There are times when the conversaion between the labor movement and people of faith is strong and vibrant and times when it is less so, but there is always a conversation on faith and labor taking place. This is not, or should not be, solely a conversation between institutions. Union members are people of varied faiths and within our rank-and-file we have many strong believers, priests and pastors, rabbis, imams, and other faith leaders. We all have much to talk about. One of our challenges is in mapping out how faith and work connect and don't connect and how they connect and don't connect to unionization.
A few examples of how faith and the labor movement connect come quickly to my mind. The United Mine Workers of America has a tradition of preachers in the mines and is today gifted to have Father Rodney Torbic, a Serbian Orthodox priest and honorary member of Local #1980, at the forefront of many of the union's efforts in Southwestern Pennsylvania. We often mention the Catholic Labor Network on this blog. Portland Jobs with Justice has a Faith and Labor Working Committee. Our labor history is filled with people of faith, within and alongside of the labor movement, supporting a common agenda and goals and coming to this from different faith traditions.
I'm including in this post a report from The Valley Labor Report and a sermon from Brad Davis, a Methodist pastor in Southern West Virginia. The basics on the AFL-CIO Labor in the Pulpit program referred to in the great Valley Labor Report Program can be found here.
Pastor Davis wrote: On Labor Day 2021 I had the honor of hosting the official Blair Centennial church service, "The People's Church" at the Coalfield Jamboree Theater in downtown Logan, WV with a group of fantastic individuals...the following is the sermon preached that day, titled "Almost Heaven" based on Isaiah 61...
He wasn’t scheduled to speak on the night
Of April 3, 1968…but the people gathered
At Memphis’ Bishop Charles Mason Temple cried out
for their brother Moses to come lead them
cross the mountain to the Promised Land.
Ya see these striking
sanitation workers are a crucified people
a people stripped of their dignity…
a people whose humanity has been extracted
a hollowed out people put
on a cross of economic exploitation and shame
Hung out to dry and left for dead
A people whose backs are against the wall
A people that goes on the picket line
With signs hung round their bodies
declaring “I am a man”
Our lives matter to God
And so they cry out
for their brother Moses,
The one that’s gonna lead
them cross the Mountain
the prophet of the God who will renew their humanness,
affirm their somebodyness
The one come to take them off the cross of shame…
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Hears their cries…
Drags himself out of his room
At the Lorraine Motel and
Prophetically speaks…
“we’ve got some difficult days ahead,” he says
But it really doesn’t matter with me now,
Because I’ve been to the mountaintop…
I’ve seen the promised land.
I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight,
That we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land”
He was right…he didn’t get there
We all know what happened on April 4
Ya see when you dare stand in solidarity
With a crucified people…….
You get yourself crucified
When you dare to stand in solidarity
With those in the low places,
You get lifted up on a cross
By those in the high places of power
When you dare to actualize
The prophet Isaiah’s vision of life how God intends
And give good news to the oppressed
Well that’s bad news for the oppressors
When you dare to set
The enslaved free….
You get the attention of the enslavers
Just ask Sid Hatfield…..
Or better yet ask Jesus
The new brother Moses, God as one of us
Who hears the cries of the people
Who has the audacity
To go up on the Mountaintop
And peer into the Promised Land
To recast Isaiah’s vision
Preach good news to a crucified, colonized people
Bring liberation to those stripped, exploited, shamed,
extracted, hollowed out by the imperial company
Proclaim the Lord’s favor to those put on cross
by the Roman Baldwin-Felts precinct
To comfort those hung out to dry and left for dead
To declare God loves justice,
And hates those that rob folks of it
Talkin bout a grand reversal
Where the first are last and the last are first…
Talkin bout a new day…the Promised Land
Yeah he saw it….
But even God in the flesh eventually gets
Crucified by the imperial company, the imperial company church,
And their gun thugs before he can make it there
But I got some good news
To share with ya’ll today…
Three days later…
There’s a holy Up-rising
And therein lies the power of the cross,
the power of the crucified God of the oppressed
Suffering and death don’t have the last word
God has a knack for flipping defeat into victory
For turning mourning into gladness,
Grief into praise…sorrow into everlasting joy
Death into life….The Promised Land…
the New Creation, Life as God intends….justice
100 years ago our ancestors
Had the audacity to stand in solidarity
With their crucified sisters and brothers…….
A people stripped of dignity and shamed,
Their humanity extracted, discredited as backward
Discarded by society
Dispossessed of their land
disinherited by their leaders
Our ancestors had the audacity
To march up to that Mountaintop
10 miles up the road from here
And Catch a glimpse of Justice….of freedom
and almost made it to heaven
But they too, like Dr. King,
Like Sid Hatfield, like Jesus,
Get themselves put on a cross
And for a century we been
Tryin to make it to the Promised Land
We’re still tryin to get over the mountain
But a hundred years later ya’ll…
God still hears the cries of the people
St. Oscar Romero once said
“As a Christian I don’t believe
In death without a resurrection.
If they kill me, I will be
Resurrected in the people”
You can kill a human being,
But you can’t kill a movement
You can hang a person on a cross,
But you can’t crucify God’s vision for humanity
100 years later ya’ll… the holy Up-rising is here
Today we’re takin our crucified people
Off the cross of economic exploitation and shame
Today The spirit of our ancestors is resurrected in us
Brother Moses has come to bring us cross the Mountain
And we are him
We who sit in darkness
Have seen a great light
Today the Holy Spirit done got hold of us
Today our people are born again
Today God’s Spirit is takin us by the hand
leadin us out of the drift mouth Into the dawn of a new day…
A new day where our labor isn’t exploited
at the expense of our humanity
A new day that values our personhood over profit margin
A new day where God’s reclamation project
Restores our dignity and our humanity
A new day that fills the hollowed out, empty spaces
Of our people and our hills with more than enough
A new day when our somebodyness is recognized,
And our land is restored and returned
A new day when we are recognized as a
human being made in God’s image,
that we’re worth more than the industry’s bottom line
A new day when we don’t
Have to worry about our water
Being contaminated
A new day when black lung is no more
A new day when company pensions
don’t have to be fought for
A new day when miners aren’t forced
To block railroad tracks to get their paychecks
A new day when the ruins
Of our communities are rebuilt,
The economic and environmental
Devastation of the Coalfields repaired
The generational trauma caused
By over a century of corporate colonization
And industrial enslavement is healed
100 years later we stand on the mountaintop…
Peering over at the other side and emphatically declare
Aint’ no stopping us now cause ain’t no stopping God
A holy Up-rising in the coalfields has come.
Rebirth is here..
We shall not be moved.
Ain’t nothin or nobody gonna turn us around
We goin to the Promised Land ya’ll
Montani. Semper. Liberi. Amen.
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