(RNS) — Addressing the congregation at his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia, on Sunday (Feb. 23), the Rev. Jamal Bryant was trying to recruit the thousands listening in the Atlanta-area church and online to join him in his plan for Lent, the Christian season of abstinence and spiritual preparation that begins March 5.
For their Lenten fast, he said, they should refrain from shopping at Target.
“Whatever it is that you was getting from Target, you can get from a Black business – amen?” Bryant said from the pulpit. “Whether it’s paper towels or soap or dishwasher detergent, whatever, a bonnet, whatever you need, you can get it.”
Four weeks before, the big-box retailer had announced that it would pull back from its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, including one dedicated to diversifying the suppliers it uses to stock its shelves. The announcement came days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing.”
Some 70,000 people have signed onto Bryant’s boycott at targetfast.org, the pastor said, and those supporters would receive an online directory of Black-owned businesses provided by the advocacy group U.S. Black Chambers Inc., as well as a prayer guide to use during the Lenten season.
Bryant is one of several faith leaders who have come up with new Lenten traditions in light of the Trump administration’s assault on DEI — besides the executive order, the president blamed a recent air disaster at Washington’s Ronald Reagan National Airport on DEI hiring — as well as policy changes reducing domestic and international humanitarian aid.
The targetfast.org website. (Screen grab)
In the weeks between Ash Wednesday and Easter, many Christians give up sweets, meat or alcohol, volunteer or increase the frequency of their worship. But this year, faith and grassroots leaders are calling for direct action aimed at corporations or politicians, while others are planning demonstrations and prayer services to protest the White House’s moves. Still others are focused on particular policy concerns directly or indirectly related to the actions of the new administration.
RELATED: At King Day rally, Sharpton leads oath to support DEI as Trump opposes it
The Catholic peace organization Pax Christi USA plans to distribute ashes on Ash Wednesday (March 5) on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol after a brief prayer service that will touch on nuclear weapons, Gaza and immigration, said Judy Coode, the group’s communications director.
The Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners, the national social justice advocacy organization, is partnering with interfaith leaders from more than 20 denominations and religious groups to pray in the shadow of the Capitol on Wednesdays from Ash Wednesday through the end of March. Besides praying for an end to attempts to freeze federal grants, dismantle agencies and threaten birthright citizenship, the gatherings will be “calling on Congress to protect its powers and to advance the common good,” said Taylor.
Bishop William J. Barber II, president of Repairers of the Breach, is set to join faith leaders and other activists in an Ash Wednesday procession to the Capitol and Supreme Court to deliver an open letter making a national call “to address the negative effects of the Trump administration’s executive orders, the budget plans in Congress and efforts to obtain personal information of the public, which directly impacts the poor and working people,” his organization said in a statement.
Bishop Vashti McKenzie, president of the National Council of Churches, is among the speakers listed by Repairers of the Breach for the event, but her ecumenical organization has planned its own prayer webinar for Monday to bring people across different backgrounds together to pray as “a powerful witness in a very divisive atmosphere that we find ourselves — and not just as a country, but around the world.”
The NCC also plans to distribute a prayer guide and a toolkit for “anxious congregations.”
“The church must step up to the plate to be able to provide the spiritual structure and discipline to help people navigate through this time,” said McKenzie, a retired bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
At a news conference at Washington’s Metropolitan AME Church earlier in February, Bishop Reginald Jackson, chair of the denomination’s Social Justice Commission, called for a boycott of Target during Lent.
“There’s got to be some corporate responsibility,” he said in an interview days later, noting he hopes Black churches and “all of those who believe that diversity, equity and inclusion are good for America” will join the boycott. “You can’t say you want people of color to buy your products and yet you don’t think people of color are good enough to work in your establishment.”
Jackson said he views the Lenten boycott as a sign of the importance of improving diversity in all areas of American life, and a spiritual goal.
“It’s part of discipline and sacrifice,” he said. “The Bible really refers to all of us in terms of our diversity. For example, in the Book of Acts, it talks about out of one blood, God made all of us to dwell together.”
Bishop Reginald Jackson speaks at Metropolitan AME Church on Feb. 17, 2025, in Washington. (Video screen gab)
Jackson said he is working with Bryant and is supporting the Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, which plans to announce in early April boycotts of corporations that have shrunk their DEI commitments after working with other partners to determine which companies will be their focus.
The Rev. Barbara Williams-Skinner, co-convener of the National African American Clergy Network, who spoke at the news conference with Jackson, said later that she is supporting the efforts to counter anti-DEI sentiments — which she called “every white supremacist’s dream” — and won’t be shopping at Target for Easter items.
Bryant, who said he hopes 100,000 “conscientious Christians” will have signed up by March 5 to mark the “season of denial,” said the action is rooted in history as well as faith and economics.
“I think that it’s going to take a spiritual intervention for things to change in this culture,” he said, recalling the 1950s Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama that was led by churches.
The Rev. Jim Wallis, director of the Georgetown University Center on Faith and Justice, said he supports the “powerful and symbolic” boycott efforts led by Black churches and he hopes to encourage a broad participation in them among faith leaders of different racial and ethnic groups.
“Civil resistance is coming back and faith-based civil resistance will be at the core of that, and economic boycotts are central,” Wallis said. “It goes back to what Black churches have done in leading the Civil Rights Movement. There wouldn’t have been a Civil Rights Movement without the Black church.”
RELATED: In nation’s capital, Trump’s cuts and funding freezes spur pastoral-care crisis
