What Can Churches & Faith Communities Do To Support a New Economy Based On Worker Cooperatives?
“Religious Solidarity Helps Build
the Bonds for Economic Solidarity”
-J. Gordon-Nembhard
After engaging in our Bible Study you might think: “What can churches and people of faith do?” What could religious solidarity look like?
We would like to encourage churches to take steps to begin a shift towards worker ownership and control in the economy by supporting worker co-ops. Here are some suggestions:
Here are some examples of how churches can support worker co-ops. Some churches are already doing this!
Education
Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard, one of the foremost experts on the history of Black economic cooperation and author of "Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice," talks about the church as a place for learning and spiritual social networking that can aid cooperative development.
Kristen Barker, executive director of Co-op Cincy, a co-op development center in Cincinnati, OH, talks about engaging faith community members of various denominations in education and mentorship. Start-ups often benefit from mentors with business-related skills such as bookkeeping, marketing, website design, etc. These are great opportunities for churches to build close relationships.
How you can engage:
Research and explore the co-op model → See our Resources page or go to USFWC. The co-op model is not widespread in the US, so sharing what you learn with your friends, family, faith community is a great way to support this work.
Financial Support
Our research found that while churches do fund cooperative development it is usually through donations. Congregations are very seldom involved directly.
Examples: With the Catholic Campaign for Human Development Fund (CCHDF) the Catholic Church for many years has supported cooperatives through direct financing for start-ups and co-op development centers.
Ed Whitfield, Senior Fellow at Seed Commons, a loan fund specializing in worker cooperative financing, points out the role of the church to leverage community wealth.
Kate Khatib, co-director of Seed Commons and a worker-owner of Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, talks about how churches, in particular the Catholic Church, has been investing in worker co-ops by supporting loan funds that focus on financing for worker co-ops. This could be a good model for other churches.
How you can engage:
Investigate where your church invests its funds.
What other community assets can your church leverage
for cooperative development?
Support the Start-Up or Incubation of Worker Co-ops
While our research was not exhaustive, we only found a few faith communities digging into this work. We would like to highlight the following two projects:
Project 1 - Luther Place Church and the Beloved Community Incubator, Washington, DC
Bianca Vasquez, director of the Beloved Community Incubator, talks about how the cooperative development center was founded. She points out how churches need to ask what their call is right now and spiritually prepare to say yes to their community and its needs.
Project 2 - Grace in Action, Detroit, MI
Pastor John Cummings of Grace in Action Church (ECLA) and Meghan Sobocienski, executive director of Grace in Action Collective in Detroit talk about how they have started a church in reaction to the communities economic needs and realities. Adopting a democratic business model, the worker cooperative model, was a natural fit for their theology based on the church as a democratic assembly.
David Camarena is the co-founder of Stitching Up Detroit, a youth-led screen printing and design co-op, and Meghan Sobocienski, executive director of Grace in Actiion Collective, talk about the history of this unique co-op, the challenges of working with others, and how they have been supported by their church community.
How you can engage:
Map your community. Are there any worker co-ops and social enterprises? Is there a co-op development center? Do they need volunteers or mentors? Do you have a skill a small business might need? Would you consider being a worker owner? Are you interested in starting a business as a co-op?
Pooling Resources and Purchasing Power of Churches
Churches can build purchasing power and use this to buy from businesses that are values-driven such as worker co-ops and social enterprises. Same is true for collectively investing in our communities. As consumers we can make choices about who to support in the economy by leveraging our pooled resources.
Pastor Stephen Handy, a CIT member, asks about what churches can do to get started in this work. Nathan Schneider, Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a journalist who writes about religion, technology and democracy, answers this question by talking about churches acting as economic agents and pooling their investment and purchasing power.
How you can engage:
Need a cleaning service for the church? Look for a cleaning co-op! Or organize some local churches and buy services/products together making sure to support businesses that match your values, such as minority- or women-owned businesses. Start an investment club to ensure your dollars go to projects that truly impact your community.
Advocate for Support for Co-ops from Local (and National) Government
While some cities fund co-op development, many do not have funds specifically allocated to this model. Help your elected officials learn more by educating them and the community about how employee ownership as an innovative model can bring high quality jobs, shared entrepreneurship and opportunities to those who have been sidelined in the economy. Worker co-oops also create benefits to the broader community such as increased local spending, job creation and business retention, and lower turnover rates.
See Kristen Barker’s presentation above under “Education.” She mentions working with groups like AMOS on shifting local policy.
Examples of Church & Co-op Collaborations
Kate Khatib, co-director of Seed Commons, a national cooperative loan fund, and a worker-owner of Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse, talks about church and co-op collaborative projects in Baltimore: a multi-use venue run by a church and a worker co-op and a construction co-op owned by workers in long-term recovery and re-entering workers and run with a Christian framework.
Kristen Barker, executive director of Co-op Cincy, a cooperative development center in Cincinnati, OH, talks about their working model that is based on Mondragon. Mondragon is the largest conglomeration of worker cooperatives with 100 cooperatives employing 75,000 workers. It was started in the Basque region of Spain by Father Jose Arizmendiarrieta during the Spanish Civil War, also a time of great economic instability.
Dr. Freddie Haynes III, Senior Pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas, TX, has worked to support community economic development in many ways to transform poverty stricken areas of South Dallas. Through taking over a credit union his church now gives access to loans and banking services to a community that had to rely on highly extractive payday lenders.
Racism, Capitalism, Cooperatives, and the Church
To hear more about the intersections of racism, capitalism, cooperatives and the church view this video segment with Dr. Jessica Gordon-Nembhard and Ed Whitfield. Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard is the expert on the Black churches’ involvement in the co-op movement throughout the history of the United States.
Formation as Spiritual, Political, Social and Economic Concept
More on Catholic Cooperativism as a basis for unique entrepreneurial interventions with Nathan Schneider. “Through the economy we form our souls and through the formation of our souls we can shape the economy.” In this video Nathan Schneider, Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and a journalist who writes about religion, technology and democracy, talks about the power of exiting to community as a strategy for building long-term multistakeholder community assets.
Resources
We believe that worker cooperatives can be an approach to build power for economic structural change for churches and for the community at large.
Join us in exploring this concept by diving deeper into the resources we have collected below.
