Welcome friends to Working Class Christianity, a cooperative blog reflecting on the faith, relationships, work life, and power of ordinary people living in a world ruled by capital.
Who are we?
Behind these writings are two ordinary persons, Chris Ruth and Chase Tibbs. Chris—a partner, dad, youth pastor, and barista—and Chase—a partner, maker-of-phillies, and host of the Faith And Capital podcast—have been close friends, disciples, and comrades in the way of the cross for a while now. Having grown up as evangelicals, meeting one another at a private, midwestern Christian college, making our way into different mainline-affiliated seminaries, and later on journeying deep into the diverse tradition of anticapitalism together, we wanted to write for/in conversation with other ordinary folks (like yourself) about something that is profoundly shaping our lives and impacting our world, yet is rarely critically reflected upon, let alone acknowledged, in Christian communities and spaces. And that “something” is the system of capitalism.
Who is this for?
These writings on Christian faith and life under capitalism will be written with working peoples in mind—workers who receive wages from their bosses, unpaid workers who labor all day at home, workers who are racialized and gendered in the plurality of ways, and workers who live in different regions of our tiny-but-expansive, interconnected planet.
However, it is also very important for us (Chris and Chase) to name the particularity and limitations of our perspectives, experiences, and voices: we are both racialized as white everywhere we go, gendered as cis-men every room we walk into, were raised in white, rural America in enabled bodies, and never had to worry about whether or not we would have access to a roof over our head or food in our bellies at night. There is of course an infinite list of factors that make our perspectives and voices particular and subjective as opposed to universal and objective, but naming these factors of race, citizenship, gender, sexuality, ability, and wealth is important to us as we also dive into this thing called ‘class.’
What’s this project about?
Working Class Christianity is our attempt to consider what it might mean to embody the way of the cross and pursue a more beloved community in light of the values, relationships, and compulsions of the system of capitalism, especially as/with working people—whether work is twenty, forty, or sixty minutes away on the shop floor, in the office, in the field, at the house, or all of the above.
We invite you to think of this resource as a call to being re-formed and re-newed by our personal and communal remembrance of the work of Jesus of Nazareth. How might ordinary people of faith like ourselves—living in a world dominated and driven by the interests of capital—be transformed for the struggle of co-creating a world more aligned with the interests and desires of a loving God, a world that values liberation and wellbeing over profits, a world that fosters communities of life and dismantles systems of death?
What we’d love for you to do!
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Remember, this ain’t for folks who have gone to seminary or have pursued a degree in economics (although you are, of course, welcome here if you have!). These reflections are for ordinary folks who we (Chris and Chase) believe God has continually worked with, revealed themself through, and struggled for.
We look forward to journeying with you.
In solidarity,
Chris and Chase