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Interfaith Worker Justice
offers good perspective on the effects of the California
wildfires, and on two critiques of progressive Christian
activism [10-31-07]
Kim Bobo, the Executive Director of Interfaith
Worker Justice, recently sent this email note.
Dear Friend,
When nature's calamities strike, like they did
last week in California, we know that
those hardest hit are poor families.
Despite the media coverage of the burning of
mansions, those who live in modest homes or even shacks will
suffer the most. Please pray for California workers and their
families hit by the fires.
Bad news and good news: the bad news is that the October 16th
Wall Street Journal carried an article that criticized
Interfaith Worker Justice; the good news is that not only was
IWJ discussed in a high-profile newspaper read by millions of
people, but most of the discussion was neutral, and accurately
described a good deal of what we do (before going on to
disparage us). The article, titled
"The Rise of the Religious Left," was authored by
Steve Malanga, a Senior Fellow at the conservative Manhattan
Institute. (It's no longer available on the Wall Street
Journal's website but can be found on the Manhattan
Institute's website.)
The piece was in fact adapted from a longer
essay that appears in the Autumn issue of the Manhattan
Institute's City Journal under the title
"The Religious Left, Reborn."
Below is my response to the article. (The
Wall Street Journal published it, but makes it available
online to subscribers only.
We have posted it online on IWJ's new blog.)
Steven Malanga's "The Rise of the
Religious Left" (October 16, 2007) ignores the depth of
religious concern for and teaching about hunger and poverty.
Ending poverty is a faith question--witness the thousands of
congregations that provide food and shelter for poor people.
The new emergence of a faith-led effort around raising
wages, benefits and working conditions reflects the maturity
and sophistication of the religious community's fight
against poverty. This is not a left-wing matter. This is a
faith matter.
Although I greatly respect the philosophers mentioned in the
article, Minister Rauschenbusch and Monsignor Ryan, most
religious leaders are not involved because of them, but
rather because of the reading and understanding of their own
sacred texts and teachings and their concrete experiences
with low-income families in their congregations.
The religious leaders I know do not "blindly refuse to
acknowledge" academic research on rising wages, but rather
understand that those who oppose raising wages and benefits
for low-wage workers have historically trotted out studies
to "prove" that we would all be better off accepting
poverty-wage jobs. Over 80 percent of the American public,
including most people of faith, supported raising the
minimum wage.
The October 21st New York Times Book Review carried an
essay by Alan Wolfe titled
"Mobilizing the Religious Left."
It's a review of Christianity and the Social Crisis in the 21st Century: The Classic That Woke Up the Church ,
a new volume celebrating and reflecting on
Walter Rauschenbusch's Christianity and the Social Crisis
(1907), a book that inspired Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma
Gandhi, and Bishop Desmond Tutu. It was good to see this book
reviewed in such a prominent forum. In his essay, however, Wolfe
made a dubious claim: "In a democracy, the people choose the
questions they want to discuss, and in our time more of them
want the religious spirit to concern itself with abortion and
homosexuality rather than race relations or a just wage." I
wrote the following response:
In his essay "Mobilizing the Religious Left,"
Alan Wolfe ignores the breadth of religious activism fighting
poverty and economic disparity by offering unsubstantiated
claims of what issues people care about and broad critiques of
the theologian Walter Rauschenbusch. Wolfe boldly and wrongly
claims, "In a democracy, the people choose the questions they
want to discuss, and in our time more of them want the religious
spirit to concern itself with abortion and homosexuality rather
than race relations or a just wage." He's flat out wrong.
An October 2005 Pew Research Center survey found that almost
half (48 percent) of Americans believe that American society is
divided between the "haves" and the "have-nots." In another Pew
survey in July 2006, asking about what social issues churchgoers
hear about from the pulpit, by far the top issue was hunger and
poverty. A whopping 92 percent of churchgoers have heard their
pastors speak out against hunger and poverty from the pulpit.
Over 80 percent of Americans, including all major Christian,
Jewish and Muslim organizations, supported an increase in the
minimum wage. These same religious bodies at the local level
have led the 100 plus local living wage campaigns and are
leading local efforts to challenge janitorial firms, laundry
firms, poultry plants, waste companies and dozens of other
industry leaders to pay living wages and family benefits.
As important as Rauschenbusch is to social thought, I daresay
that few religious leaders are engaged in just wage issues
either because of what he said or didn't say. People of faith
are engaged in challenging economic injustice because all our
faith traditions' sacred texts condemn greed and advocate just
treatment of workers. The teachings, combined with their own
faith journeys of seeing poverty in their congregations, propel
their actions.
The New York Times hasn't published the
letter, but
you can find it, too, on IWJ's blog.
Although I must admit I'm not all that enamored by blogs and
online conversations, my twin teenage sons are convincing me of
the importance of engaging in them. Our work is so important. We
can't let biased commentators and inaccurate claims undermine
it.
Interfaith Worker Justice calls upon our religious values in
order to educate, organize, and mobilize the religious community
in the U.S. on issues and campaigns that will improve wages,
benefits and working conditions for workers, especially workers
in low-wage jobs.
Interfaith Worker Justice relies on
contributions to support its work. Your tax-deductible gift will
be strategically used to further justice for workers throughout
the United States.
Thank you and Blessings,
Kim Bobo, Executive Director
Interfaith Worker Justice |
