Robin Parrish – CMCentral

Popular punk band Relient K has asked clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch to sever their business partnership. Numerous conservative watchdog groups denounced the relationship between the band and the retailer, due to A&F’s near-pornographic clothing catalogs.

Relient K’s deal with A&F included use of the band’s music in A&F store music videos as well as the Abercrombie & Fitch website. Early last week, Gotee Records President Joey Elwood told AgapePress that company officials had not yet decided if they will be able to remove Relient K’s music from its stores. As of November 12, the band’s song “Press On” is still featured on the Abercrombie & Fitch website.

Billed as a “first-ever exclusive partnership with a band,” Abercrombie & Fitch launched a massive multimedia campaign with Relient K on Nov. 2. However, Bill Johnson, president of American Decency Association, and perhaps the most vocal conservative critic of Abercrombie & Fitch, said Relient K was making a mistake.

“I am very disappointed and very troubled that a Christian band or any group of people that are naming the name of Jesus Christ in their music and ministry would in any regard feel comfortable aligning themselves with a corporation so blatant in targeting our youth through sexually erotic images,” Johnson told Baptist Press. “It is very troubling to me. I for one will be urging people not to purchase their records. They have made a serious error.”

In addition to the ADA, representatives of Focus On the Family and Concerned Women for America also were critical of the band’s decision to partner with Abercrombie & Fitch.

Elwood said that while Gotee did not condone A&F’s overly suggestive advertisements and catalogs, “I felt like the line we were drawing was consistent with what we had been doing for years, and that we were entering into a domain that we couldn’t control — a secular domain — in order to offer a choice to consumers. But I and my partner and the band are walking in faith that there’s a larger work at hand here that these other organizations are trying to accomplish — and we do not want to get in the way of that.”