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Christianity and Labor Law

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The ties between religion and labor law generally go unknown and unappreciated. However, current labor law would not exist without the religious impulse. Thomas Kohler discusses how religion shaped understandings of work, motivated actors, and shaped European and American labor and employment law.

Image courtesy of interviewee. August 12, 2024

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This video discusses the pivotal role of religious frameworks, particularly Christianity, in the development of labor law, especially in the United States. It highlights the contributions of the Catholic Church and Jewish communities to the labor movement, emphasizing how these groups, often seen as minorities, approached community and work differently than Protestants. The speaker refers to significant historical influences, such as papal encyclicals advocating for labor organizations, pointing out how Catholic social thought underpinned key legislation like the National Labor Relations Act during the New Deal era.

This video contrasts the views of labor in different cultures, noting that Jewish and Catholic traditions view work as a fundamental, community-oriented aspect of life, unlike the more instrumental approach found in Protestant thought. The speaker argues for greater recognition of these religious influences in contemporary legal discussions about labor and aims to revive awareness of historical and philosophical perspectives on solidarity and community engagement in labor relations.

Overall, the speaker seeks to enrich the conversation about labor law by integrating religious viewpoints and uncovering often overlooked historical roots, encouraging a more nuanced understanding of labor rights and community building.

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Here are five key points from the video:

1. **Interconnection of Labor Law and Religion**: The speaker emphasizes that labor law cannot be fully understood without considering its religious origins, particularly the influence of Christian teachings and Catholic social thought. They reference the role of Christianity in shaping labor laws and highlight that much of American labor law has roots in Catholicism.

2. **Cultural and Community Aspects of Labor**: The video discusses how Jews and Catholics, as minority groups in the United States, have a distinct communal perspective that contrasts with the Protestant view. This communal approach encourages a stronger inclination to join labor unions, which is tied to their religious and social identities.

3. **Historical Foundations of Labor Movements**: The speaker notes that Catholic social thought has historically supported labor organizations, with papal encyclicals encouraging participation in labor unions. Influential works from several authors are mentioned, illustrating the profound influence of religious thought on labor relationships and rights throughout history.

4. **Views on Work in Jewish and Catholic Traditions**: The distinction between the understanding of work in Judeo-Christian traditions versus other historical perspectives is highlighted. The video explains that work is seen as a form of cooperation with God's creation, thus attributing dignity to labor in these faiths, which contrasts with views of labor in ancient Greek thought that regarded workers as less than human.

5. **Solidarity and Modern Labor Law**: The video concludes with a discussion on the concept of solidarity in the convideo of labor law, pointing out that modern labor laws, especially in the U.S., are influenced by Catholic social teachings and communal values. The speaker aims to encourage a reevaluation of how labor institutions are understood within a broader social and historical convideo, promoting a dialogue that includes religious perspectives.

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Here are some key quotes from the video you :

1. **Connection Between Labor Law and Religion**:
- "Labor law cannot be understood outside of, uh, a religious framework... we would not have labor law had it not been for Christianity."

2. **Role of the Catholic Church in Labor Movements**:
- "The Catholic church always had a big role to play in labor, and the labor movement itself was overwhelmingly Catholic and Jewish."

3. **Historical Convideo of Labor Law**:
- "So part of my goal in this chapter was simply to make, uh, a whole series of trends much more known than they have been, and to give people sources where they can go themselves and, and read more."

4. **Understanding of Work**:
- "Work isn't just drudgery... it's also the way in which, um, this does go back to the ancients, but certainly the uh, Jewish and uh, Catholic traditions pick it up."

5. **The Value of Work**:
- "We make ourselves to be what we are by what we habitually do. We are self-Creating selves."

6. **Human Value in Labor**:
- "If you're a human being and are owed, we use the term dignity, but it's more than dignity, uh, more than respect."

7. **Solidarity Created by Work**:
- "Work creates solidarity... It binds people who never met, who never breathed the same air at the same time."

8. **Influence of Catholic Social Thought**:
- "The roots of the National Labor Relations Act in the United States are very, very Catholic. The New Deal largely grew out of, um, Catholic social thought."

