For the University of Evansville’s third annual Ethics Lecture, Melissa Snarr, associate dean and associate professor of ethics and society at Vanderbilt Divinity School, will present “Jesus was a Low Wage Worker: Religious Activism for Living Wages.â€
Snarr will speak at 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, April 3 in Vectren Lecture Hall (Room 100, Koch Center for Engineering and Science). Her lecture is free and open to the public.
In 1994, a coalition of Baltimore churches initiated a campaign that would change the face of worker justice organizing in the United States. Since then, over 150 cities have passed living wage ordinances in an effort to counter the growing phenomenon of “working poverty.â€
“Religious activists have offered important resources to this successful movement through their ethical framing, racial bridge-building, and ritualized protests,†Snarr said. “This lecture will explore lessons — both positive and negative — from the activism of people of faith in the movement.â€
Snarr focuses her work on the intersection of religion, social change, and political ethics. Her most recent book, All You That Labor: Religion and Ethics in the Living Wage Movement (NYU Press, 2011), draws on extensive participant observation to analyze and evaluate the contributions of religious activists in the living wage movement. Snarr is also the author of Social Selves and Political Reforms (Continuum, 2007) and several articles in the area of feminist ethics. Her current research projects center on Protestant resources for unionization, as well as an analysis of interfaith organizing as a peace-building practice.
The Ethics Lecture Series, sponsored by UE’s Department of Philosophy and Religion, brings ethicists from both religious and philosophical backgrounds to explore questions of value, justice, responsibility, and meaning in the realm of human conduct and the moral life.
“Lecturers examine significant ethical issues in the contemporary world and ways in which moral reflection might be brought to bear on them,†said Dianne Oliver, chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion and associate professor of religion. “The series is intended to bring focus to the study and practice of ethics among our students and the larger community.â€
Previous Ethics Lecture topics have included ethical eating and ethical considerations of faith and politics.