Selfishness and Damnation on a Subway

Imagine, if you will, a crowded, standing-room only subway car during rush hour. Even though people are standing, a seated passenger keeps his backpack on the seat next to his. It would be difficult upon seeing such a sordid display of selfishness not to reflect on the person’s values and character. The flipside of selfishness would be obvious: an indifference towards other people, including that which might benefit them. Instead, selfishness, which is self-love that is oriented teleologically to the person’s own benefit (i.e., private benefit) at the expense of benefits to other people and even a society as a whole. The shift from the ethical domain to that of religion may seem easily done—people of bad character are likely to go to hell rather than heaven—but not so fast, lest we presume to be omniscient (i.e., all-knowing) and capable of promulgating divine justice. It is indeed very tempting to relegate selfish people to hell.

John Calvin, a Protestant reformer in the sixteenth century, held that by absolute sovereignty, God has predestined an elect who are saved. Although he viewed wealth as a sign of God’s approval of the elect, it was not until the next century that Calvinists considered industriousness to be a Christian virtue.[1] All this contradicts Jesus’s statement in the Gospels to the rich man that unless he gives up his fortune, he would not enter the kingdom of God; it would be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle. Furthermore, wealth as a sign of divine favor leaves out the divine favor that could be supposed to be lavished on monks such as Cuthbert and Godric of Finchale, who lived intentionally impoverished lives so to be worthy of being saved. Wealth as a sign of divine favor also flies in the face of the preachments of such religious notables as St. Francis of Assisi and Luther, both of whom can be interpreted as attempting to apply brakes to the emerging and maturating Christian pro-wealth paradigm of their respective times.[2]

Much less problematic is the attribution by observing selfishness of someone not being among the elect saved by the shedding of blood by the Son of God, for, as Paul and Augustine both claimed, God is love and it emanates not only in a person’s love directed to God, but also to one’s neighbors in benevolentia universalis. Intentionally depriving another subway passenger on a crowded train of a seat by taking one up with one’s backpack is antipodal to benevolence, which manifests divine love according to Christianity.

In fact, Samuel Hopkins, who was a protégé of the New England theologian and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, claims in his book on holiness that the essence of the kingdom of God is kindness and acts of compassion oriented to the humanity of people who dislike one or whom one dislikes.[3] Literally “rubbing shoulders” with another passenger on a subway car is much less inconvenient than being charitable towards adversaries. The root of the word charity is love rather than philanthropy.

In his book on virtue, Edwards himself distinguishes selfishness from “compounded self-love,” which differs from simple self-love because benefits are intentionally extended to other people rather than limited to oneself.[4] Similarly, Pierre Nicole, a seventeenth-century Jansenist Catholic priest and theologian, claims that the inherently sinful self-love can nonetheless be cleverly manifested as courtesy—but not interior kindness!—to other people because more can be gotten from laying out honey than from the stinginess of selfishness. Had the subway passenger moved his backpack, who knows, perhaps a person who might have been useful might have sat in the suddenly empty seat? 

Nevertheless, Hopkins, Edwards, and Nicole were all very clear in that even if self-love can have intentional beneficial consequences, which are in a person's self-interest, the root is still a sin. Needless to say, this point applies to the naked underlying narrow selfishness of the baker and the consumer in Adam Smith's theory of a competitive market, where not even moral sentiments can be assumed to be in the calculus of either participant. In relying on market-level unintended beneficial consequences of selfish economic pursuits by the crucially price-based impersonal mechanism of the proverbial "invisible hand," Smith does not even acknowledge or rely on intentional benefits for others from the enlightened or "compound" self-interest of market participants. Smith's view of human nature in the economic domain is thus relatively pessimistic. I submit that the business world empirically bears this out, as evinced, for example, by how corporations market their marketing under the subterfuge of "corporate social responsibility." Even attempts to reconcile organizational and societal norms are not ethical in nature, given Hume's notion of the naturalistic fallacy, which states that ethical principles are necessary to get from "is" to "ought." I submit that still another fallacy is instantiated by conflating the ethical and theological domains. In short, God transcends and thus is not limited to "ought." The profane world of business greed is oceans of time from the realm of godliness. 