9. **Importance of Community**:
- "Jews and Catholics both see themselves as bound in their communities."

10. **Educational Aspirations**:
- "I'd like to bring that as into the conversation. An awful lot of what passes as religion really isn't it's ideology."

These quotes encapsulate the main themes of the video regarding labor law, the influence of religion—especially Catholicism and Judaism—on labor movements, the dignity of work, and the value of community and solidarity in the convideo of labor.

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Here are some similar articles that explore the intersection of religion, labor law, and community dynamics in the convideo of different cultural and religious perspectives:

1. **"Faith and Work: The Religious Dimensions of Labor Law"** - This article examines how various religious traditions, including Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, influence contemporary labor laws and practices. It discusses the ethical implications of these religious teachings on workplace rights and labor relations.

2. **"Catholic Social Teaching and Labor Rights: An Historical Perspective"** - Focusing specifically on the Catholic Church's role in labor movements, this article traces the historical developments from the late 19th century through the modern era, highlighting encyclicals and papal statements that shaped labor rights.

3. **"Judaism and the Ethics of Work: Historical Contributions to Labor Movements"** - This piece explores Jewish contributions to labor rights, emphasizing the communal aspects of labor within Jewish culture and how they have historically advocated for workers’ rights.

4. **"Protestant Work Ethic vs. Catholic Social Thought: Diverging Views on Labor"** - This comparative study analyzes the differences between Protestant and Catholic views on work and labor rights, discussing the implications these differences have on labor legislation and community welfare.

5. **"The Role of Faith-Based Organizations in the Labor Movement"** - An article that discusses how various faith-based organizations, including those from Catholic and Jewish traditions, have contributed to labor movements, advocating for workers and influencing labor policies through a religious lens.

6. **"Historical Perspectives on Solidarity and Community in Labor Relations"** - This scholarly article delves into the historical roots of labor movements, emphasizing the role of solidarity derived from religious teachings and communal approaches to labor challenges.

7. **"Religious Influences on Modern Labor Law: A Comparative Analysis"** - This research paper provides an overview of how different religious doctrines have influenced contemporary labor law, discussing the impact of religious thought on legal frameworks and labor disputes.

These articles collectively address the themes of religious influence on labor law, community engagement, and historical perspectives, enriching the discussion initiated by the original video.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Labor law in cannot be understood outside of,

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a religious framework.

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Uh, as, my German colleague,

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Al Kitner, who's definitely not a believer,

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has said, you,

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we would not have labor law had it not

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been for Christianity.

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Um, so my own work comes into this,

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looking at the fact

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that the American labor movement particularly has,

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as Nelson Lichtenstein has pointed out,

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the great labor historian David Sapas,

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who was a labor economist of a previous generation,

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the thirties, forties.

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Uh, the Catholic church always had a big role

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to play in labor, and the labor movement itself was

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overwhelmingly Catholic and Jewish.

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Well, why would that be?

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They Catholics

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and Jews were always a minority in the United States.

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So looking at the reasons for that drew me into,

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looking more and more at

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where our labor law come from in its roots.

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So, being asked to do this chapter was an attempt to,

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bring something into the conversation that's,

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often been missing.

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So Kitner has talked about it.

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Uh, a German, historian,

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Claudia Heel has written a lot on this in the us.

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Uh, Ken,

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and Elizabeth Phones Wolf,

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have both written on from the Protestant perspective.

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They've looked at labor in the South,

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and I've written a lot on, the role of Catholicism

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and how that shaped the imagination of those

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who joined unions.

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So let me say a word about that,

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and, I'm sorry for going on.

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But, the, reason

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that Jews and Catholics in were much more likely

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to join unions than,

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Protestants in the United States,

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or those of no religion, is that Jews

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and Catholics have, the Catholics

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of course got it from the Jews,

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where everything else came from, a distinct way

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of looking at community

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and a distinct way of looking at work.

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Jews and Catholics both see themselves as bound

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in their communities.

