Churches and Cooperatives
Can churches and faith communities be part of creating a new economy?
People have been actively creating cooperative and solidarity economies all over the world for thousands of years. The paradigm is built on cooperation, democracy, equality, solidarity, equity, justice, openness, honesty, inclusion, social responsibility and caring for others and the environment. Our current economic system is broken. Worker cooperatives--businesses owned and controlled by the people who work there--are a concrete vision of what a more just society can look like. Social ventures, like cooperatives, bring a triple bottom line to current business structures: a focus on people, planet, and profit.
The solutions to the problems created by the Great Recession aren't working. A just economy is not a service economy that keeps workers contingent, with stagnating wages, and without benefits while concentrating wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer CEOs and shareholders. 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. There are biblical traditions that counter these distortions and point toward a cooperative, bottom-up alternative. Featuring voices from four leaders from the Churches and Cooperatives Collaborative Inquiry team, this Interventions forum takes up this imperative -- that faith communities can be part of creating a new economy -- and explores the value of cooperatives to churches and their mission.
Contributors: Lariss Romero; Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger; George Schmidt; Joerg Rieger.
Adapting for a new Adventure:
Cooperative Lessons for Pastors
REv. Larissa Romero
5 November 2021
The theological imperative according to our biblical call for working cooperatively and the flourishing relationships between cooperatives and churches are well defined by the Churches and Cooperatives Toolkit, and better outlined by far greater theologians than myself on this panel. As a working pastor, I find the impressive nature of this work rests not just in the theological grounding, but also the ways in which it resonates with practical church processes for transformation. The call for cooperatives echoes what churches know in their lived experience: the current system does not work. In church leadership circles, it is becoming more and more accepted that we have entered a period requiring adaptive capacities, such as those as outlined in Tod Bolsinger’s Canoeing the Mountains, gathering well a la Priya Parker, and the joys of affirmative inquiry. My contribution is to highlight that the partnership between churches and cooperatives offers a life-giving opportunity through mutual thriving, since co-ops integrate naturally into the best practices for transformational change now necessary in churches.
If one thing is abundantly clear on a larger socio-economic level, and so too the church level, it is that we cannot go on with business as usual. At many of its “heights” the church was an echo of empire, tied in to its domineering paradigms. Church flourishing was far more aligned with the exploitative practices of the governing elite. This most recent peak ended in the late ‘60’s, and since then many churches have been trying to tweak old ways of living in the “Christendom church.” In what scholars of early Jesus movements might call a revisiting of our roots, churches now find themselves less and less the purveyors of normative power. Like our spiritual ancestors, we find ourselves in need of a paradigm shift - a transformation bent on the ability to adapt.
Bolsinger’s Canoeing the Mountains is so named to acknowledge the adventurousness required when, like Meriweather and Lewis, we come with particular tools only to find that the terrain is entirely unlike what we expected. We now necessarily start from a place of unknowing - and that’s a new kind of power.
What is needed? ‘A spirit of adventure,’ where there are new, unexpected discoveries (serendipities), and ultimately, ‘new perceptions.’ To be sure, this is an adapt-or-die moment. This is a moment when most of our backs are against the wall, and we are unsure if the church will survive to the next generation. The answer is not to try harder but to start a new adventure: to look over Lemhi Pass and let the assumptions go. To see not the absence of a water route but the discovery of a new, uncharted land beckoning us forward - yes, in the face of the uncertainties, fears and potential losses - to learn and be transformed… What is needed? An adventure that requires adaptive capacity.
In the Churches and Cooperatives toolkit, Southeast Center and Wendland-Cook state, “People have been actively creating cooperative and solidarity economies all over the world for thousands of years. The paradigm is built on values of cooperation, democracy, equality, solidarity, equity, justice, openness, honesty, inclusion, social responsibility and caring for others and the environment.” Cooperatives are, like churches themselves, both utterly old in all their rooted radical ways of being, and also resurging with a new vigor as they meet the need for adventurous adaptation.
Another aspect of adaptive capacity that Bolsinger illuminates is the square focus of mission. “The focused, shared, missional purpose of the church or organization will trump every other competing value. Does it further our mission? The mission trumps all.” For most churches with solid biblical teaching and theological grounding, our mission necessarily intertwines with the economic needs of our siblings. Cooperatives can be a large part of keeping us aligned with our gospel values and mission. Take the toolkit’s Bible study, as an example. Ask yourself, “Does this align with our mission?” We can almost certainly reply with a resounding, “Yes!”