As preferable as damning selfishness is to reckoning a rich person as being favored by God, distinguishing the ethical domain from that of salvation is important because the two domains are, I submit, qualitatively different even though they do interrelate. Hence Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling distinguishes the universally-accessible moral domain from that of the divine command that only Abraham receives.  What is attempted murder (of Abraham’s son, Isaac) in moral (and legal) terms is a sacrifice in religious terms. Both domains are valid in themselves and their respective meanings, and they relate to each other, as in the story of Abraham, but attempted murder and religious sacrifice are qualitatively different. This point is also clear in the Book of Job, as Job is a righteous man and thus does not deserve to be made to suffer by the devil even as a test sanctioned by the Old Testament deity. Abstractly stated, divine omnipotence (i.e., all-powerful) means that divine command cannot be constrained by human ethical principles. Regarding the five Commandments that have ethical conduct, it is explicitly based on divine command, and thus on divine will, and thus is not a constraint on the deity. This does not mean that the ethical itself is theological in nature.

So while it is tempting to relegate a selfish person to hell as a sordid reprobate, especially as selfishness is antithetical to benevolentia universalis, which is a manifestation of “God is love” in Christianity, both our own finite nature as judges and the distinction between acting unethically and being saved or damned mitigate against making such a hasty and wholly convenient category mistake as superimposes stuff of our realm onto God. It could be, for example, that the man on the subway suffers from PTSD and thus God has mercy on such a trifling thing as the man taking up an extra seat. Furthermore, it could be that the man was on his way to care for his sick grandmother and triggering his social anxiety on the train would compromise the care he could give.

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1. Skip Worden, God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth. See also the author’s related academic treatise, Godliness and Greed: Shifting Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010). The first text is of the non-fiction genre for the general educated reader, whereas the second text is of the academic genre. Ironically, God’s Gold not only contains additional chapters, but is also an ideational improvement on God’s Gold, especially concerning the concluding chapter of both books. A Christian apologist, for instance, would prefer the conclusion of God’s Gold, which hinges on the Logos in answering a critique of anthropomorphism from David Hume’s Natural History of Religion. Sometimes better ideas reach a general readership rather than cloistered, over-specialized academia.

2. Ibid.

3. Samuel Hopkins, An Eenquiry into the Nature of Holiness (New York: William Durell, 1710).

4. Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1960).

Christianity and “Social Capitalism”

The SEC charged Ephren Taylor with a fraudulent $11 million Ponzi scheme in April 2012. According to Reuters, “Taylor fraudulently sold $7 million of notes said to bear 12 percent to 20 percent annual interest rates, to fund small businesses such as laundries, juice bars and gas stations.” He “had conducted a multi-city ‘Building Wealth Tour’ in which he spoke to congregations” on the importance of “giving back.” He called himself a “social capitalist.” In actuality, he used the money on himself and his wife’s attempt to become a singer.

The full essay is at "Christianity and 'Social Capitalism'"

See: God's Gold, available in print and as an ebook at Amazon.

Source:

Jonathan Stempel, “SEC Charges Ephren Taylor II ForAllegedly Bilking Churchgoers In $11 Million Ponzi Scheme,” The Huffington Post, April 12, 2012.

A Religious Stockholder-Test for Wells Fargo: Confronting Mediocre Accountability

Orienting executive compensation to accountability is easier said than done. For example, it might be supposed that the cause of accountability was aptly served by John Stumpf’s forfeit of $41 million in unvested stock when he resigned under pressure as Wells Fargo’s CEO because of the bank’s systemic overzealousness in signing customers up for unwanted services. Unfortunately, he “realized pretax earnings of more than $83 million by exercising vested stock options, amassed over his 34 years at the bank, and receiving payouts on certain stock awards.”[1] In other words, the man who presided over unethical business practices at the expense of customers received double that which he was forfeiting. How can accountability have any meaning against $83 million? This figure connotes reward rather than punishment. Tim Sloan, who succeeded Stumpf as the bank’s CEO, received compensation in 2016 of $13, up from the $11 million in 2015. Interestingly, it may have been religion to the rescue.

 The full essay is at "A Religious Stockholder-Test for Wells Fargo."

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[1] Stacy Cowley, “Wells Fargo Leaders Reaped Lavish Pay Even as Account Scandal Unfolded,” The New York Times, March 16, 2017.