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Um, Connor Cruz O'Brien says of,

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Edmund Burke that he was a, you know,

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very much a Catholic in his orientation, his understanding.

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So, Burke's famous society is a compact at the Living Dead

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knows, not yet born, Andrew Greeley,

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the great sociologist, writes about Catholics that way.

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The Jews, of course, see themselves that way.

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You're always part of a community.

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So joining, being, joining a community

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is typical.

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The second thing is, for Catholics, there's a,

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tradition of Catholic social thought, that the papal

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announcements of this start with Leo, the 13th

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cent cyclical in 1891 Rum Navarro, where he tells Catholics,

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look, labor organizations are good things.

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You should join these.

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This is followed in 1931 by Quadra j

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and Milano by p 11th, not the 12th, the 11th.

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Um, but that tradition is much older.

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It has roots in largely German social thought that go back

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to the enlightenment period.

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Um, so there's this long tradition.

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It's largely unappreciated.

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So as a legal scholar, when I look at opinions

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or I look at, well, you know, if unions were only more,

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Marxist, et cetera, that never was the motivation

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for people to join unions, not in the United States.

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And, the Catholic, for example,

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in Germany, the Catholic Unions were a very large part

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of the labor movement,

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but largely in the Catholic, west of Germany.

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That as Claudia heel points out,

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and as Kitner talks about, that's always been underplayed.

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So part of my goal in this chapter was simply

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to make, a whole series of

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trends much more known than they have been,

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and, to give people sources where they can go themselves

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and, and read more.

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So that, that was the idea.

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The Greek world, for example, Aristotle

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and Plato talked about, laborers as,

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and slaves who did most of the labor as talking tools.

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They weren't human beings.

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They were, you know, in the Greek world,

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and understanding people had different sorts of souls.

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So there were different sorts of people.

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And the laborers, the, the slaves

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were barely human.

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And of course, the barbarians,

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were not really considered human at all.

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Judaism had this rather odd view of saying that everyone,

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every human being was created by God,

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and so they're all equal.

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So in Jewish law,

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even the non-Jew, even the slave, the servant person,

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et cetera, all of them, for example, had the Sabbath

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because God created the Sabbath for the human.

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If you were a human, you had the Sabbath.

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It, there wasn't a separate rule for,

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the Jews and everybody else.

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It was for all humans. The idea that,

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you should love your neighbor as yourself, as Mati says,

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that's the whole of the Torah.

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Everything else is simply commentary makes

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the role of working

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or workers very, very different.

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Suddenly, you're not a talking tool,

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you're another human being.

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To put it in, sort

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of the later Christian terms, the Imago day,

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which the Jews agree with everybody, of course,

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is made in the image of God.

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So that's one big thing.

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The second thing is from,

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the idea of what's work in Genesis,

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by the sweat of your brow, you'll eat your bread

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until you return to the ground.

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Well, that's the curse of Adam.

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But there's a funny thing about that curse.

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The curse is actually part of one's salvation.

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Work isn't just drudgery.

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That tends to be the way

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that the Protestants Slater would look at it.

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It's also the way Hobbes Locke,

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the entire modern world looks at it.

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It's an instrumental thing for the Jews and the Catholics.

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Work was a way of cooperating,

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as the rabbis put it.

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God created the world,

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but God gave the gift to humans of, of being able

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to participate in the completion of creation.

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That makes work a wholly different thing.

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That's not to say that there's not drudgery and work.

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Face it. Washing dishes, doing the laundry.

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I dug ditches for a summer as a job. It wasn't big fun.

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On the other hand, in this, there's a dignity of work

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that centers it

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and is the way in which, this does go back

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to the ancients, but certainly the, Jewish

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and, Catholic traditions pick it up.

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We make ourselves to be what we are by

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what we habitually do.

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We are self-Creating selves

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decent work is pretty important

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because if you're, if you're a human being

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and are owed, we use the term dignity,

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but it's more than dignity, more than respect.

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If you're owed that, if I'm

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to love you the way I love myself, then I have

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to be careful about the sort of things you do.

