Faith, Class, and Labor

Product Description


Despite the fact that 99 percent of us work for a living and although work shapes us to the core, class and labor are topics that are underrepresented in the work of scholars of religion, theology, and the Bible. With this volume, an international group of scholars and activists from nine different countries is bringing issues of religion, class, and labor back into conversation. Historians and theologians investigate how new images of God and the world emerge, and what difference they can make. Biblical critics develop new takes on ancient texts that lead to the reversal of readings that had been seemingly stable, settled, and taken for granted. Activists and organizers identify neglected sources of power and energy returning in new force and point to transformations happening. Asking how labor and religion mutually shape each other and how the agency of working people operates in their lives, the contributors also employ intersectional approaches that engage race, gender, sexuality, and colonialism. This volume presents transdisciplinary, transtextual, transactional, transnational, and transgressive work in progress, much needed in our time.


Review


""This collection of essays represents a fine addition to the growing juncture of religious-theological studies and economic studies. Its particular focus is on the significance of labor and class for the study and practice of religion and theology, and vice versa. Toward this end, the volume draws on an excellent group of scholars. . . . The result is a keen reading of the problematic from a broad variety of angles of vision. A creative and sophisticated interdisciplinary exercise; well done!"" --Fernando F. Segovia, Vanderbilt University ""I thank the authors for laboring to connect work, faith as deep solidarity, and class realities as ways to breathe new life into labor struggles and the revitalization of religion. As long as people have to work for a living, this text is required reading for all who hunger and thirst for justice, and for those who labor and are heavy-laden. They are in fact, one and the same."" --Angela Cowser, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary ""This volume opens many lines of inquiry to redress one of the greatest failures of Christian theology, ethics, and biblical studies over the past few decades: not adequately engaging labor, class, and capitalism as such, in right proportion to the immense power the capitalist class exercises over every dimension of life. And the volume does so fully immersed in the intersections of class, gender, and race, thereby showing how each is indispensable for a full understanding of the others."" --Jeremy Posadas, Austin College, Sherman, Texas ""Faith, Class, and Labor is a thoughtfully conceived anthology. Through the lenses of history, Bible, gender, and organizing and activism, authors representing eight geographical contexts present complex and nuanced readings of class that describe how intersectional circumstances influence and reveal the meaning of class in what people experience. . . . This book is a must-read for academic and practical engagement in Christian ethics as well as for all of us who sometimes are befuddled by the absence of concrete discussions of class as we witness its diverse, disappointing manifestations in our own communities and in communities around the globe."" --Rosetta E. Ross, Spelman College


About the Author


Jin Young Choi is Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins and the Baptist Missionary Training School Professorial Chair for Biblical Studies at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School and author of Postcolonial Discipleship of Embodiment (2015). Joerg Rieger is Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor's Chair in Wesleyan Studies, and the Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at the Divinity School and the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of numerous books