Faith Needs Labor to Respond to this Moment

Francisco Garcia, Jr. is the Graduate Research Fellow and Student Leadership Representative at the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice, and is a PhD Student in Theology at Vanderbilt University in the Graduate Program of Religion.

Over the first several months of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Wendland-Cook brought together 10 academic and activist voices to address the economic, theological, international, racial and labor intersections of this global crisis. To see the entire forum, click here. This is Francisco Garcia Jr.’s contribution to the forum.

Faith Needs Labor to Respond to this Moment

Francisco Garcia Jr.

May 21, 2020

“The state of emergency and the logic of downturn, which are not the exceptions but the rule, teach us that we need to look elsewhere in the world for what truly matters and for what can save us. This will help us shake off not only false rulers but also false gods who demand sacrifice from the many to shore up the power of the few. Those who continue to search for God might be surprised as well.” - Joerg Rieger

In his initial post Joerg Rieger closes with the above paragraph, calling us to find our collective salvation in places beyond the elite class that champions financial capitalism and the corresponding theologies undergirding it. This may lead some to think, “so where do we turn?” Is there any hope in churches, and in religious communities more broadly speaking, to guide us out of this mess?

My answer is a nuanced yes, with some qualifications. Faith communities have within their capacity many powerful values, traditions, rituals, and narratives that are sorely needed during this time--stories of redemption, compassion, and justice. We need to leverage the best of these traditions, and wrestle with those toxic elements that support the status quo. And, I would add, faith communities cannot do it with their customary tools and approaches alone. They need to engage in fruitful, collaborative, and long-haul relationships with strategic social movement partners committed to the work of justice. One key group, as Joerg Rieger and Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger highlight in their book Unified We Are a Force, is the labor movement.

One major obstacle for this collaboration is that, for the most part, faith communities and labor unions operate in entirely different silos. The handful of faith leaders, worshiping communities, and organizing networks that are directly engaged in the question of labor are the exception. This is despite the long tradition of faith and labor moments in U.S. social movement history - from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final act of solidarity with striking sanitation workers in Memphis (that had its roots in an important faith and labor coalition), to the National Farm Worker Ministry that emerged out of the United Farm Workers organizing in California. Today, these events are understood primarily as moments in past history. As a result, rarely will religious communities speak of labor justice or engage in discussions about class.

How do we bridge the gap between faith and labor? Elsewhere I have argued for the need of churches to adopt a social movement ethos and to invest in a relational internal organizing process with their members. This work is essential and urgently needed to get people of faith to a place of what Brazilian popular educator Paulo Freire calls critical consciousness, specifically around issues of labor. This development of critical consciousness is a prerequisite, in my view, to Rieger’s notion of deep solidarity, that is manifested as organized action rooted in an understanding of broader class solidarity while recognizing difference (i.e. the 99%). Moreover, this process is necessary, regardless of one’s economic and social location.

In my work as a parish priest, I have encountered working-class church members, even those belonging to a union, who have never considered the question of how their faith and work relate to each other. Senior pastors of affluent congregations may have supported a local labor action, but never thought of themselves or their own flock in terms of their identities as workers. What are the primary economic pressures faced by members of the congregation? How many religious communities know what percentage of their congregations are union members, and what unions they belong to? Understanding these connections is key to moving from a basic understanding of the interrelationship between faith and labor to one that begins to challenge and transform systemic economic injustices. The current moment, as Jeremy Posadas noted in his contribution to this series, presents a unique opportunity to do just that.

The labor movement also has its own work to do, as Stephen Lerner, one of the organizing masterminds behind the successful Justice for Janitors campaign, recently laid out:

A precondition for a labor upsurge is to develop organizing, bargaining, and political strategies appropriate to a world in which power is concentrating in the hands of fewer actors. Monopolies like Amazon and private equity giants like Blackstone and Cerberus increasingly dominate every part of Americans’ lives. For many millions of Americans, they, and corporations like them, are our employers, even if their name isn’t on our paychecks. They own our apartments or homes, manage our pensions, control data and information, provide all of our goods and services, and increasingly monitor and surveil our purchases and even our daily travel from place to place.

In Lerner’s view, unions also need to adapt to a changed environment; they cannot limit themselves to workplace-only focused strategies. Right now, nearly everyone has their eyes on Amazon, as CEO Jeff Bezos rakes in record profits while front line warehouse and delivery workers are organizing for sick days, personal protective equipment, and other demands in response to worsening health and safety conditions. Class consciousness is brewing at the grassroots level, as workers are organizing formally through their labor organizations, and informally, for safe jobs, secure housing, and other related issues.

If the labor movement is adopting an organizing strategy that includes a broader understanding of worker justice issues and challenges concentrated power and wealth, then there is much resonance with Rieger’s call to search beyond the elite power structure that promotes and sanctions the sacrifice of working people at the altar of economic prosperity. This is fertile common ground to be cultivated with faith communities. Together, labor unions and faith communities can begin to identify the multiple economic pressures that their members and their neighbors in the community face—which include workplace injustices, housing, healthcare, debt, and the impact of race, gender, and immigration status. Through power-mapping and other tools, they can identify trends and strategic points of interest that can lead to transformative campaigns that challenge traditional narratives and systems that are steeped in economic injustice.

The common ground that I have described here is already emerging at the grassroots level in some places. It is my hope that this moment of pandemic can be used strategically by faith communities, in spirited collaboration with the labor movement, to lay the groundwork for larger efforts that can restore greater dignity to the lives of working people.