“Right Use” of a Business in Church: Incorporating Corporate Social Responsibility

The ends–justifying-the-means rationale is a tricky business, justifying historically a myriad of offensive practices including torture. On the other hand, “good use” has been deemed a legitimate rationale for acquiring wealth under Christian auspices—the obstacle of the proverbial camel squeezing through the eye of the needle being assuaged by good intentions. Generally speaking, the “right use” rationale gained currency through the centuries of Christianity, leading to the Prosperity Gospel , which maintains that right belief rather than right use is all a believer needs to justify  acquiring and amassing wealth without being thereby excluded from the Kingdom of God. That Gospel, by the way, comes out of the Hebrew Bible, or “Old Testament.”  In this essay, I analyze the “good use” rationale in the context of incorporating businesses inside a church—a trend well-underway in the evangelical  Christian mega-churches as of 2014. Can the rationale survive the baleful implications of the proverbial camel Biblical passage? Further, what of Jesus’s over-turning of the sellers’s tables in the Temple?

Particularly vulnerable to the business v. Jesus dichotomy, many mega-churches own and manage (or franchise) coffee shops, pouring the profits into the general operating budget. Although increasing fellowship is often cited as the end served by the means here, the “right use” is so broad (including the use of the profits) that the ends-justifying-the-means rationale may be tenuous. That is to say, the actual motive in setting up and maintaining the business could very easily become gain itself, which has consistently counted as greed in the history of Christian thought.

Would it be ethical in either business or religious terms for a church coffee shop to expand its hours and use its cost advantage to undercut Starbucks? Would it make a difference how the profits are being used? (Image Source: frtim.wordpress.com)

Less vulnerable is the strategy of opening a business that is dedicated to a particular religious purpose, such as missions. Less vulnerable still, some churches have tied a non-religious social responsible use to a particular religious use. An “input/output” distinction is useful here. Organizations such as Zoe Internatioal, FashionABLE, Sak Saum, and Fight For Them Jewelry provide businesses with products made by people vulnerable to or rehabilitating from the human sex trade. At least one, Sak Saum, fuses its social responsibility mission with ministry by following a model of “self-sustaining ministry.” As for the mega-churches that create businesses that sell the wares from these networks, the corporate social responsibility aim goes back to the suppliers, who get a cut of the revenue. The distinctly religious use lies with the use of the profits. For example, a church might use its profits from the business to fund missions work. In this way, corporate social responsibility and Christianity can both be in the mix without necessarily sacrificing the integrity of either vantage point.

In conclusion, I have laid out a spectrum of religio-business models to suggest that the “right use” justification is not monolithic, and can thus have more or less sway in assuaging any theological discomfort from having businesses literally within a church—even just steps away from a sanctuary. To be sure, the justification can easily become a slippery slope, particularly as the “right use” gets increasingly generalized or vague. Also, if the end being served is itself a sort of gain, even if in terms of souls or membership, greed may run through the means-end continuum itself, thereby compromising the entire “good use” rationale. It is perhaps human, all too human, to get caught up in our enterprises and miss the whisper passing by the mountain. Even the fellowship in a coffee shop carries with it the opportunity cost in terms of missed worship in the sanctuary across the hall. In short, the “good use” justification is treacherous, given the human proclivity to love gain and that which it brings, whether spiritual or material.

Pope Francis on Factory Wages in Bangladesh: A Theological Basis of Corporate Social Responsibility

If what Pope Francis said during a private Mass in April 2013 takes hold as a theme in his papacy, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement will have gained a new public advocate on the world stage. Besides the fact that the pope is the spiritual leader to well over a billion Roman Catholics around the world, his remarks are significant in the that they proffer theology as an alternative foundation for CSR. As with the more established bases, theology applied to CSR has its advantages and shortcomings.

Scholars of CSR have long debated the salience of ethical principles as the basis of the movement/theory, as against the alternative basis in cultural norms. On the ethics side, the word responsibility is said to connote ought (i.e., prescriptive duty) rationally applied to conduct. To whit, businesses ought to be more responsible.

However, basis of CSR could also be a desired shift in corporate values and norms toward  a greater degree of fit with extant social norms held societally. In other words, the CSR agenda can be characterized as moving one set of values/norms closer to a more widely-held set. While prescriptive in nature--wayward corporate norms should be changed--the emphasis here is on norms and values that already exist rather than ought to exist. The goal is to get corporate norms to reflect, or at least not be in conflict with societal norms so the corporation will not suffer a loss in reputational capital and long-term profit from being out of sync with society.

