Ep 26 Union Made w Heath Carter

The late 19th and early 20th century saw an immense struggle between labor and capital in the United States. From the Haymarket Massacre to the Pullman Strike, Chicago was the site of many significant victories and defeats for the labor movement. There are loads of great histories attending to the burgeoning socialist movements in the midst of those struggles, but what were the Christians up to in Chicago, especially following revivals rolling across the country and a strong Catholic presence there? That's what Heath Carter asks in his book Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago. Unsurprisingly, the establishment Christian community is often on the side of capital. But the workers movement had an interesting strategy for dealing with this problem--identify Jesus as what he was, a worker. We talk to Heath about some of the interesting characters he discovered, how he pulled his research together, and what strategies Christians might find today to evangelize the churches for the sake of justice for working people. It's a mission that's increasingly important, and one that Christians slowly came around to in the last century in an effort to meet the demands in their pews for a pro-labor faith.