Jin Young Choi - Faith, Class, and Labor

This project would have been impossible without the tremendous support of the Council for World Mission through the Discernment and Radical Engagement (DARE) initiative. We would like to thank General Secretary Rev. Dr. Collin Cowan, Mission Secretary Dr. Sudipta Singh, and Program Associate Ms. Maria Fe Labayo for providing a space in which the contributors, as a working group, have engaged in a discussion of issues of class and labor that demand the churchs missional responses and theologys public witness. Our special appreciation goes to Dr. Jione Havea for his support of this project from the conception stage to publication both as an architect of the DARE program and as the series editor of the Intersectionality and Theology Series of Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock Publishers). We thank Dr. Aaron Stauffer for his editorial support and for preparing the index. Finally, we would like to thank our contributors for their outstanding collaboration, which consisted of meeting in person in Taipei, Taiwan, constructively engaging each others presentations, and being in correspondence with the suggestions and queries of the editors of this volume. As a result, this book is not merely a collection of individual essays but a product of collective labor that embodies our commitments to and hope for a just society where working people, which means the majority of people with all of their differences, become more effective agents and are treated with respect, dignity, and equity.

What is gained when activists and scholars of religion, theology, and the Bible begin to address matters of economics, labor, and class? Despite the fact that 99 percent of us have to work for a living and even though our work shapes us to the core, labor and class are topics that are underrepresented in the work of scholars of religion, theology, and the Bible. In recent decades, labor and class have rarely been addressed in-depth even in the growing number of explorations of theology, religion, and economics.

One way to frame this conversation is to observe that labor relations impact, and are impacted by, all other relations. This includes religion, which can also be defined in relational terms, as relationships among people, religious traditions, and the divine.

With this volume, an international group of scholars and activists at various stages in their careers presents a concerted effort to bring issues of labor and class back into the discussion. The twelve contributors have roots in eight different countries including (in alphabetical order) Germany, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, the U.S., and Zimbabwe. They currently reside and work in five different countries and are connected through various academic, ecclesial, and activist networks. Some are in positions to provide long and deep assessments of their fields, others are making provocative statements about how things might be different if the next generation of scholars would pick up one of the key topics of our age.