Taglines on our email at work and their new policy: many people upset

[beyurslf]

I work for a non-profit that is the state contracted agency to manage foster care and adoption in the largest county in the state. We have done this for almost 10 years now. My agency is affiliated with the United Methodist Church and was started almost 100 years. This is the first public venture they have undertaken though.
Many very religious people work with me. Many of us have taglines on the bottom of our emails. Mine is a quote from Booker T. Washington. However, it is quite common to see a Bible verse or religious quote on the bottom of an email. (A co-worker on my team even has some prayer thing on the bottom of his that is very long.)
When I started working there, they said in the HR orientation that it was a religiously backed organization but the contract side (where I work) is not. They did state though that we might see these types of things. Today, they sent out an email that stated no one would be allowed to have a religious quote or verse on their taglines for email.
People went nuts. You would have thought the agency told people they had to worship satan or something. I loved it personally. I think it hugely unprofessional and just plain annoying when the thing is half a page long. I wish they would set standards on font color and size as well as background images too. While they're at it, how about no more "praise god" voice mail messages either.
Anyone else have an issue like this?

[TheFriedPiper]

1. Religious ppl get mad when they can't shove it in your face

If the policy gets annulled, you should put Flying Spaghetti Monster sayings on your emails.

[AZBlue]

2. I agree it was very unprofessional. Tag-lines should be work-related...

...or non-existent. No matter who you work for or what you do.

Having said that, I truly hope that this doesn't turn into another anti-religion hate thread.

[TheFriedPiper]

3. You don't have to hate it to make fun of it

:)

[beyurslf]

4. I don't want to make fun of it. I just don't see why they have to complain

so much. No one told them they had to change their beliefs.
Children who come into foster care are referred to us for case management. We work with them and with their families. How can we say we work with everyone when some workers throw their religion out everytime they email? I can't imagine having some of our workers as my case manager if I didn't believe in the same thing they did.

[Solo_in_MD]

11. Bet they still allow HTML based email

which is about as unprofessional as it comes, regardless of tag lines

[rzemanfl]

5. You in Florida? n/t

[beyurslf]

6. Kansas.

[rzemanfl]

7. No offense, but religion should not be an element of foster care,

those kids have already been screwed up enough by adults. Florida is pressing the edge of the envelope on this too.

[jwirr]

8. Our County Social Service workers were told a long time ago to

take down political/religious items in their offices. I think the idea was that the office is used for a specific business not to further your own ends. So now instead of a poster regarding James Oberstar my worker has rules and regulations and posters supporting food programs and family planning. It makes no difference to me.

[SoCalDem]

9. "business" emails should be BUSINESS.. people can use the

preachy taglines on their personal emails..

[Turbineguy]

10. Too bad one company

I worked for did not have email. My tagline would have been:

"We strive to exceed our goal of zero improvement by a wide margin."

[flordehinojos]

12. your post makes me thinkg of this (perhaps unrelate off-topic)nonetheless,

i recently subscribed to Every Church a Peace Church. This is part of the e-mail i received today,

"The peace church identifies the church today with the first followers of Jesus, the church of the Apostolic age, which was nonviolent.

"What comes to people’s minds today when they hear the word church? Do they think of a community of people who are at peace and making peace? Or does the church have a warlike image? (snip)

"Sadly, the church in America today is generally so compromised with the nation and its wars that a church which does not want to be seen that way has to do something quite significant, or even a little dramatic, to part company with that warlike image of the church. (snip)

"A church could imitate the church of the first three centuries, when every believer, with only the rarest exceptions, saw themselves disarmed as Peter was disarmed by Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. No Christian in those days thought they could participate in the organized homicide of warfare and be a follower of Jesus at the same time. " (snip)

i suppose that taglines, praise the lord, going nuts over being told no taglines, government contracted church services... it all made me think of John Hagee, the Christian Wrong, the Hagee people now at the white house telling bush how to think about Israel, Armageddon etc.

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Seems to me that...

a Methodist organization would be expected to have a lot of people with religious signatures.

But, yeah, if you are contracting with the state, irrelevant religious messages should be forbidden. I can see the uproar happening, but they just have to get used to it. It's just the right thing to do, and other organizations should learn that, too, or lose the contract.

Interesting gray area, though-- what about a Biblical, or other Church, reference to child care or adoption? That might be as relevant to the mission of the organization as any other secular message.

[beyurslf]

14. Actually a couple of years ago they dropped the United Methodist

part of the name from the contract side of the organization. They did this with the specific intent to secularize the the company. I use my company as an example of the right way to do privatization.