By Chris Herlinger
Religion News Service
American houses of worship should commemorate Labor Day weekend not as the last hurrah of the summer but as a time to celebrate the “sacred link between faith, work and justice,” according to a national social justice advocate.
“If a congregation was ever going to lift up labor issues, it’s Labor Day weekend,” said Kim Bobo, executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, a Chicago-based organization.
Bobo’s organization, which builds alliances between faith communities and the labor movement, is promoting “Labor in the Pulpits” services that focus on various themes of work and justice.
A major focus this year are the lives of low-income workers and the faith community’s support for their “struggles for living wages and family-sustaining benefits,” the network said. The project is also supported by the AFL-CIO.
Labor Day religious services — sometimes called “Labor Day Sundays” — were prevalent throughout the early and mid-20th century. But Bobo said the tradition began to fade during the 1950s, just as labor unions began to lose membership.
The tradition was revived in the mid-1990s, and now thousands of congregations — including Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist houses of worship — participate in Labor Day weekend-themed events.
Only about one in 10 U.S. workers is now a member of a labor union, and Bobo acknowledged that the overall cultural shift away from unions has made it difficult for faith communities to embrace the labor movement.
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