Can churches and faith communities be a part of creating a new economy? And can a participating in new economy revitalize and transform churches and faith communities? On November 17 at 6:30pm CT, join the Wendland-Cook Program and the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development in a conversation on how clergy and faith leaders of religious institutions can join the solidarity and cooperative economy. Working for a more just economy is not an optional charity project: it is at the heart of many faith traditions. But Even faith itself can be distorted as the hallmarks of our current economic system find their way into our faith communities and theology.

This webinar will launch the Churches and Cooperatives toolkit. We believe that worker cooperatives can be an approach to build power for economic structural change for that will transform both churches and for the community at large.

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It's been ten years since the beginning of Occupy Wall Street: a movement that popularized "We are the 99%" and led to a worldwide resurgence of movements for economic justice.

Join us on October 6 at 3PM CT as we gather a group of scholars and activists reflecting on the Occupy Wall Street movement on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. We’ll also talk about the role of religion in the Occupy movement, especially as captured in Occupy Religion, by Joerg Rieger and Kwok Pui Lan.

Kwok Pui Lan is the Dean’s Professor of Systematic Theology at Candler School of Theology, Emory University

Obery Hendricks, Visiting Professor at Yale University

Nathan Schneider is an Assistant Professor of media studies at University of Colorado, Boulder.

Joerg Rieger, Founding Director, Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice and Distinguished Professor of Theology, Vanderbilt University Divinity School

Labor Day is often a marker of the definitive end of summer and the beginning of Fall church and school programming. But how often has the actual significance of Labor Day been emphasized in our worshiping communities, and how often have congregations been encouraged to examine the relationship between faith and labor, of the plight of working people in our communities and among our pews? As we still grapple with the impact of the pandemic on all who have to work for a living, we cannot let Labor Day pass us by without critically examining our faith in light of our oppressive economic and political systems that trample upon both people and planet.

Juan Floyd-Thomas is the Associate Professor of African American Religious History at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Additionally, he is both a co-founder and an executive board member of the Black Religious Scholars Group (BRSG). Recently, he was appointed as an Associate Editor for the American Academy of Religion's Reading Religion website.

In the aftermath of the most important election of our lifetimes we need to take another look at the flows of power. Political power is deeply entangled with other forms of power: cultural, religious, and economic. Yet can political, cultural, and religious power really change without changing the economic strongholds of power that fund them all? How might shifts in economic power—often assumed to be the least likely to change—support the shifting of power everywhere? And what could the working majority and people of faith contribute to the much-needed shifting of power? 

Our first webinar in a series on Religion and Labor explored historic and contemporary challenges and opportunities for engaging theology, faith communities, and the labor movement. In this second webinar taking place right before Labor Day, we share stories of struggle and victory from the faith and worker justice organizing trenches. A panel of experienced faith and labor leaders will discuss strategies for how people of faith and organizers can bring together working people everywhere, employing resources from faith and labor traditions. We believe that building stronger relationships, communities, and people power in these ways will help us address the many injustices people are facing today. Dr. Joerg Rieger will moderate a conversation about tangible ways to move forward together.

Rev. Francisco Garcia, Jr., is the Graduate Research Fellow and Student Leadership Representative at the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice, and is a PhD Student in Theology at Vanderbilt University in the Graduate Program of Religion. As an Episcopal priest, labor and community organizer, Francisco’s work over the last ten years has centered around congregation-based ministry and interfaith community organizing around immigrant rights, housing rights, and racial and economic justice issues, holding active board and organizing support roles with Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE), and L.A. Voice (PICO-Faith in Action). During this time, he served in pastoral roles at two parishes--most recently as the Rector of Holy Faith Episcopal Church, a multiracial, multilingual congregation in Inglewood, California.

Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair in Wesleyan Studies, and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. As Founding Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice, Dr. Rieger is the author and editor of 22 books and more than 140 academic articles. His work brings together the study of theology and of the movements for liberation and justice that mark our age. This is exemplied in his work Unified We are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities (co-authored with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger, 2016).

TENSE RELATIONS: Exploring the Problems & Promise of Labor & ReligionLABOR AND RELIGION,

WEDNESDAY, JULY 22 at 1:00PM CST

Featuring: BILL FLETCHER JR., VONDA MCDANIEL, REV. CHARLES E. CLARK SR., RABBI SHANA MACKLER, moderated by JOERG RIEGER

In this webinar we seek to go deeper into the relationship between religion and labor, exploring historic and contemporary challenges and opportunities between theology, faith communities, and the labor movement. As Wendland-Cook Program founder and Vanderbilt Professor of Theology  Dr. Joerg Rieger and Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger have explored in their work, Unified We are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities, faith and labor can be an often unexplored powerful alliance. So, what are the tensions that have existed between organized workers and organized religion, and where are the promises for potential collaborative action to address the systemic injustices endemic to the current order? Joerg Rieger will moderate a conversation featuring local and national perspectives from theologians, faith and labor leaders.

Bill Fletcher Jr. has been an activist since his teen years. Fletcher is the former president of TransAfrica Forum; a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies; an editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com; and in the leadership of several other projects.

Vonda McDaniel is the president of the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle TN, AFL-CIO and a lifelong member of the First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill. She is a member of the Wendland-Cook Program’s Steering Committee

Rabbi Shana Goldstein Mackler has been serving as a Rabbi at The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom in Nashville since her ordination at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, June 2004.  Prior to that, she earned her Masters of Arts in Hebrew Letters from HUC in 2003, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Florida in 1998.

Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair in Wesleyan Studies, and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice

Charles E. Clark Sr., is the National Community Engagement Coordinator of the AFL-CIO.