Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop, who died on September 10, is being honored around the world for her life commitment to ethical, cruelty free business practices. Initially uneasy with religion, she believed that “anybody who has a religious inclination has no sense of rationale or intellectual understanding and therefore should be dismissed.” She came to see the value of spiritual development bringing about material change to the way we live and act – and she was surprised and delighted by her experience of the annual Greenbelt Festival, commenting that its practical vitality and intellectual energy was far from the stereotypes of Christianity she had often met, and the stuffiness of the church she had personally encountered.
Tributes have been pouring in from across the world for green and ethical business pioneer Anita Roddick, founder of the Body Shop chain and supporter of Fair Trade, who died on 10 September 2007 aged 64 after a major brain haemorrhage. Ekklesia reports on Dame Anita, the daughter of Italian immigrants, who set up the first Body Shop in Brighton in 1976 – when its approach was regarded as radical and new. She pioneered cruelty-free beauty products and turned them into a highly profitable enterprise.
Simon Barrow, co-director of the Christian think tank Ekklesia, said that the best way to honour the memory of Anita Roddick was to take forward the case for corporate responsibility as a human obligation, not a luxury option.
“It is easy to be cynical about ‘ethical business’ now that it has become mainstream and trendy”, he commented. “Of course there is a lot of hot air around it. But developing alternative practices for doing business as if people and the planet matters is a tough call. Roddick recognised that massive injustice in trade, corporate greed and unfair debt often confounded efforts to take the world in a different direction. But she wasn’t daunted or deceived. Nor should we be.”
Ekklesia has also praised Roddick for bringing people together from different belief and non-belief backgrounds to work for a better world in spite of their differences.
“She didn’t feel easy with ‘religion’ and she was highly critical of a lot of established religious institutions”, said Barrow. “But Anita Roddick also saw the value of spiritual development bringing about material change to the way we live and act – and she was surprised and delighted by her experience of the annual Greenbelt festival, commenting that its practical vitality and intellectual energy was far from the stereotypes of Christianity she had often met, and the stuffiness of the church she had personally encountered.”
Ekklesia relates how Roddick changed her mind about religion in her participation with the Greenbelt Christian Arts Festival:
Speaking to the Church Times newspaper ahead of her appearance at the Greenbelt Christian arts festival back in 2004, Dame Anita Roddick – who died yesterday – declared at the time: “What’s wonderful about being my age is having to face your prejudices.”
She continued: “I had no idea how big Greenbelt was. I had no idea how organised it was; how free it was; how joyful it was. And I had no idea that there was such a strong activist, trade justice plank in its platform.”
She said: “It’s really hard, when you have had your antennae up for most of these movements, to have completely ignored it. I have fallen for the zeitgeist that says anybody who has a religious inclination has no sense of rationale or intellectual understanding and therefore should be dismissed.”
“I am cheering the Greenbelt festival from the top of every bloody mountain…for me, it’s like a heartbeat. And it’s youth. I’m ashamed of my bloody prejudices, but I’m delighted to be a convert. I find it wonderful.”
Greenbelt Festival website here