“Don’t let yourself be thrown off course”—“Lass dich nicht aus der Bahn werfen.” These were the words my father said to me in his Swabian-German dialect when we said goodbye for the last time. He passed away this summer, on another continent. In places where Christianity is the religion of the majority, this may sound like an odd piece of advice. If faith and religion are part of the dominant status quo, why would there be a danger of being thrown off course?

When Christmas was turned into celebrations of consumption and sentimentality, a few things got lost along the way. No surprise here. Reclaiming what was lost is another story, as well-meaning responses have mostly failed. Blaming consumers for hijacking Christmas overlooks that consumption is driven by bigger and more powerful interests. And efforts to “keep Christ in Christmas” make little sense when our images of Christ are hollow.

Reproductive justice and economic justice are two essential sites of the struggle for justice in America today. There is a strong moral and religious case to be made for building collective worker power in the face of the debilitating effects of capitalism, racism, patriarchy, and other systems that perpetrate injustice and erode human dignity.  Given that conservative Christian groups are leading the legislative and legal fight to overturn or severely weaken Roe v. Wade, it is incumbent on progressive Christian thinkers and activists to alert their faith communities and the public about the health and economic impacts of losing access to abortion healthcare.  Reproductive justice advocates have sounded the alarm that communities of color are already suffering the loss of access to abortion healthcare and to the resources to have and raise children in safe and healthy environments.  Christian communities urgently need to act in solidarity with both of these movements. Yet many congregations are not sure of how they can become more involved. 

Nowadays, power shapes up in relationships of exploitation and domination that consistently divide working people from each other — deep solidarity is what threatens our capitalist age the most. Exploring these alternatives and the work of building deep solidarity needs theology, since economics and politics are in many ways already religious and already pervade our theological discourse. We need to explore how power shapes up in the productive and reproductive relationships in our world so that we can build on the movements already going in the right direction. Work and productive relationships are crucial here, but so are reproductive relationships that help us consider how capitalism seeks to extract and exploit nature as much as it does humanity. We need justice and liberation for all people and the planet. This forum and the book come at a critical time in the study of theology in the Capitalocene and helps explore some of the crucial contributions of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. Take and read!

Working people have been on the move in powerful and creative ways over the last 12 months. From employment trends like the “great resignation” to the wave of work stoppages that was dubbed “Striketober,” from the successful grassroots unionization efforts by Amazon workers in Staten Island to Starbucks workers organizing their stores nationwide, working people and their organizations (labor unions, worker centers) have been steadily organizing and helping to raise the labor consciousness of the nation. Here in the South and Tennessee in particular, the labor movement and its allies face tremendous challenges in confronting an incredibly anti-union (and anti-worker) political and economic climate and yet continue to find proactive ways to organize and build people power. 

But how often has the actual significance of Labor Day been emphasized in our worshiping communities, and how often have congregations been encouraged to examine the relationship between faith and labor or the plight of working people in our communities and among our pews? As we grapple with the ongoing impact of the pandemic on all who have to work for a living, we cannot let Labor Day pass us by without critically examining our faith in light of our oppressive economic and political systems that trample upon both people and planet. Simply put, there is no time like the present to engage in multi-faith acts of solidarity that bridges faith, labor, and the many structural injustices that have been made ever more apparent in recent years.

Discussing white supremacy, two African American women scholars have emphasized fundamental distinctions between race and class that are often overlooked. Historian Barbara Fields notes that “Not all white people have the same power and not all white people are in the same class position.” Along the same lines, African American studies scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor points out that “racism in the United States has never been just about abusing Black and Brown people just for the sake of doing so. It has always been a means by which the most powerful white men in the country have justified their rule, made their money, and kept the rest of us at bay.”