Similar to the need for mission focus, a large part of Christian practice is gathering together as an alternative people shaped by God and creating an alternative world that glorifies God. In The Art of Gathering Well, Priya Parker emphasizes how important to any kind of gathering it is to create an alternative world with real life formats, rules, and adherences, such that we are not merely abiding by the status-quo cultural norms. Cooperatives create an alternative economy to the cultural norms of exploitation and dominance of late-stage capitalism. Again, where mission eclipses all else, if part of our mission is to facilitate God’s alternative kin-dom come here on earth, cooperatives give us tools to live out that alternate reality, not just dream of it in hope.
Finally, another tool of great importance in the transformation of churches is the process of affirmative inquiry. In this process, you approach organizational change through positive reinforcement of strengths already present in the organization. As the toolkit teaches us, churches have actually lived cooperatively for some time - it has been part of their staying power. In this way, cooperative relationships are a strength of churches; think of denominational relationships and structures, nevermind the polity of individual churches. What kind of energy does it lend to change initiatives to lean into, support, and celebrate a way of relating in which many churches already show great strength? Relationships with cooperatives give churches another way of celebrating what they already do well and that can generate good energy for thriving.
In all the ways working with cooperatives stretches churches, it stretches us towards life-giving processes. In all the ways working with cooperatives is more difficult in the rest of the world, it is where we have the capacity (even already) to shine, and can gain energy for the work in recognizing and affirming that. The relationship between churches and cooperatives could potentially yield an ongoing cycle of healthy socio-economic adaptive changes that both the church itself, and our wider society, so needs.
Larissa Romero is Pastor at Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville. She comes from serving Pascack Reformed Church in Park Ridge, New Jersey as solo pastor. Prior to that call, she worked at Scarsdale Congregational Church in Scarsdale, New York and Greenpoint Reformed Church in Brooklyn.
Fighting Forward
Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger
November 8, 2021
The global pandemic has laid bare not only the many health-related inequalities but also the many unhealthy economic pre-existing conditions we have been burdened with for decades. For instance:
More than half (56 percent) of all workers in the US between the ages of 25 and 50 are employed at jobs that pay a median annual income of $17,950. While these low-wage workers are a racially diverse group, people of color and women are overrepresented. Nearly one-third of these low-wage workers live below 150 percent of the federal poverty line (about $36,000 for a family of four). Most low wage workers are concentrated in the care, retail, and food industry sectors.
While 20 percent of all households have zero or even negative wealth, the top 1 percent hold 40 percent of all wealth in the United States, increasingly widening the income and wealth gap in our communities. For almost five decades now, the top income earners have accounted for roughly 86 percent of all income gains, while 90 percent of earners have seen their income values decline.
And then there is the crisis not many are talking about: the “silver tsunami,” or small business closure crisis. With baby boomers owning more than half of all privately held small businesses, an estimated 29 million firms, these companies are destined to transfer ownership as the owners are ready to retire in the near future. Not only do these enterprises employ an estimated 1 in 5 workers, they also face a 1 in 5 chance of finding a buyer when the time comes to sell. This tidal wave of business closures will endanger an estimated 25 million jobs and put entire communities at risk.
Employee ownership can be the solution for these multiple economic challenges we are facing today. At the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development (SEC4CD), we look at worker cooperatives (for-profit businesses that are owned and managed by the people who work there) as a way to create good jobs and equity for people who have been left out of the economy. In our work we give priority to women, people of color, youth, formerly incarcerated individuals, low-income folks, and those living in underserved and underdeveloped areas of Tennessee and the Southeast.
Worker co-ops impact more than just the immediate employee-owners. They create a whole new business culture by developing democratic workplaces with a voice in key decisions by the worker-owners, higher job satisfaction, and autonomy compared to traditional firms. They also create higher paying jobs. The average entry level hourly wage paid at all reporting worker cooperatives in a recent study was $19.67. This is over $12.00 more than the federal minimum wage that is currently still set at $7.25 per hour. In addition to wages, worker cooperatives distribute surplus earnings as patronage to the worker owners (usually based on the number of hours worked). The average distribution in 2019 was $8,241 per member.
