From Reflections, a publication of Yale Divinity School: The Christian Case for Union Organizing
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is four years old but it is still timely because the religious right is still demonizing unions as un-Christian.
By BEN CROSBY
• A huddle of nervous hotel workers, mostly Latina women, meet in a Roman Catholic church basement to discuss forming a union.
• A Lutheran minister spends a few hours walking the picket line with striking food service workers and gives a benediction through a bullhorn on a freezing morning.
• A Pentecostal minister submits to arrest as part of a civil disobedience to push an employer to recognize a union.
Such stories of church cooperation with labor are real, yet they no longer have the place in the mainline church’s imagination that they had 40 or 50 years ago. Nevertheless, nearly every labor movement veteran I know has stories of how Christian churches have made a difference in workers’ struggles for justice. Those three happen to be mine.