"But there's very little said about where it comes from. It's mostly about the mystique, the exotic providence of the crop, and fair trade lifts up the farmer again and again. That's why it feels so solid in churches," Frerichs said.
Frerichs said that Lutherans drank 45 tonnes of fair-trade coffee last year, and hope to double that next year.
"We're not increasing wanton coffee drinking, we're saying replace what you normally buy with fair trade coffee," he said.
But some people, including Neal, said they actually drink more coffee now that they switched to Equal Exchange because it tastes better than the old church coffee.
On a recent Sunday, members of the Lexington United Methodist Church in Massachusetts snacked on Christmas cookies and sipped fair-trade coffee from small Styrofoam cups.
Ken Kreutziger and Bob Miner instituted the program at the church three and a half years ago, and persuaded the United Methodist New England conference to serve fairly traded coffee at all parishes. Kreutziger plans to bring a resolution before the church's general conference in the spring asking the national church to buy fairly traded coffee and tea.
The Lexington church brews decaffeinated coffee at the 10:30am coffee hour; caffeinated Earl Grey tea is also available. The church often sells the fair-trade coffee as a fund-raiser, and brought in extra shipments this month so members could purchase the products as Christmas gifts. Most members say they now only drink fair-trade coffee.
"It's always been an unintentional sin. No one wants to keep these people in poverty, but no one thinks about where coffee comes from," Miner said.
Michael Arnott persuaded the First Unitarian Society of Newton in West Newton, Massachusetts, to change its coffee eight years ago. On a recent Sunday, members poured coffee from carafes into cups emblazoned with the Equal Exchange logo. Arnott stood at a nearby table, selling coffee, tea, cocoa and chocolate bars for a church fund-raiser.
Erica Foldy, a professor of public and nonprofit management at New York University, and her husband, Roger Luckmann, a professor of family medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, bought a few bags of decaffeinated coffee for Foldy at the 11:30 social hour. The couple, who live in Natick, Massachusetts, said their New Year's resolution was to completely switch to fair trade coffee. They must buy a coffee grinder for the whole beans that Arnott usually sells.
At the Beth El Temple Center in Belmont, Mass., Margery Williams, a member, sells coffee, tea and cocoa each month.
At the last sale, she raised about US$60 for the temple. Williams, who said she and her husband drank coffee "incessantly," got involved in the fair trade movement after the Sept. 11 attacks, and brought it to the temple soon after.
"It really made me see how this little luxury in which I indulge myself on a daily basis was really coming out of the hides of these farmers," she said. "I looked at the coffee in my hand and said `this is ridiculous.'"
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