Put even more academically, the question is whether CSR is founded in philosophy (ethics being a sub-discipline) or sociology/anthropology. If Pope Francis’s theological rationale can be reckoned as an alternative, theology or religious studies (i.e., widening out to other religions)  could be reconized as CSR's basic academic displine. That is to say, CSR could be studied by adding study of theology (or religious studies) to management. The opportunity cost would be the foregone study in ethics and sociology. As there is a cost, it is worthwhile to investigate the pope's rationale, including its context.

The pope’s homiletical comments came in the wake of a major industrial accident in India. On April 24, 2013 in Bangladesh, India, an eight-story building containing (among other things) five garment factories collapsed. As of this writing, more than 1100 people had already been found dead in the rubble. This made the accident the worst of its kind in history.

It is as if the sheer magnitude of the disaster shook people's confidence in the power of the ethical principle of duty and relevant societal norms to resist or even push back the countervailing force of greed fueled by the ubiquitous profit-motive. In other words, the standing of human nature itself took a hit. It makes sense then that a religious leader would preach an alternative basis that obviates the new-found lack of balance in human nature by transcending it and even our very realm of existence.

I now turn to the pope’s rationale to consider how his theological approach might apply to the five manufacturers in the disaster and the clothing retailers that buy the output. Furthermore, a bit can be said about relevant public policy. In short, how far does the sinning against God extend?

In his homily, Pope Francis said he was shocked to learn that the workers who died had been earning a paltry 38 euros (about $50) a month. Granted the standard of living is relatively low in Bangladesh as compared to North America and Western Europe, but that a day's pay is just enough to buy a dozen eggs gives some indication of the ongoing hardship being endured by the typical factory laborer in Bangladesh. Rather than focus only on the immediate tragedy, the pope used it to focus attention on the ongoing suffering endured by the working poor, some of whom even in Bangladesh are Christian and thus of particular concern to the pope.

The Pope excoriated the garment companies’ wage policies as being equivalent to slave labor. Speaking in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the pope said, “Today in the world this slavery is being committed against something beautiful that God has given us.” That something is “the capacity to create, to work, to have dignity.” God created human beings as being able to survive without having to compromise or sacrifice human dignity.

Of course, it could be argued that creating, working, and having dignity can be of value without any mention of a divine being. The three values could simply be social norms that are highly valued, as in Europe and North America. Even so, the tragedy sent a message around the world that organizational and societal values may not be sufficient to counter the force of greed in human nature, particularly when that nature finds itself in positions of power.

Therefore, I want to flesh out a  distinctly theological rationale that could have been behind the pope’s remarks. I turn next to what it might be.

 "God giving life to Adam" by Michelangelo.     source: fotopedia.com      

In all three Abrahamic faiths, work is punishment for Adam's original sin. In their respective poems on cycles, both Hesiod and Ovid place laboring with buried treasures in the Iron Age, which is the furtherest (and lowest) from the prestine Golden Age. At least with respect to antiquity, toil did not have much of a positive connotation.

Yet in the Renaissance and later in Calvinism, industriousness made its way as a Christian virtue. Working hard to fashion God's gold as good stewards and dispensing some of the output as charity (neighbor-love being caritas in Latin) could give work a positive theological significance.

Furthermore, creating things and having dignity could be based on mankind being made in the image of God. Creativity can be associated with God being the Creator. Human dignity can be thought of from the standpoint of Leibniz’s point that human beings have a share of the perfection that is sourced in God as the perfect being. God's being perfect is inclusive of other divine attributes, such as omnipotence (all-powerful), benevolentia (having a good will), omnipresence (being everywhere), and omniscience (knowing all). Being made in the image of God, we have a certain dignity in that we exist. Our being, or existance, has a share of ultimate being, which is perfection in God. In short, we have dignity because we exist as created by God in His image.

Trampling on the divine image in other people by paying them a humiliating wage to do mundane, repetitive work is like putting a light under a bushel even though one knows that the radiance from the light belongs out in the open rather than weighed down and hidden. “Not paying fairly, not giving a job because you are only looking at balance sheets, only looking at how to make a profit. That goes against God!” Francis said. He could easily have pointed to Jesus’s saying, “What you do to the least of mine, you do to me.” This is fundamental to Jesus’s message that God is to be loved by loving one’s neighbor—even one’s enemies. Leibniz puts this as caritas seu benevolentia universalis, or love, that is, universal benevolence, in the Codex.

