c. 1997 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest in Winston-Salem, N.C., an author and former Wall Street Journal reporter. E-mail him at journey(at)interpath.com).

UNDATED _ A word to the Southern Baptists as they gird up for a boycott of the Walt Disney Co. empire.

Before you get too hot on Mickey’s trail, I suggest you visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn. It’s built on the site of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated outside room 305 in 1968.

Pay special attention to the story of the Montgomery, Ala., boycott in 1955-1956, when blacks refused to ride city buses because the system treated them unjustly. Imagine yourself as Rosa Parks, whose arrest for refusing to be intimidated sparked the boycott. She paid a high price. So did the blacks who joined her. They had to walk miles to work, spend time in jail, and listen to city officials vow to crush their uppity little rebellion.

What will your boycotters be doing? Passing disdainfully by the Disney Store as they walk through the mall? Or making vacation plans that don’t include Disney World? Renting a Bugs Bunny video rather than”Snow White”? Refusing to buy a mutual fund that contains Disney stock?

A real boycott is about personal sacrifice, not a change in entertainment plans. Stand outside Room 305. See the balcony where Dr. King died. Remember that battle, when men and women who had everything to lose stood up against real forces of darkness.

Second, before counting the press clippings you got for your anti-Disney vote and the anti-gay rhetoric that accompanied it, I suggest you visit a convention of the Episcopal Church. For 20 years I sat in church conventions and listened to impassioned debates on all sorts of hot topics.

We quoted Scripture, passed resolutions and sent them immediately to the press. We were proud of ourselves for being”prophetic.”Then we went out for drinks with the people we had just debated. Nothing had changed. We had enjoyed a few seconds of passion, that’s all. Ethics as theater.

But during each debate, we spent a bit more of our remaining capital _ our public respect, our tax-exempt right to speak with the expectation of being heard. The next time we gathered, we had a little less capital. By now, we have virtually none. The Episcopal Church speaks, and no one listens.

That could happen even to you, Southern Baptists, America’s largest Protestant denomination. Since having bashed gays and shunned a TV actress for playing the part of a lesbian, you now have less capital to spend. In time, you could have none.

Third, go back to your Bible. Yes, those Bibles that you waved so magnificently as you condemned homosexuals. Read about the ministry of Jesus. Can you imagine the son of God taking a public vote, holding a press conference, and sending delegates back home with a charge to proclaim deliverance from a cartoon empire?

When given the chance to go public, Jesus stayed silent. When the crowd came to him, he took his small band of disciples aside and taught them about blessedness. When he sent out his followers, he warned them they would suffer for their faith, to the point of joining him in a baptism of blood.

Do you really believe that castigating Disney’s gay-affirming employment policies is the kind of suffering servanthood that Jesus had in mind? Has Calvary been telescoped to such a small vision of godliness as avoiding Orlando?

I may sound harsh, but the spectacle of several thousand well-to-do white folks chasing after Mickey Mouse is a bit over the top.

But mostly, I am saddened.

I am saddened that evangelical fervor in America has come down to gay-bashing. This nation needs the gospel, not a sex war.

And I am saddened that you are buying that which is indeed cruel about Disney, namely, the power of illusion. Disney sells the illusion that one can”wish upon a star”and make life better, that appearance is the same as reality, that watching Mouseketeer Annette play on a beach blanket is the same as having a life oneself.

MJP END EHRICH