The primary purpose of a worker cooperative is to benefit the member-owners and not maximize to profits for investors as is the goal for traditional investor-owned corporations. With profits circulating locally instead of being siphoned off by remote investors community wealth is increased. Since most workers are community residents, worker cooperatives are more likely than other businesses to employ sustainable business practices that do not harm the local environment. These community benefits are not short lived as studies of worker co-ops around the world show that worker cooperatives are more resilient compared to traditional small businesses, especially during economic downturns.
Furthermore, racial demographics show that the majority of worker co-op owners are people of color and/or women, with 58.6 percent of member-owners being non-white. The majority of the workforce at worker co-ops (62.5 percent) identifies as female. This shows that worker co-ops give individuals who are most often left out of entrepreneurship an opportunity to become business owners and economic players.
Employee ownership can also be a solution for the small business closure crisis mentioned above. By selling to their employees, owners can ensure a lasting legacy by retaining jobs in the community and keeping the business locally-owned. Conversions to employee ownership create community wealth by keeping money (and jobs) local for the long haul. With a focus on creating worker cooperatives in partnership with those communities left out of the economy we can democratize entrepreneurial opportunity to build an economy that works for all.
It will definitely take a village to address the economic challenges we face. And that is why we are turning to faith communities to build a collective vision of a just economy based on values that we share with each other, like solidarity, democracy, equity, equality, mutuality in terms of caring for each other, and being responsible towards each other and the community.
Together with our partners at the Wendland Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt Divinity School and with financial support from the Louisville Institute’s Collaborative Inquiry Team Grant a project was born to engage people of faith in creating a new, democracy-centered economy, one that works for all. We are excited to offer a virtual toolkit that seeks to put more people of faith on this path and helps them understand the deep connections of this project to their sacred traditions. Let’s “build forward” towards an economic future that creates equity and agency through shared ownership and control of land, labor, and capital to fundamentally reshape our relationships with each other and with the means of production. This is a monumental task that can only be built in solidarity.
Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger is a community organizer, author, lecturer, and a co-founder of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development. She has been involved with worker rights advocacy as the community engagement coordinator with the Dallas AFL-CIO Central Labor Council and director of Texas New ERA Center/Jobs with Justice. Before working in nonprofit and cooperative development, Rosemarie worked in biotech research for many years and was a Montessori educator. She holds an M.S. degree from Eberhard Karls University (Germany) and an M.Ed. degree from Loyola University Maryland.
Survival of the Most Cooperative
By: George Schmidt
16 November 2021
The larger promise of the CIT Toolkit, as I see it, is not merely a more equitable work environment or a refocusing of the Church’s mission but a greater chance of survival for us all. This will mean, however, remembering old truths about competition and cooperation. The world has dramatically changed in the wake of the climate crisis (with even greater change to come), and we must rediscover these truths about ourselves and our world in order to respond effectively to the future.
In climate change literature two terms standout: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation refers to the dramatic necessity to cutback greenhouse gas emissions while facilitating the use of cleaner energy sources. Mitigation speaks to the need to prevent the worst case scenarios from taking place, i.e. biological annihilation. Adaptation, however, refers to the planning and implementing of the necessary technologies and political solutions needed to live within a world that has been drastically remade in the wake of climate change. Without a doubt, we live in what Courtney White calls the “Age of Consequences.”
On the one hand, mitigation efforts, as incredibly inadequate as they now stand, appear to be gesturing in a positive direction. Adaptation, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly violent and authoritarian. In fact, the Transnational Institute recently released a study entitled “Global Climate Wall” that reveals wealthier nations (those who are also the greatest emitters of greenhouse gas) are spending nearly twice as much on militarizing their border security than they are on combating the climate emergency. That is to say, wealthier countries are adapting to climate change by separating themselves from the rest of the world, seeing survival as something pursued in opposition and in competition to others.
