Join Labor in the Pulpits over Labor Day Weekend

by James Parks, Aug 7, 2010

Labor Day is less than a month away and America’s workers find themselves mired in the worst economic crisis since the 1930s Depression. Some 26 million U.S. workers are without jobs or full-time work. Even if you are working, it’s hard to make ends meet. In the richest country in the world, more than 2 million full-time, year-round workers live below the poverty line, struggling to pay for necessities such as food, housing, health care, transportation and childcare.

Each Labor Day weekend, Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) and the AFL-CIO sponsor the Labor in the Pulpits/on the Bimah/in the Minbar program, which highlights the shared goals of the faith community and the union movement for a new vision for justice in our communities. (If you need materials for a Labor Day service or want to add your congregation to the list of participants in Labor in the Pulpits, click here or email Cynthia Brooke at cbrooke@iwj.org.)

As part of Labor in the Pulpits, union members serve as guest speakers in congregations to speak out about their faith, work and the union movement. Some AFL-CIO central labor councils use this program as an opportunity to host a Faith and Labor meeting in which participants discuss important issues facing workers in their communities and reaffirm their shared commitments to social justice. Last year, more than 1,000 congregations participated in Labor in the Pulpits.

Since 1996, thousands of congregations have focused Labor Day weekend services on the injustices facing low-wage workers and the religious community’s efforts to support those workers’ struggles for living wages and family-sustaining benefits.

Says IWJ Executive Director Kim Bobo:

With official unemployment hovering around 10 percent, and real unemployment much higher, Labor in the Pulpits offers an opportunity to minister to workers and families who have lost jobs through no fault of their own and lift up a vision of society that strives to create good paying jobs for all those who want to work. Labor Day weekend gives us a chance to honor those who work and recommit ourselves as a nation to design policies and programs that can put all Americans back to work

Celebrate the sacred link between faith, work and justice. Volunteer to speak to your congregation on Labor Day weekend, or talk to your congregation about inviting a union member or labor leader to be a guest speaker or focusing its Labor Day weekend service on worker justice issues.

The Rev. Frank Raines, pastor of Gethsemane Baptist Church in Buffalo, N.Y., says “work provides us an opportunity to build a bridge that impacts our character, conscious and citizenship” and

Labor in the Pulpits provides an opportunity for the faith and labor community to discuss the paths that we travel together, towards creating a more just society.

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