Article February 26, 1990 Issue

Back and Forth

a dialogue with readers

It has been a year since the Sentinel published a readership survey (February 27, 1989, issue). We shared some of the results of that survey in the October 2, 1989, issue—with the promise that we'd include more individual responses in a later issue. So below, as promised, is a brief sampling of some readers' comments, taken from the more than six thousand surveys that were filled out and sent to us from near and far— Pakistan, Poland, Zimbabwe, Spain, Canada, Uruguay, Turkey, Australia, Ghana, Indonesia, Denmark, Japan, and so forth.

Many respondents took the time to add remarkably insightful comments and suggestions. These simply didn't fall into the usual boxes of "positive" and "negative." Even comments that seemed to counterbalance one another ("articles are too short," "too long," "too denominational," "too oriented toward those unacquainted with Christian Science," "please publish more testimonies," "fewer testimonies") often included extremely thoughtful explanations for the suggestions.

We heard from longtime readers and new ones. For instance, one woman, who indicated she is a "chemical dependency technician" and had been reading the Sentinel "off and on for about a year until I now regularly subscribe," told us: "The articles are socially relevant to today's Christian." And in response to the question about what it would be helpful to have more of in order to share the Sentinel widely with new readers, she wrote, "Just keep on putting things like you do in there. God attracts those people to truth." She gave us her address and asked if there were any Christian Science churches near her.

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