You can now pre-order Interfaith Worker Justice’s new book: A Worker Justice Reader: Essential Writings on Religion and Labor.

Next month Orbis Books is publishing A Worker Justice Reader: Essential Writings on Religion and Labor, an exciting anthology compiled by IWJ that will be a vital resource for seminaries, congregational study groups, social justice committees, labor unions, and beyond.

The book is organized into five parts:

1. Crisis for U.S. Workers
2. Religion-Labor History
3. What Our Religious Traditions Say about Work
4. Theology and the Ethics of Work
5. The Religion-Labor Movement Today

I will be picking up a copy. I wonder if the role of the PNCC in Labor history will be included, as well as the role played by organizations like the Polish National Alliance (An interesting history, the PNA is generally non-sectarian and was a close ally of the PNCCMany PNCC Parishes had PNA Lodges, some more than one Lodge. The PNA and PNCC were united in their goals of organizing Poles in the United States for their own betterment, service to their homeland, and at the time independence for Poland. The PNA’s non-sectarian character (membership included Roman Catholics, PNC Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Poles of no denominational affiliation) led to accusations that it was communist, anti-clerical, engaged in organizing secret societies, and all sorts of other evils — generally from a cadre of Polish R.C. priests, most especially Rev. Wincenty Barzynski, a Resurrectionist priest in Chicago and co-founder of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America. There were movements throughout the Alliance’s history to bar non-Roman Catholics from membership. They generally failed. As time has progressed, the Alliance while remaining non-sectarian, has assumed a more Roman Catholic identity. See Polish-American politics in Chicago, 1888-1940 By Edward R. Kantowicz, especially Chapter 3, ppg 28-37. in supporting Labor).

You can pre-order a copy online or by phone (call 800-258-5838 and use code WJR for FREE shipping) or through your local bookstore.

For suggestions on incorporating the Reader into your curriculum, contact Rev. April McGlothin-Eller, IWJ’s Student Programs Coordinator, at (773) 728-8400, ext. 21, or by E-mail.