Southern Baptist pastor who sparked 8-year Disney boycott dies
Anyone who attended the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1990s will likely remember Rev. Wiley Drake, who gave more than 70 speeches on the open microphone during business sessions, Baptist Press said.
One of his ideas, first proposed in 1995, was a boycott of Disney. The next year, in 1996, the convention voted to take up Drake’s proposal if the company didn’t change its ways. In 1997, the SBC voted to fully boycott Disney.
Drake, who at the time was pastor of the Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, near Disneyland, vowed to stop going to see Disney movies until the company stopped producing morally objectionable content.
Drake even pulled off his Mickey Mouse tie and discarded it to make his point.
Drake acknowledged that many Southern Baptist families struggled with boycotting a company that had produced so many family movies and had such lovable cartoon characters: “I’ve got grandkids that love Disney,” he said.
But Drake said Disney betrayed ordinary Americans by veering away from being a trusted provider of family entertainment.
By 2005, Drake and other Baptist leaders said the company had taken a turn back toward producing more family-friendly entertainment and fewer morally objectionable films.
A resolution approved in 2005 said the boycott, in effect since 1997, had ‘’communicated effectively our displeasure concerning products and policies that violate moral righteousness and traditional family values.’’
It also pledged to continue to monitor the morality of Disney products, urged Disney to provide only family-friendly products, and said Southern Baptists should be careful about all their entertainment choices.
‘’They knew it was hurting their bottom line,’’ said Richard Land, then president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He noted that business journalists had detailed declining profits and stock prices that led to Disney’s announcement of the departure of Disney chief executive officer Michael Eisner in 2005.
Drake said Disney had betrayed ordinary Americans by going from a trusted provider of family entertainment to an anti-family corporation whose subsidiaries produced controversial movies such as ‘’Priest’’ and ‘’Powder.’’
Drake, who dropped his 12 family passes to Disneyland as part of the boycott, said large numbers of Baptists and other conservative Christians canceled or avoided trips to the theme parks including Disney World in Orlando, and stopped going to Disney movies or buying toys from Disney retail stores. ‘’We have cost them millions and millions of dollars,’’ Drake said in 2005.
https://www.al.com/news/2026/02/southern...-dies.html
Anyone who attended the annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1990s will likely remember Rev. Wiley Drake, who gave more than 70 speeches on the open microphone during business sessions, Baptist Press said.
One of his ideas, first proposed in 1995, was a boycott of Disney. The next year, in 1996, the convention voted to take up Drake’s proposal if the company didn’t change its ways. In 1997, the SBC voted to fully boycott Disney.
Drake, who at the time was pastor of the Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park, California, near Disneyland, vowed to stop going to see Disney movies until the company stopped producing morally objectionable content.
Drake even pulled off his Mickey Mouse tie and discarded it to make his point.
Drake acknowledged that many Southern Baptist families struggled with boycotting a company that had produced so many family movies and had such lovable cartoon characters: “I’ve got grandkids that love Disney,” he said.
But Drake said Disney betrayed ordinary Americans by veering away from being a trusted provider of family entertainment.
By 2005, Drake and other Baptist leaders said the company had taken a turn back toward producing more family-friendly entertainment and fewer morally objectionable films.
A resolution approved in 2005 said the boycott, in effect since 1997, had ‘’communicated effectively our displeasure concerning products and policies that violate moral righteousness and traditional family values.’’
It also pledged to continue to monitor the morality of Disney products, urged Disney to provide only family-friendly products, and said Southern Baptists should be careful about all their entertainment choices.
‘’They knew it was hurting their bottom line,’’ said Richard Land, then president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He noted that business journalists had detailed declining profits and stock prices that led to Disney’s announcement of the departure of Disney chief executive officer Michael Eisner in 2005.
Drake said Disney had betrayed ordinary Americans by going from a trusted provider of family entertainment to an anti-family corporation whose subsidiaries produced controversial movies such as ‘’Priest’’ and ‘’Powder.’’
Drake, who dropped his 12 family passes to Disneyland as part of the boycott, said large numbers of Baptists and other conservative Christians canceled or avoided trips to the theme parks including Disney World in Orlando, and stopped going to Disney movies or buying toys from Disney retail stores. ‘’We have cost them millions and millions of dollars,’’ Drake said in 2005.
https://www.al.com/news/2026/02/southern...-dies.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
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