Related articles and links |  1 of 2

One criterion not included in your article on "The 40 Best Christian Places to Work" [April] was pensions.

It may be different in 2003, but after working 24 and 38 years respectively for several of the finalists, my husband and I, now retired, have no pensions from any

of those organizations. We receive minimal Social Security checks based on what were comparably lower salaries.

Such work was a "calling" (we were never in it for the money), as it is for many of your respondents. But it does require great frugality, if not hardship, in one's senior years.

V.K. Hearn
Berkeley, California

I was so much looking forward to finding examples of Christian businesspersons thinking Christianly about every facet of their enterprise in your April cover story.

Alas, I was disappointed to discover that you were narrowly construing "Christian" to mean those businesses whose work focuses on nurturing the confessional task of the church.

We certainly need such businesses. We cannot for one second believe, however, that these businesses exhaust the meaning of "Christian places to work." Perhaps in the future you will see fit to profile mainstream businesses seeking to incarnate the faith throughout their enterprises.

Kenneth W. Hermann
Kent, Ohio

We limited the scope of the first survey to ensure a fair and thorough evaluation of the companies. We plan to broaden our definition of Christian workplaces in the future. Also, the survey did address pensions, though CT did not publish those results. —Eds.

Thanks for your article. Working as a senior manager in a Christian organization in India, I have learned many underlying principles for making it a better workplace. The insights gained will help us transform our departments.

M.J. Kumardoss
Bangalore, India

In his amazingly weak attack on animal rights, Chuck Colson reaches a conclusion that is exactly the opposite of that demanded by his premise ["Taming Beasts," April].

Colson asserts that animal-rights advocates place humans on the same ethical plane as chickens. He then asserts that this will make it easier for a "future Hitler to herd millions of humans into gas chambers."

Isn't it just the opposite? If animal-rights advocates object to slaughtering chickens and place humans on the same ethical plane as chickens, wouldn't they also object to mass slaughter of humans?

Joseph Higginbotham
Lexington, Kentucky

Chuck colson charges us to never confuse "mercy and respect for animals" with "rights for animals." The former is good, the latter bad. Fine.

What does it mean, then, for a slaughterhouse to treat its pigs and cows mercifully and respectfully? In Colson's mind, legislation requiring stalls big enough for pregnant sows to turn around in illustrates not mercy or respect, but silliness.

Mark Roeda
Ann Arbor, Michigan

Thanks to Charles Colson and Anne Morse for doubling my personal benefit from the April issue. For years I have struggled in a sort of half-conscious discomfort against some intangible uneasiness about the way certain people relate to animal-rights issues.

This column has made the reasons clear and plain. It will surely enhance my ability to understand where I should draw the lines in my own life.

H. Thomas
Clarksville, Michigan

The many men whose lives Charles Colson's work has touched in our nation's prisons have impressed me. Therefore I was especially interested in his column on animal rights, which has been a concern of mine as a Christian for about 15 years.

I was delighted to learn that Michael Pollan's New York Times Magazine article on abused farm animals, and Matthew Scully's book, Dominion, had so impressed Colson. These works show that in slaughterhouses, for example, animals' throats are slit, their limbs are hacked off, and their skin is torn from their bodies while they are still conscious. Conscious pigs are routinely plunged into vats of scalding water for hair removal.

next page... |  1 of 2

share this page

June 2003, Vol. 47, No. 6