This approach is perhaps most famously put forth in the fifth edition of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: the survival of the fittest. While this phrase (originally put forth by Herbert Spencer but adopted by Darwin) tends to obfuscate a complicated network of concepts within evolutionary biology, it more importantly reflects Darwin’s preconceived economic worldview. It goes without saying that Darwin’s theory grew up within a specific historical context and drew its guiding metaphors from British capitalism. For this reason it is not surprising that we see within Darwin a legitimation of capitalism as “natural.” For this reason, it is not surprising that as he began to derive his theories, he saw reflected in nature the British society in which he lived. In a letter to Engels, Marx writes, “It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, ‘inventions’ and the Malthusian struggle for existence.” The concluding reference is particularly telling because in the introduction to On the Origin of Species Darwin credits Thomas Malthus, the political economist, for many of his key insights. The “survival of the fittest” is, therefore, by no means a perfect expression of the natural world.
Interestingly, evolutionary biologists not exposed to the same harsh world of ruthless British industrialism as Darwin came to very different conclusions about the natural world. For a great deal of evolutionists, rather than seeing species and individuals in competition with one another they stressed cooperation and mutual aid. Recent evolutionary biology is reflecting these earlier insights. It is not that competition and opposition play no part in survival, but evolutionary biologists are noting the greater role that cooperation plays in survival. One major example is what is referred to as the “Wood Wide Web.”
The next time you take a walk in the woods, dig lightly into the earth around a tree. You will find almost imperceptibly-thin white strands of fungus, what scientists call mycorrhizal networks. What you will have uncovered is an incredibly small part of a vast interconnected and subterranean network of microbial fungi that facilitate water, carbon, and nitrogen sharing among the forest community. Not only do the trees share nutrients among themselves, but they also have a rudimentary system of communicating with each other in regard to threats. For instance, as one tree experiences pests it will send out an alarm to the trees around it to grow their leaves more bitter. Through this very same network, weaker trees are supported by healthier ones.
In this sense, nature is telling us a deep truth we seem to have forgotten as we struggle to make ends meet within the unnatural landscape of laissez-faire capitalism: it is not survival of the fittest but rather survival of the most cooperative. Bertrand Russell once wrote,
The only thing that will redeem [humanity] is cooperation… it is common to wish well to oneself, but in our technically unified world, wishing well to oneself is sure to be futile unless it is combined with wishing well to others.
Biblically speaking, the first question ever posed to God was “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Deep within Christ’s ministry is the answer: yes. The work of the Church is to remind us of our deep connection with each other and to facilitate opportunities to meaningfully live that out, and the CIT tool kit offers a path for developing these connections.
We need each other… And manufactured forms of competition, at their most sinister, hide this wisdom from us, and it is our duty as keepers of one another to lean into that truth put forth by the ancients. For if we are to survive and adapt to what is to come, it will not be by way of wall building that cuts us off from our local or international neighbors. Our survival, and the survival of those yet to be, depends upon our capacity to lean into the truth of our dependence upon one another.
George is a second year PhD student in the Graduate Department of Religion at Vanderbilt and is a graduate student fellow with the Wendland-Cook Program. After seminary at Union Theological Seminary in NYC, George worked as a community organizer in New York City. George is ordained by the Disciples of Christ and served as a chaplain in both the prison and hospice setting. A number of years ago he was commissioned into the United States Navy as an officer and a military chaplain where he served with the navy, the marines, and the coast guard. He is on the board of directors for the Institute for Christian Socialism. His doctoral research primarily revolves around a genealogy of corporate personhood. It seeks to imagine new ways of forming theological movements and moments that have the potential to form pluralist assemblages of multiple action directed primarily at the stranglehold of corporate power.
Economic Democracy Inspiring Faith Traditions and Politics
By: Joerg Rieger
16 November 2021
Living into democratic traditions takes time, sometimes centuries. In the United States, universal suffrage was only achieved after almost two centuries, and democracy continues to be under attack. Likewise, the egalitarian traditions of the Jesus movement, which held that the last shall be the first and that those who want to be great should be the servants of all, have had to contend with hierarchical tendencies.
What might have kept democratic and egalitarian spirits alive in the midst of opposition and pushback, and what accounts for the ongoing development of these spirits? In US politics, many assume that it is the intellectual legacy of the founding fathers; in religion, liberal theology and its proponents are cherished for similar reasons. Yet intellectual traditions and ideas alone are hardly sufficient to transform the world, as most teachers and preachers find out at some point in their careers, and the liberal traditions have their own myopias when it comes to minorities and working people.
As argued in an earlier contribution, political democracy cannot save itself. Democratic relationships need to expand into all areas of life, starting with places of work, where most people spend the bulk of their waking hours. This is where culture and religion are deeply shaped, although this is rarely accounted for.
