The Social Gospel and Global Labor Solidarities (Labor Day 2024)

For Labor Day 2024, scholars discussed the challenges and opportunities of building global labor solidarity, rooted in the tradition of the social Gospel. They highlighted the intersection of religion and labor, the importance of transnational connections, and the role of faith in enabling social change. The panel also discussed the potential of worker cooperatives as an alternative to capitalist exploitation, and the need for a class analysis to foster solidarity with labor.

Chaumtoli Huq is an Associate Professor of Law at the CUNY School of Law focused on gender, migration, labor and human rights. Prof. Huq has devoted her entire professional career to public service focusing on issues impacting low-income New Yorkers, workers in Bangladesh, and human rights issue related to South Asia. Prof. Huq’s is the author of, The War on Terror on Muslim Women and Girls: Forging Transformative Solidarities (Scholar and Feminist Online, 2019). She has also produced documentaries on her work in Bangladesh, Sramik Awaaz: Workers Voices, and created a digital archive on tea workers in Bangladesh, Chai Justice (https://chaijustice.com/)

Dr. Jin Young Choi is Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins and the Baptist Missionary Training School Professorial Chair in Biblical Studies. She earned her Ph.D. in New Testament and Early Christianity at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Choi is the author of the book, Postcolonial Discipleship of Embodiment: An Asian and Asian American Feminist Reading of the Gospel of Mark (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Dr. Joerg Rieger is Distinguished Professor of Theology, the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies, and the Founding Director of the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice. Previously he was the Wendland-Cook Endowed Professor of Constructive Theology at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University. Rieger’s work brings together the study of theology and of the movements for liberation and justice that mark our age. Rieger is the author and editor of 26 books and more than 198 academic articles, most recently he is the co-editor of Liberating People, Planet, and Religion: Intersections of Ecology, Economics, and Christianity; Theology in the Capitalocene: Ecology, Identity, Class, and Solidarity (2022)His books have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German, Korean and Chinese.