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Your work is a way

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of cooperating in your own salvation.

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Work has both a vertical and a horizontal aspect to it.

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The horizontal aspect, of course, is that when we do work,

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we're trying to serve others.

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Uh, we do things simply for ourselves,

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but much of what we do is in cooperation for others,

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trying to serve others.

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So when I teach

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or write, when you, your journalism

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communicating ideas, it's for others who live in our time.

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Uh, and that's obviously extremely important thing,

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but there's also a vertical aspect to it.

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The vertical aspect is not only

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what we inherited from our fore parents, the sciences,

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the arts, literature, culture,

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but it's also what we're going to leave for others.

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It, it's our, we become part of a tradition

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that lives beyond us.

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So for better

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or for worse, whatever we're doing, we're leaving

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to the next generation.

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So that work creates solidarity.

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It creates solidarity not only in time, but across times.

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And it binds people who never met,

10:05.525 --> 10:09.145
who never breathe the same air at the same time,

10:09.645 --> 10:14.305
but nevertheless are living in, in a way, very much

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as part of a, a common set of decisions

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or value, et cetera.

10:21.975 --> 10:25.555
One of the reasons that we don't understand either

10:27.315 --> 10:31.295
American labor law, especially collective bargaining law, is

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that we've never understood really where it came from.

10:35.605 --> 10:38.505
The roots of the National Labor Relations Act in the

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United States are very, very Catholic.

10:41.525 --> 10:46.145
Um, it comes, in fact, the New Deal largely

10:47.935 --> 10:51.545
grew out of, Catholic social thought.

10:51.765 --> 10:54.225
The advisors to FDR point out that

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what they were doing is looking at,

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the papal statements.

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Uh, Senator Wagner, Robert Wagner,

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who wrote the National Labor Relations Act, who wrote,

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the, fair Labor Standards Act, along with lots

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of other legislation, said that all he was trying to do,

11:17.875 --> 11:20.765
this is an interview he gave just,

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at the beginning of World War ii.

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So the New Deal era was coming to an end, to an end.

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He said, all I tried to do was to enact in law

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what the Popes had told us good social policy looks like.

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Now, the interesting thing about this, I have colleagues,

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at the University of Florence who have written on

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corporatism and the roots of corporatism.

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There are many, but part of that, kind of

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what I might call healthy corporatism

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is reflected in something like the National Labor

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Relations Act.

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It's the idea that if you form self-governing bodies

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and provide the support for them, you can allow people

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to engage in their own ordering.

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So the famous, Weimar,

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constitution, paragraphs 1 65

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and 1 56, which called for,

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very, works councils and then, regional councils,

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and then a national council to set economic policy

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and to build labor, terms,

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who goes inheimer, the father of a, of German labor law.

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Um, the father, really of European labor law, who,

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had to flee Germany as a Jew, just prior to the war.

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Um, he was the one who wrote those paragraphs.

12:57.825 --> 13:02.285
The, oddly enough, in the nation

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as they were writing this in a 1919 article, the,

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correspondent from the nation said,

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this is really interesting.

13:11.505 --> 13:13.525
The bishops and the socialists seem

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to be working very closely together,

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and they're giving us a new way of understanding

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what the world could look like.

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People don't, and especially in the United States,

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don't tend to know that, and a lot

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of Europeans have forgotten it.

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So, that really, if I'm trying to do anything,

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it's to get us a different way of looking at institutions

13:34.495 --> 13:37.215
that we think we understand, but we truly don't.

13:38.235 --> 13:41.415
As a young, as a young lawyer, you write articles saying,

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you know, the court misunderstood this,

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doctor if they just do this.

13:44.995 --> 13:47.895
And then you wait for the courts to say, thank you,

13:47.895 --> 13:49.815
professor Kohler for clarifying the world.

13:51.615 --> 13:53.505
They don't seem to do it.

13:55.095 --> 13:59.955
So the implications are, I hope, I have a lot

13:59.955 --> 14:02.635
of people do read my stuff in various places,

14:03.095 --> 14:07.035
and, I've had the opportunity to lecture

14:08.235 --> 14:11.395
actually a lot in Japan, a lot in throughout Europe

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as well as the United States.

