Extraordinary Callings: Religion and Labor: Beyond Charity and Advocacy to Deep Solidarity with Jorge Rieger

Extraordinary Callings Conversation Series

An ongoing conversation series (Spring 2015) and immersive & experiential learning retreat (Summer 2015) for social justice activists focusing upon spiritual formation and theological grounding.

Religion and Labor: Beyond Charity and Advocacy to Deep Solidarity

Efforts to bring together religion and labor often remain on the surface, focusing on short-term results. In order to organize communities for political action long term, we need to dig deeper and rethink both religion and labor. In this presentation, we will demonstrate how new energy for political action is tied to new visions of religion and labor.

Religion can only be appreciated in its fullness in relation to labor: In the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Godself is presented not as a manager but as a worker who forms the human being from clay (Genesis 2:7, Qur’an 15.26, 15.28) and plants a garden (Genesis 2:8-9). The Christian traditions hold that God joined the workforce as a day laborer in construction in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Religion appears to be at its best when it is located in the communal struggles of everyday life, where God is at work.

Likewise, labor movements are at their best when they put themselves in relation to the deepest hopes and aspirations of people and their communities. This insight is embodied in the many religious traditions that have been shaped by working people. As labor issues affect the majority of humanity (less than 1 percent are independently wealthy), the political agency of communities is best developed from this perspective, based on deep solidarity.

1. Understand the deep connections of religion and labor: How does the perspective of labor reshape religion and faith communities? How does the perspective of religion reshape labor and political engagement?
2. Learn about the fundamental differences of charity, advocacy, and deep solidarity.
3. Discuss specific campaigns that bring together labor, religion, and communities, for example Workers’ Rights Boards, Peer Chaplains’ programs, and solidarity campaigns with the labor movement.

Rosemarie Rieger is an organizer with North Texas Jobs with Justice. Her previous lives were spent as a Molecular Biologist, a Montessori teacher and home educator. She also heads the Community Engagement Committee of the Dallas American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

Joerg Rieger is Wendland-Cook Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology, SMU. He engages issues of religion and power both practically and theoretically. Among his books are Religion, Theology, and Class (2013), Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude (2012), and No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future (2009).