In the United States, the history of power at work begins with working people developing relationships early on. In the early 1600s, long before the founding of the nation, black and white sharecroppers and indentured servants connected so successfully that the white masters had to use all the tricks of classical divide-and-conquer models to uphold their rule. Anti-black racism was invented and employed by the masters in order to crush the power of people that was gained at work. In the process, both black and white workers were further subdued, except that the latter were less likely to notice because racism misled them into assuming that the interests of their white masters were identical to their own. Religion, for the most part, was on the side of the masters, except when African Americans reclaimed it in their own communities.
Not all was lost for economic democracy, however, as working people continued to build relationships and to organize. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the labor movement with the help of many mainline churches won victories that today are taken for granted, without awareness of their roots. Yet the end of child labor, protection for women at work, eight-hour workdays, weekends off work, pension plans, and social security provisions were not given by benevolent politicians but fought for by broad coalitions of working people.
The Methodist social creed of 1908, which became the foundation for the 1908 Federal Council of Churches social creed, is an example for the difference progressive religion was able to make when it joined efforts to expand political and economic democracy. Not only were these early social creeds more radical in terms of their push for economic democracy than almost any contemporary social creed, they were also successful in accomplishing many of their demands because they intuitively combined economic, political, and religious democracy. And even though the labor union movement and relations of religion and labor have experienced severe pushback in the United States since then, the fortunes of the labor movement may be rising again at present and even some religious support is returning.
Another equally significant—although less known—development that helped lay the foundations of economic democracy in the United States are cooperative businesses. Worker cooperatives, in particular, developed as places where working people could build their own businesses, asserting their own agency and the ability to determine democratically what would be produced and how, and how the profit is shared. Such cooperatives often thrived especially among minorities in the United States. Many African American cooperatives, in particular, became so successful that dominant business interests kept pushing back against them, undermining them, and ultimately destroying them.
Today, there is another wave of cooperative developments in the United States. According to the Democracy at Work Institute, worker cooperatives build local wealth, as profits stay with the workers and their communities. Worker cooperatives also create higher-quality jobs that are longer-term and provide better wages that comparable jobs in conventional businesses. But it is opportunities for greater participation in the workplace are at the heart of worker co-ops, leading to a profound change in quality of life and transforming cultural behavior. More than half of worker co-ops in the United States are developed in low-income communities, providing opportunities and empowerment where it is most needed, addressing not only economic and political discrimination, but also discrimination along the lines of race, ethnicity, and immigration status.
In addition, collaborations between cooperative development and faith communities are emerging, providing new inspiration for religion and opportunities to move from providing charity to participating in systemic changes. The Southeast Center for Cooperative Development, in collaboration with the Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice at Vanderbilt, supported by the Louisville Institute, has brought together co-op developers, representatives of labor unions, religious officials, and academics in efforts to crossfertilize the work of cooperative development and religious communities, with benefits for each. In this work, both economic and religious democracy are being strengthened in climates where hierarchical relationships are still mostly the norm.
These examples of emerging economic democracy highlight opportunities for building more democratic relationships that can affect all areas of life, including religion. Nevertheless, the benefits are not automatic, which means that work needs to be done in all of these areas if democracy is to benefit.
This brings us back to political democracy. Universal suffrage was not an automatic benefit of the founding of the United States, and neither was it accomplished by well-meaning politicians persuaded by enlightened arguments. Universal suffrage was achieved in the struggles against slavery, for women’s voting rights, and for the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Similar dynamics were at work as Christianity reclaimed parts of its egalitarian heritage. The voices of the oppressed and the exploited were not heard primarily because some well-meaning theologians became “the voice for the voiceless.” In the United States, working people rather than religious leaders organized some of the most vibrant embodiments of the Social Gospel, both in white and black churches. The work of politicians, community leaders, pastors, and theologians can find inspiration in these dynamics, but without the agency of working people little will change.
This is where economic democracy enters the conversation once again today, reminding us of the need to consider and deepen it, for the benefit of all.
Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology, Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School and Graduate Department of Religion, Affiliate Faculty, Turner Family Center for Social Ventures, Owen Graduate School of Management, Vanderbilt University, and the Founder and Director of the Wendland-Cook Program.