ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY INSPIRING FAITH TRADITIONS AND POLITICS

Originally published 16 November 2021

Living into democratic traditions takes time, sometimes centuries. In the United States, universal suffrage was only achieved after almost two centuries, and democracy continues to be under attack. Likewise, the egalitarian traditions of the Jesus movement, which held that the last shall be the first and that those who want to be great should be the servants of all, have had to contend with hierarchical tendencies.

What might have kept democratic and egalitarian spirits alive in the midst of opposition and pushback, and what accounts for the ongoing development of these spirits? In US politics, many assume that it is the intellectual legacy of the founding fathers; in religion, liberal theology and its proponents are cherished for similar reasons. Yet intellectual traditions and ideas alone are hardly sufficient to transform the world, as most teachers and preachers find out at some point in their careers, and the liberal traditions have their own myopias when it comes to minorities and working people.

As argued in an earlier contribution, political democracy cannot save itself. Democratic relationships need to expand into all areas of life, starting with places of work, where most people spend the bulk of their waking hours. This is where culture and religion are deeply shaped, although this is rarely accounted for.

In the United States, the history of power at work begins with working people developing relationships early on. In the early 1600s, long before the founding of the nation, black and white sharecroppers and indentured servants connected so successfully that the white masters had to use all the tricks of classical divide-and-conquer models to uphold their rule. Anti-black racism was invented and employed by the masters in order to crush the power of people that was gained at work. In the process, both black and white workers were further subdued, except that the latter were less likely to notice because racism misled them into assuming that the interests of their white masters were identical to their own. Religion, for the most part, was on the side of the masters, except when African Americans reclaimed it in their own communities.

Not all was lost for economic democracy, however, as working people continued to build relationships and to organize. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the labor movement with the help of many mainline churches won victories that today are taken for granted, without awareness of their roots. Yet the end of child labor, protection for women at work, eight-hour workdays, weekends off work, pension plans, and social security provisions were not given by benevolent politicians but fought for by broad coalitions of working people.

The Methodist social creed of 1908, which became the foundation for the 1908 Federal Council of Churches social creed, is an example for the difference progressive religion was able to make when it joined efforts to expand political and economic democracy. Not only were these early social creeds more radical in terms of their push for economic democracy than almost any contemporary social creed, they were also successful in accomplishing many of their demands because they intuitively combined economic, political, and religious democracy. And even though the labor union movement and relations of religion and labor have experienced severe pushback in the United States since then, the fortunes of the labor movement may be rising again at present and even some religious support is returning.

Another equally significant—although less known—development that helped lay the foundations of economic democracy in the United States are cooperative businesses. Worker cooperatives, in particular, developed as places where working people could build their own businesses, asserting their own agency and the ability to determine democratically what would be produced and how, and how the profit is shared. Such cooperatives often thrived especially among minorities in the United States. Many African American cooperatives, in particular, became so successful that dominant business interests kept pushing back against them, undermining them, and ultimately destroying them.

Today, there is another wave of cooperative developments in the United States. According to the Democracy at Work Institute, worker cooperatives build local wealth, as profits stay with the workers and their communities. Worker cooperatives also create higher-quality jobs that are longer-term and provide better wages that comparable jobs in conventional businesses. But it is opportunities for greater participation in the workplace are at the heart of worker co-ops, leading to a profound change in quality of life and transforming cultural behavior. More than half of worker co-ops in the United States are developed in low-income communities, providing opportunities and empowerment where it is most needed, addressing not only economic and political discrimination, but also discrimination along the lines of race, ethnicity, and immigration status.

In addition, collaborations between cooperative development and faith communities are emerging, providing new inspiration for religion and opportunities to move from providing charity to participating in systemic changes. The Southeast Center for Cooperative Development, in collaboration with the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt, supported by the Louisville Institute, has brought together co-op developers, representatives of labor unions, religious officials, and academics in efforts to crossfertilize the work of cooperative development and religious communities, with benefits for each. In this work, both economic and religious democracy are being strengthened in climates where hierarchical relationships are still mostly the norm.

These examples of emerging economic democracy highlight opportunities for building more democratic relationships that can affect all areas of life, including religion. Nevertheless, the benefits are not automatic, which means that work needs to be done in all of these areas if democracy is to benefit.

This brings us back to political democracy. Universal suffrage was not an automatic benefit of the founding of the United States, and neither was it accomplished by well-meaning politicians persuaded by enlightened arguments. Universal suffrage was achieved in the struggles against slavery, for women’s voting rights, and for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Similar dynamics were at work as Christianity reclaimed parts of its egalitarian heritage. The voices of the oppressed and the exploited were not heard primarily because some well-meaning theologians became “the voice for the voiceless.” In the United States, working people rather than religious leaders organized some of the most vibrant embodiments of the Social Gospel, both in white and black churches. The work of politicians, community leaders, pastors, and theologians can find inspiration in these dynamics, but without the agency of working people little will change.

This is where economic democracy enters the conversation once again today, reminding us of the need to consider and deepen it, for the benefit of all.

This piece was written as part of an online forum with the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. Read more from the contributors here.