Chick-fil-A Day in America

MECHANICSBURG, Pa. – A police escort parked near the entrance to the local Chick-fil-A, directing traffic, so that the crush of cars and people didn’t clog the rest of the Silver Spring shopping center. I drove past it to work at a Panera (free wifi, diet coke refills), but through my window, from 3:30 to 7, I could see a line-out-the-door become a sort of festival, and the lines of cars start snaking around the entire parking lot. At 5, three local TV crews pulled up, taking b-roll and interviewing the chicken-eaters. “Support Chick-fil-A Day,” from this vantage point, looked like a bona fide national Happening. Every table in my corner of the Panera was abuzz about it. “I guess some people still support free speech!” said a pastor to a family sitting down to pray over their soup-and-sandwich combos. When I needed to leave to meet a source, I detoured over to the crowd, right as another pastor was checking on “prayer warriors.” There were regular spoken prayers – the wait at the end of the queue was rumored to be two hours.
“Lord, we thank you for this food and for this fellowship,” said Bob Nemoyer, a local pastor. He was carrying a copy of John Lennox’s against-atheism book God’s Undertaker. We had a nice, short conversation about psychologists and scientists whose work enhanced Christianity without degrading it, and then Nemoyer made his elevator pitch.
“I am not here because I hate gays,” he said. “I don’t believe people choose to be gay; there’s sound reason to believe that sexual preference can be explained by hormonal balance, and that’s innate. I’m just here because I think marriage is intended for child-rearing, and you should be able to say that – like this Dan Cathy said that – without fear of retribution.”