In summary, sinning clothing manufacturers, including their owners and managers, deny God’s divine attributes by weighing down those created in God's image by paying them hardship wages. There is no neighbor-love in that, and thus no God. To get a fuller sense of how theology can serve as a basis for CSR, this theological rationale can be extended beyond the garment manufacturers themselves to those stakeholders who can be said to have played an indirect role in the tragedy.

The pope could have pointed to the fact that the building’s owner, Mohammed Rana, had ignored huge cracks and the consequent police evacuation order in assuring tenants that the building was safe. After the collapse, he was arrested for negligence, illegal construction (he had permission to build five stories), and forcing workers to join work.

Similarly, the pontiff could have pointed to the managers of the five factories, who, after having been informed of the evacuation order, ordered their workers to report to work. That a bank and some shops in the building did not open after the evacuation order suggests that the building’s owner and the factory managers must have known they were subjecting their employees to considerable risk of being killed.

In answer to Rana and the five factory managers who knew of the unsafe condition of the building, the pope could have given a homily on how the squalid cocktail of selfish greed, obstinate presumptuousness (i.e., “I can’t be wrong) and abuse of power can smother other people to death--pushing their lights under a bushel to be hidden forever. To knowingly put others at risk is to deny the inherent value in  not only the share of perfection that they have merely in existing, but also the font of perfection itself, which is God as perfect being.

The theological denunciations against paying the factory workers paltry wages and  forcing them to work in unsafe conditions can be extended to include the indirect culprits, such as the apparel retailers that had contracted with the five manufacturers and even any retailer that contracts with a sweatshop. The question relevant to corporate theological responsibility is whether indirectly enabling low wages and unsafe working conditions rather than acting to curtail them is included in the sin against God mentioned by the pope.

Specifically, by paying such low prices for the factory output, do the retailers keep the factory workers hungry? Were there not the contracts, would the workers be doing creative work elsewhere? Finally, do the retailers enable the factory managers to keep treating the workers in ways that violate any sort of dignity in the worker? If so, then Jesus's command to love one's neighbor as oneself is being violated not only by the manufacturers, but also by the more distant, yet contributory retailers.

The executives of retail clothing companies like JC Penney and the Gap surely know that contracting with a sweatshop allows them the advantage of paying less for the factory output because of the below-poverty wages and lack of safety upkeep. Rather than worrying about possible unsafe factory conditions or whether the factory workers can support a family, those executives are calculating that the low price they get to pay more than makes up for the additional shipping costs. 

Approaching CSR alternatively by looking at social norms, the disjuncture between the executives' values and societal values concerning sustenance would be the focal point. CSR would be oriented to change the executives' values so they are in line with the societal values, perhaps by showing the executives that their respective companies can make more money that way, or at least have a better reputation.  

In approaching CSR by means of ethics, the question would be whether the executives' motives, actions, or consequences thereof violates an ethical principle. Are those executives violating the social contract wherein the rights a company enjoys come with certain obligations? Are those executives enabling people to be treated only as other peoples' means, or also as ends in themselves? Do the low wages and unsafe conditions go along with the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people? Especially if the answers to these three questions all point to unethical conduct, the retailers' policies ought to be changed.

Adding insult to injury, the apparel retailers extend very little flexibility to the sweatshops. American Apparel CEO Dov Charney explains that in the apparel industry, “it’s all about deadline. You’ve got to get these sweatshirts or this swimwear by a certain day, or you’re nailed, and you’re out of business.” Strict cutoff dates and the lack of cooperation from retailers pushed factories in developing countries to their limits, forcing them to do whatever it takes to get the job done on time. This may explain why the managers of the five factories chose to ignore the evacuation order. If so, the relevant retailers bear some of the blame for pressuring the managers to do whatever it takes to finish an order on time, even if doing so involves risking the lives of the workers.

