Labor Day Reflections
Illustration courtesy of Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University.
August 10, 2022
“Which side are you on?” This is the chorus of a well-known labor song that originated in Harlan County in southeastern Kentucky in the 1930s. It was written by Florence Reece, the wife of coal miner and union leader Sam Reece, after she and her children were terrorized by the local sheriff and his men when they entered her house in search of her husband.
Like many working families, the Reeces experienced not only the abuse of law enforcement and military, which often ended in deadly fashion for the workers who organized themselves (the US has had the bloodiest labor history of any industrialized nation in the world). Like many workers, they also knew that work itself is often a matter of life and death. Even today, black lung disease is killing coal miners, lack of safety equipment is killing construction workers—and much work in the United States no longer provides living wages for families.
The Israelites to whom Moses speaks in Deuteronomy made similar experiences: They were exploited by an empire designed to secure wealth and power for the few at the expense of the many, and they were systematically terrorized by its slave drivers (Exodus 1:11). Like an ever-growing number of working families today, the Israelites knew that work could be a matter of life and death.
The question, “Which side are you on?” becomes a matter of life and death when exploitation and extraction are the rule and when power and wealth are distributed unevenly between the many and the few. Both in ancient Egypt and in the United States today the rich keep getting richer at precisely the same time when the poor are getting poorer, and the environment is ravaged. Conventional promises that “a rising tide will lift all boats” ring increasingly more hollow.
Working people are often misled into siding with the privileged few rather than the many. White supremacy, for instance, fools white working people into thinking they have more in common with their white bosses than their non-white co-workers. Nevertheless, it is becoming increasingly clearer on what side the proverbial 99 percent who work for a living belong.
The biggest surprise, perhaps, is that God also takes sides. The ancient Exodus stories shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims leave no doubt: God is on the side of the slaves rather than their masters. The book of Deuteronomy, from which our text is taken, continues the theme. There, God demands that orphans, widows, and strangers be treated fairly, and God cares about the poor, reminding the Israelites of their own poverty as enslaved people in Egypt (Deuteronomy 24:19-21).
In times when exploitation, extraction, and inequality are the rule rather than the exception, taking sides is not optional. Unfortunately, the so-called “culture wars” in the United States continue to mislead us, both in politics and in religion. Conservatives seem to be determined to take the side of the privileged few rather than the many, and many liberals tend to respond by refusing to take sides and aspiring to love everyone, even if it kills both people and the planet.
The good news is that there is another option: if the book of Deuteronomy and Florence Reece are right, there are ways of taking sides that are life-giving rather than death-dealing. This insight might bring together people of different faiths and people of no faith who are working together for life and flourishing, against the threat of death and destruction and the false gods of exploitation and extraction.
Joerg Rieger 2022
The Rev. Dr. Joerg Rieger
The Rev. Dr. Joerg Rieger, a United Methodist clergyman, is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Affiliate Faculty, Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and the Founder and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program. This post is reprinted with permission from the website of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. To reproduce this content elsewhere, please contact the author.