Faith, Class, and Labor

Intersectional Approaches in a Global Context

Jin Young Choi, Joerg Rieger

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725257184
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ethics & Religion

Despite the fact that 99 percent of us work for a living and although work shapes us to the core, class and labor are topics that are underrepresented in the work of scholars of religion, theology, and the Bible. With this volume, an international group of scholars and activists from nine different countries is bringing issues of religion, class, and labor back into conversation. Historians and theologians investigate how new images of God and the world emerge, and what difference they can make. Biblical critics develop new takes on ancient texts that lead to the reversal of readings that had been seemingly stable, settled, and taken for granted. Activists and organizers identify neglected sources of power and energy returning in new force and point to transformations happening. Asking how labor and religion mutually shape each other and how the agency of working people operates in their lives, the contributors also employ intersectional approaches that engage race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism. This volume presents transdisciplinary, transtextual, transactional, transnational, and transgressive work in progress, much needed in our time.

1

The Multiple Intersections of Religion, Labor, and Class1

Joerg Rieger

Introduction

Labor and class are topics crucial to much of life: 99 percent of us need to work in order to make a living, and in the twenty-first century much of the natural environment has been affected by processes of human labor. Another crucial topic in many places around the world is faith. Still, few things can derail a conversation in the United States faster than mentioning labor and class, with topics combining labor and religion coming in as a close second. This is true not only for casual conversations, it is also true in the theological academy and even more true for most religious communities.

The reasons are multiple. In many cases, any reference to class is seen as irredeemably Marxist, as if it would be impossible to come up with the notion of class without the help of Karl Marx. This is very strange, considering the fact that class differentials are directly experienced on a daily basis by those who feel the humiliations of power at their workplace. This is not only a problem in the United States and other countries in the proverbial West; even many Chinese intellectuals have turned away from the question of class, as I found when lecturing in academic settings in China in 2015. In addition to the term class, terms like labor and even work also tend to be seen in a negative light; conversations about worker cooperatives, for instance, are easier when reframed in terms of employee cooperatives.

My question as a theologian is how we might reclaim discourses on labor and class as well as discourses on religion. My suggestion is that this happens by bringing the two together, as concerns of labor and class can revitalize religion, and some of the concerns of religion can revitalize the engagement of class and labor.

In the following, I will talk about labor and class in the same breath, as class describes the basic relationship of people at work. At the most basic level, class is determined by the power that people have at work and over their own work. This power relates not only to how much money people are making—although this is a significant factor when profits are rising in times of “mean and lean production”—it also relates to how much of a say people have in the work process. Moreover, the power that people have at work also influences and shapes how people embrace and embody power in many other areas of their lives. Since most people are spending the majority of their waking hours at work, and since work is the fundamental pillar of people’s livelihoods, it can be argued that class relationships tend to shape us all the way down. According to some estimates, two-thirds of Americans are working class due to their limited power at work,2 but we should not forget that 99 percent of us have to work for a living and that even many traditional middle-class jobs are being downgraded and offer even less power than they once did. Working people are no longer confined to those who wear blue collars—today they wear also white collars, lab coats, and in many cases even clerical and professorial gowns.

Note that this definition of class in terms of relationships of power stands in contradistinction to other definitions of class in terms of social stratification.3 Stratification theories examine class as layers of a social system but not necessarily in relation to each other. This definition of class also questions the usefulness of the common notion of “classism,” which seems to assume that the problem of class is linked with prejudices of one class against another and that the problem can be overcome by doing away with the prejudice rather than the structure of class.

Unfortunately, there is no room in this chapter for more extensive discussions of race, ethnicity, caste, gender, and sexuality. Labor is crucially related to all of these categories, as exploitation and oppression along these lines is a major factor of racism, ethnocentrism, caste hierarchies, sexism, and heterosexism. The workplace is where all of these elements come together most intimately, as workplaces are typically more diverse than other social spaces, including the practice of religion. This is the foundation for the formation of solidarity, which does not have to be understood as homogenizing the various identities but as providing space for bringing to bear different identities (as well as different religious traditions) in constructive ways. This is what, together with co-authors Kwok Pui-lan and Rosemarie Henkel Rieger, I have called deep solidarity elsewhere.4

Religion Needs Labor

When engaging a group of undocumented Latino construction workers in the United States a few years ago, many expressed concern that religion was more of a problem than a help. They pointed out that their employers were religious people as well, and that this made little positive difference at work. Moreover, they argued, religion might be harmful for workers because it tended to make them more docile and submissive. To these construction workers, the conventional values they connected with religion, like humility, service, and love of neighbor, was bound to make things worse for working people. Another way of understanding religion, however, caught their attention. What if religion is not primarily about ideas, conventional values, or about the sort of things that people do in private, when they are off work? What if religion is about the experience of struggling communities, deep solidarity that includes racial/ethnic and sexual identities without erasing difference, the formation of alternative power, and the fight for a better life for everyone? In these examples, religion is not defined by the pious ideas of the status quo but by people of different identities bonding together with the divine in order to make use of their abilities (including their disabilities, to be sure) for the common good.

Ancient Traditions on the Side of Labor

Religion shapes up differently when seen through the lenses of labor and class. When connecting with the issues of real life, religion has an opportunity to return to its sources, which in many cases are linked to the lives of ordinary working people. The three Abrahamic religions have deep roots in the struggles for liberation of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt, where God is portrayed as involved in the movement. Elsewhere in the traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, God is presented as a working person who forms the human being from clay (Gen 2:7; Qur’an 15.26; 15.28) and plants a garden (Gen 2:8–9). In these traditions, God goes about the creation of the world just as working people would do, rather than as a supervisor or a manager who puts others to work. When religion is viewed from the perspective of labor and class, images of God as ruler can be called into question. Coincident...