Beyond the managers and companies involved, the Indian society itself, particularly as it is reflected in public policy on the state and federal levels in India, may also be culpable theologically for having been negligent toward worker safety. The societal norm allowing for corruption in India allows building owners, construction companies, and manufacturers to get away with a lot. In the U.S., the Occupational Health and Safety Administration and a watchful media provide sufficient scrutiny that manufacturers cannot easily get away with whatever they want. Accordingly, Charney, whose factory is located in the U.S., declares, “If there’s something unsafe at my factory I’m shutting that thing down. If not, one wrong move and it’s all exposed. That’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing.” He may be drawing too stark a contrast so the Indian government will be forced to increase the minimum wage in the low-cost factories. For our purposes here, the relevant point is that the failure of the Indian government to enact and enforce more rigorous regulations oriented to worker safety and wages may also be within the sin against God.

More generally, legislators and government officials who do not do enough in enacting public policy oriented to achieving full employment may be sinning against God. “There are many people who want to work but cannot,” the Pope said. “When a society is organised in a way that not everyone is given the chance to work, that society is not just.” The justice to which the Pope undoubtedly was referring is divine justice, which also stems from God’s attributes—in particular, omnipotence (all-powerful) and omniscience (all-knowing). According to Leibniz, that justice is essentially love manifesting as universal benevolence. Simply put, having a share of God’s perfection, each person is due benevolence from others.  To violate that justice, such as by selfishly paying another person only enough to keep him as a means rather than as having value in being made in the image of God, is to sin against God.

In summary, managers (and their companies) who are not theologically responsible to the workers are not merely unethical and acting contrary to societal norms. From the theological perspective, the fundamental flaw in running a company centers on sinning against God. Prideful selfishness and sordid greed slight God by replacing neighbor-love with exploitation. This is not to say that God, being omnipotent, is confined to our social norms or even our ethical systems. A theological perspective can mandate conduct that is unethical or against a society’s norms. So the theological perspective does not reduce to either that of ethics or sociology. There are, however, at least two problems in going with the theological grounding.

First, it is debatable whether a theological rationale for CSR can or should be recognized as valid beyond the safe confines of the believers who subscribe to the theological doctrines. For example, it might not be fair to apply criteria from Christianity to the people of India, whose people are predominantly Hindus, Jains, and Sikhs. In his homily during Midnight Mass in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI cited Origen, a theologian in Early Christianity, who saw paganism such as Hinduism as "a lack of feeling." Paganism, the pope said quoting from Origen, "means a heart of stone that is incapable of loving and perceiving God's love." In other words, a Hindu married couple is incapable of loving each other. "Lacking feeling and reason, [pagans] are transformed into stones and wood." A Hindu manager would likely ask why he should apply a pope's theological criteria to anything. If the Hindu manager is "lacking feeling and reason," how could he apply any criterion?

It could be argued that the extent of corruption allowed and the consequent laxity in regulation and wage-support in India should be critiqued by Hindu rather than Christian principles, though non-Hindus in India would doubtlessly object to even that solution. It is not clear, therefore, whether religious claims from any religion, including Christianity, are universal enough to be applicable beyond the members of the particular religion. If so, it might be difficult to treat religious belief as an alternative to ethical principles and social norms on which to base CSR.

Second, the Pope’s theological rationale can be put in secular terms without much if any change in the resulting prescription. For example, trampling on creatures made in the image of God bears a resemblance to Kant’s ethical categorical imperative that rational beings should be treated not only as a means to one’s own interests, but also as an end in themselves. Exploiting workers, whether by paying them an insufficient wage or mandating that they work in an unsafe building, involves treating them as a means only. How much more of a rationale need be added in terms of theology? In other words, is the Pope’s rationale redundant, practically speaking? If not, perhaps theological (or religious) corporate responsibility should be developed. 

Sources:

Agence France Presse, “Pope Francis Condemns ‘Slave Labor’ in Bangladesh: ‘Goes Against God’,” The Huffington Post, May 1, 2013.  

Farid Hossain, “Bangladesh Building Collaspe Death Toll Rises To 430, Many Still Missing,” the Huffington Post, May 2, 2013.   

Syed Zain AL-Mahmoud, “Bangladesh Factory Toll Surpasses 800,” The Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2013.

Kim Bhasin, “American Apparel CEO Dov Charney On Bangladesh: Start Making Clothing in a Human Way,” The Huffington Post, May 11, 2013.

Pope Benedict XVI, "Midnight Mass Homily," The Vatican, December 24, 2009.