09/07/2026
Labor Day, Religion, and the Dignity of Work
One of the things we say when we do not know what else to say on a holiday is, “Happy this,” or “Happy that.”
So, I’ll play along: Happy Labor Day.
Labor Day is one of those holidays we tend to take for granted. We have largely forgotten why we celebrate it. We have begun to think of it primarily as a day for barbecuing, the last holiday of summer, or summer’s final gasp.
But I want to return to some of its roots.
Labor Day is rooted in the American labor movement—in the lives of the people on the ground who build things, produce things, serve people, and make things happen.
Other countries observe workers’ holidays, particularly International Workers’ Day on May 1. During the Cold War, Americans often associated May Day with the Communist bloc. Our September observance, however, emerged from America’s own strong and sometimes turbulent labor tradition.
I want to add a dimension to the conversation that may not receive as much attention: the intersection of religion, religious people, and religious institutions with the American labor movement.
The first example that comes to mind is the Social Gospel movement. Protestant ministers and reformers—especially the Baptist theologian Walter Rauschenbusch—challenged child labor, dangerous working conditions, poverty, and extreme inequality during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
A second influence came through Catholic social teaching. We might also remember the Catholic Worker Movement, founded later by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. But an important foundation was Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum. It affirmed the rights of workers to organize, receive just wages, and seek protection from exploitation.
Jewish immigrants and religious communities also played major roles in organizing garment workers, supporting unions such as the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, and sustaining strikes through mutual-aid societies.
Churches, synagogues, and religious halls have traditionally provided meeting space, food, money, and moral support for striking workers. They have helped care for workers and their families when other institutions were reluctant to welcome or assist them.
Religious leaders also gave the demands of labor a moral vocabulary. They presented fair wages, humane working hours, workplace safety, and the dignity of labor as matters of justice—not merely matters of economic negotiation.
Black churches connected labor rights with civil rights. Ministers and congregations supported organizing among porters, sanitation workers, domestic workers, and others who were frequently excluded from established unions. They were not always welcomed into the larger labor movement.
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. strengthened the alliance between religion, civil rights, and organized labor. We should not forget that he was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers when he was assassinated in 1968.
César Chávez and the United Farm Workers drew heavily upon Catholic spirituality. They used prayer, fasting, pilgrimages, religious symbols, and nonviolence to organize farmworkers and appeal to the conscience of the public.
Religious organizations have also mediated labor disputes. Religious leaders have sometimes brought workers and employers together, encouraged negotiation, and helped legitimize collective bargaining.
But religion has not always supported the labor movement.
Some clergy and religious institutions defended employers, condemned strikes as a form of socialism, promoted paternalism, and discouraged workers from challenging the existing economic order.
If we are going to lift up religion’s role in advancing the labor movement, we must also acknowledge its role in restraining it.
So, what is our role today?
The Torah teaches fairness, equity, and justice. Jesus teaches us to love our neighbors. Scripture reminds us that “the laborer is worthy of his hire” or, in another translation, “the worker deserves his wages” (Luke 10:7; 1 Timothy 5:18).
Put it all together, and I believe we will always find God on the side of truth, justice, human dignity, and fairness.
And that is my amen for now.
Happy Labor Day.
