Solidarity Forever

My colleague Jin Young Choi and I have been blessed with a group of excellent reviewers and respondents to our co-edited volume Faith, Class, and Labor: An Intersectional Approach in a Global Context (Cascade 2020). In an earlier conversation, Kerry Danner, Rosetta Ross, and Aaron Stauffer shared reflections, and now Marlene Ferreras and Steed Vernyl Davidson have added their engagements of the book, expanding the conversation.

To recap, the book is an effort to deal with class and labor in international, transdisciplinary, trans-textual, transactional, translational, and transgressive fashion, recognizing that these topics are still rarely addressed in the context of higher education. This is true also for the study of religion and theology, which is why studying faith, class, and labor means to be covering new ground. And, it might be argued, this is a topic whose time has come if it is true that work is essential and that there are essential workers, as all of us were forced to rediscover during the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, none of us would even exist without labor, in particular the reproductive labor of women, starting with gestational labor, and the reproductive labor of nonhuman nature, without which there would be no living bodies, no air to breathe, and no food to eat.

Based on these insights, in a forthcoming book I am arguing that productive and reproductive labor is a significant part of what theologian Paul Tillich has called the “ultimate concern.” In Tillich’s words, “Our ultimate concern is that which determines our being or not-being. Only those statements are theological which deal with their object in so far as it can become a matter of being or not-being for us” (Systematic Theology, 1:14). While Tillich did not make the connection to labor, the topic can no longer ignored if we truly want to engage being and not-being today as scholars of religion and theology.

Ferreras’ and Davidson’s contributions pick up the matter in their own ways. Davidson directs our view to “the material conditions that stand behind biblical texts,” linked with the material conditions of today’s working people, particularly women in the global economy. With this, he responds to Jin Young Choi’s interpretation of the poor widow in Mark 12, emphasizing the complexity of the text. This text struggles, it seems, just as we do, in coming to terms with the reality of those doubly and triply exploited and oppressed. Davidson also picks up on the existential struggles of the domestic labor mostly performed by women, as investigated in Chin Ming Stephen Lim’s chapter on the biblical book of Ruth and the exploitation experienced by Filipina domestic worker Esperanza. Davidson follows Lim’s exploration of labor exploitation, which in this case includes sexual exploitation as well, which is often ignored.

To be sure, the focus on labor in Faith, Class, and Labor is to deepen our understanding of the challenges of labor. Labor is indeed, many of the contributors would agree, a matter of life and death. However, many of us would add that labor is also where resistance forms and where working people (which are always the majority of the population, never merely scattered minorities) can build power from within the systems of capitalism, and where they can eventually contribute to the formation of new relationships and a new world.

Davidson classifies this as “utopian,” a term which has potential but also its limits. “Utopic thought” that “equips communities of new worlds unencumbered by the structures of the present” (Davidson) has its merits, but does not quite get at what this volume is about. At stake is not primarily something that lies beyond the present and this world, but something that emerges from within its pressures, imperfectly but also very powerfully. This is where work and labor play a role that is often overlooked, embodied for instance in the labor movement that once brought us protections at work especially for women, the eight-hour workday, the end of child labor, benefits and social security, and so on. Moreover, labor is the premier place of intersectionality, where the working majority is both exploited but also asserts itself in all of its racial, ethnic, gendered, and sexual diversity.

Ferreras, in her engagement, grasps some of this emergence from within because it resonates with her lived experience and her study of the lives of working-class Mayan women in Mexico’s Yucatán, who work on the assembly lines of a transnational corporation. Revolution and resistance in this context are not primarily based on religious texts or ideas emerging seemingly out of nowhere. In the pueblos of these Maya mexicanas, scripture is not used as a resource, unlike in many other communities discussed in Faith, Class, and Labor. In the Yucatán, Ferreras argues, alternatives and the roots of resistance are tied to cosmovisions arising from Mesoamerican spiritualities in the context of labor struggles.

Despite these differences, what is most important is “an emerging faith arising from [working people] who resist the evils of the apparatus.” Resistance, with possibly revolutionary consequences, is rooted not primarily in the realm of ideas but in “the agency of workers who in the absence of a union practice solidarity and a deep spirituality that is life affirming” (Ferreras). This matters for how we envision the religious inspiration that emerges here. Ferreras is right that such phenomena need more study, and I would add that the study of religion and theology as a whole would be reshaped if it took such faith as it arises under pressure more seriously. In addition, imagine what such insights could do for revitalizing our own ways of practicing religion and faith.

In her response to Davidson and Ferreras, Jin Young Choi ends with the notion of solidarity. Conversations about labor and work remind us that at a time when 99 percent of us have to work for a living, the exploitation of labor ultimately benefits the few rather than the many, despite the complexities involved. The potential for solidarity emerges not based on wishful thinking or hopeful dreams but is based on a realization that the current arrangements in which we live do not fully benefit most of humanity, nor do they benefit the planet.

This realization does two things: First, it limits the ability of the few to divide and conquer the many, which currently happens with the help of constructs like gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, nationality, and religion. And second, it allows for relations of deep solidarity that not only respect the differences of the working majority along these lines but make use of them as constructive and productive parts of transformation, so that the contributions of global women discussed in various chapters of Faith, Class, and Labor matter more than we ever realized. For people of faith, everything changes when they begin to observe God at work there.

This post was originally published as part of Faith, Class, and Labor: An Interventions Forum. Be sure to check out the full conversation.