Research Note: Religion and Work in Post-War North America: Mennonite Responses to Labor Activism, 1945-1995

Labor history has been invigorated over the last generation through the study of the cultural dimensions of work, and the intersection of race, gender, ethnicity and linguistics with worker identity. Religion, for all its current attention in both Canada and the United States, has had comparatively little impact on the fields of North American labor and working class history. While the radical component (e.g., social gospel, Christian socialist) has been studied, religious traditions that conflicted with organized or radicalized labor have received less attention. Over the next two years, with the financial support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), I will investigate how ethno-religious identity informed and was shaped dialectically by the culture of work. While various social groups could be an appropriate focus for such a study, the Mennonites offer a particularly rich avenue of research. Given their proximity to agrarian rural life, the value they placed on independent farm families, and their teachings on pacifism and nonconformity, a comparative study of the Mennonites' interaction with labor radicalism in Canada and the United States will deepen understandings of both labor and religion. Although Mennonites are typically associated with rural life, in the post-1945 period, they became increasingly urbanized and were involved as workers in specific locations in both traditional Mennonite enclaves in Ohio, Indiana, Ontario and Manitoba, and those to which they migrated in the twentieth century, such as British Columbia and California. Mennonites in these locales found employment both as field workers for large agricultural operations and as factory hands in major manufacturing firms. The postwar experiences of North American Mennonites in these locales caused them to confront and reassess their understandings of labor and religion. A comparative study of these Mennonite workers, ostensibly united by a common ethnic and religious identity, and yet shaped in distinct ways by their differing geographic locations, immigration histories and cultural contexts, should make a contribution to both the history of labor and the history of religion in North America. A major part of the research base for this project will be interviews. The interviews will be an opportunity to explore the attitudes and actions of Mennonites of all ages: those old enough to have participated in or resisted various labor issues of the post-1945 period, as well as their descendants. I intend to examine the means by which the religious commitments of interviewees shaped their perspectives on labor issues, the manner in which their class position influenced their religious beliefs, and the ways in which their understandings of religion and labor have changed over time. Differences in age, gender, national origin, migration history, church conference affiliation, educational background and class position will be investigated. The interpretation of these interviews and the relations among Mennonites and between Mennonites and secular society will draw on insights from oral history theory, memory theory and discourse analysis, as exemplified by the works of Alessandro Portelli, Alon Confino, Michael Frisch, Jacques LeGoff and others. Interview subjects will be identified in six cities: Winnipeg, Manitoba; Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario; Vancouver, British Columbia; Bluffton, Ohio; Goshen, Indiana; and Reedley, California. Notices have been placed in relevant North American Mennonite periodicals and in the offices of the Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches, the United States Conference of Mennonite Brethren, Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA. In addition, I will consult relevant Mennonite Church archival sources, the archives of various labor and union associations (including the Christian Labour Association of Canada), and articles and letters to the editor in the North American Mennonite popular press on these themes. …

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