community find that Wal-Mart has an ethical and moral dilemma on its hands, one that can only be rectified when we lift our voices and issue a clarion call for Wal-Mart to return to just ways of conducting business, ensuring fairness and equality to consumers, suppliers, and workers worldwide. Wal-Mart's trademark phrase, "Save Money, Live Better" cannot stay true for all peoples when its avenues of productions are also avenues of injustice. All religions believe in justice, and justice is only relevant when all individuals are seen with significance and inherent value and not as chattels of the corporate machine.

the aims of our faith community

We believe that members of all backgrounds from all faith traditions must implore Wal-Mart to seriously consider its corporate responsibility to work for a more ethical economic, as well as social globe, not solely based on the pragmatic need to restore its public relations image, but also for the greater end of seeing the lives of individuals bettered within the societies Wal-Mart works in. As America's largest retailer, it is our belief that Wal-Mart must change, conforming its image to reflect the great values of justice and equality as set forth by our great faith traditions. 

This network aims to engage people of all faiths by providing an alternative path of peace and justice that Wal-Mart may trod. Additionally, this network seeks to empower people of all faiths by providing avenues through which we can act. With this, we hope to determine course of action for the faith community to respond to the issues at stake, such as discrimination, health care, environment, and workers' rights. We offer specific actions that the faith community can participate in because as the common saying follows, "faith without works is dead."

Sign up and become part of our community to receive information on the faith community's involvement to bring fair business practices to Wal-Mart. You'll receive memos on our Battlemart fights, community events, "Handshake with Sam" resolutions, community benefits agreements, and breaking news and research concerning America's largest retailer.

why Wal-Mart?

The question may come to our mind, "why target Wal-Mart? Are other large retailers not equally as responsible for the problems at hand?" Wal-Mart's sheer size enables it to have few rivals, and thus fewer chances of pushing Wal-Mart to become a better corporation. Wal-Mart is, in fact, a larger corporation than Home Depot, Kroger, Target, Costco, Sears, and Kmart combined.  Thus, the decisions Wal-Mart makes in disregard of the common good become magnified, and serve as the precedent for other corporations.

We must recognize the need of "praxis" - of living our our lives in accordance with ourfaith. This requires believers to stand against Wal-Mart unethical business practices, spanning from gender, racial, and gender identity discrimination, to environmental degradation, and even health care reform. The fight becomes even more relevant because we recognize that Wal-Mart has failed to take action. When we can get a corporate mega giant such as Wal-Mart to amend their harmful practices, then the world has a better opportunity for a positive transformation.

Click here to read more about why the Faith community must join the fight to hold Wal-Mart accountable for its actions >>  

stay up-to-date

Our blog serves as the primary outlet through which we decimate news concerning faith-based issues in pertinence to Wal-Mart. You will find news stories, past sermons and leaders in the spotlight all contributing to the larger discussion of Wal-Mart's ethical obligations.

call to action: stop the injustice in health care

Today, fewer than half of all Wal-Mart employees are insured under the Wal-Mart's arrangement. This compares to two-thirds of workers at large U.S. firms who receive health insurance from their employer. Rev. James M. Lawson Jr., President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice stated the following:

"With 1.2 million U.S. workers, Wal-Mart is reshaping the American workplace. Its Supercenters are being built where productive factories once stood, and middle-class workers are now competing for jobs as all-night cashiers, making a fraction of their former wages. The Wal-Mart model of low costs, underwritten by low wages, has cast a shadow on Dr. King's dreams of an American economy that provides stability and prosperity for all workers. Just as the Memphis sanitation workers were asked to work without dignity, so too are Wal-Mart's."

It is time to make a difference. The issue of health care coverage for all Wal-Mart employees is an opportunity for you to become engaged and act upon it. We ask that you to encourage your friends to help us and our campaign to pressure Wal-Mart to provide adequate and affordable health care for their employees. Click on the link below to sign this letter set forth by the faith community.

		Write a letter to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott asking him to provide affordable, quality health care to all employees. >>
		Click here to watch faith leaders discuss health care at Wal-Mart in honor of Martin Luther King Day, 2007.

links & resources: the faith community speaks out about Wal-Mart's duty to pursue justice

		Faithful Reform An interfaith effort that seeks to address the pressing issue of healthcare by expanding "the depth and breadth of support for health care reform within the religious community."
		What Faith Groups Say About the Right to Organize A PDF document by National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice which lays out the moral and ethical basis for workers' rights.
		Religious Wal-Mart Stockholders Push Wal-Mart by Proposing Shareholder Resolutions Learn more about how the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility pushed Wal-Mart to consider its greater ethical obligations.
		Where would Jesus shop? Not Wal-Mart. Brian Bolton of Sojourners Magazine declares that "our purchases ought to reflect deeper values than just 'always low prices."
		Statement on Climate Change by World Council of Churches Protestant inter-denominational group speaks out against corporations' role in perpetuating global warming.
		Living Wage Campaigns: Paying Workers Fairly for their Labor The Interfaith Worker Justice tells the narrative of countless workers fighting for fair and decent wages.
		Is It Ethical to Shop at Wal-Mart? A Debate A debate hosted by Markkula Center for Applied Ethics concerning the particular ethical issues consumers face when shopping at Wal-Mart.
		Are the Concerns that Faith-based Organizations Express Concerning Wal-Mart Justified? An article from Christianity Today describes just how "Wal-Mart has become a lightning rod nationwide in local tempests of moral outrage."