14:14.085 --> 14:18.205
I try to lay out ideas so other people can pick them up,

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find something interesting in them

14:20.905 --> 14:25.365
and rethink what they're working on that are,

14:25.785 --> 14:28.085
are common areas, our common thoughts.

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Second thing I'm trying to do is,

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to bring the religious voice seriously into

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the legal discussion.

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Um, an awful lot of what passes as religion really isn't

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it's ideology,

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but the anthropology, these deep philosophical theological

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questions that play themselves out in how to live.

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Of course, that means law, that means economics,

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that means political structures.

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This is part of a serious conversation.

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So I'd like to bring that as into the conversation.

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Um, I'm finishing a work now, a long study, a book on,

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the notion of solidarity and where it came from.

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Uh, it's a term unknown to Americans that

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might not surprise you.

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Um, I'm not the only one to have said that.

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Nathan Glazer said that for fraternity

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and solidarity are two words unknown to Americans,

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and it would be interesting to know why.

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Uh, well, I can tell you why.

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And this study looks at the roots of this idea

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that actually comes out of, German, romanticism,

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which grows up with what becomes Catholic social thought.

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And it's not just the Germans, obviously, lots

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of people are talking about this

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and become part of this conversation,

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but that's a theme that most

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of us don't know anything about.

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So I, I like picking up things

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that people don't know anything about, trying to explain it

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to them.

00:00 - Labor law in cannot be understood outside of, a religious framework. as, my German colleague, Al Kitner, who's definitely not a believer, has said, you, we would not have labor law had it not

00:23 - been for Christianity. so my own work comes into this, looking at the fact that the American labor movement particularly has, as Nelson Lichtenstein has pointed out, the great labor historian David Sapas, who was a labor economist of a previous generation, the thirties, forties. the Catholic church always had a big role to play in labor, and the labor movement itself was

00:54 - overwhelmingly Catholic and Jewish. Well, why would that be? They Catholics and Jews were always a minority in the United States. So looking at the reasons for that drew me into, looking more and more at where our labor law come from in its roots. So, being asked to do this chapter was an attempt to, bring something into the conversation that's, often been missing.

01:23 - So Kitner has talked about it. a German, historian, Claudia Heel has written a lot on this in the us. Ken, and Elizabeth Phones Wolf, have both written on from the Protestant perspective. They've looked at labor in the South, and I've written a lot on, the role of Catholicism and how that shaped the imagination of those who joined unions.

01:52 - So let me say a word about that, and, I'm sorry for going on. But, the, reason that Jews and Catholics in were much more likely to join unions than, Protestants in the United States, or those of no religion, is that Jews and Catholics have, the Catholics of course got it from the Jews, where everything else came from, a distinct way

02:21 - of looking at community and a distinct way of looking at work. Jews and Catholics both see themselves as bound in their communities. Connor Cruz O'Brien says of, Edmund Burke that he was a, you know, very much a Catholic in his orientation, his understanding. So, Burke's famous society is a compact at the Living Dead knows, not yet born, Andrew Greeley, the great sociologist, writes about Catholics that way.

02:55 - The Jews, of course, see themselves that way. You're always part of a community. So joining, being, joining a community is typical. The second thing is, for Catholics, there's a, tradition of Catholic social thought, that the papal announcements of this start with Leo, the 13th cent cyclical in 1891 Rum Navarro, where he tells Catholics, look, labor organizations are good things. You should join these.

03:27 - This is followed in 1931 by Quadra j and Milano by p 11th, not the 12th, the 11th. but that tradition is much older. It has roots in largely German social thought that go back to the enlightenment period. so there's this long tradition. It's largely unappreciated. So as a legal scholar, when I look at opinions or I look at, well, you know, if unions were only more, Marxist, et cetera, that never was the motivation

04:06 - for people to join unions, not in the United States. And, the Catholic, for example, in Germany, the Catholic Unions were a very large part of the labor movement, but largely in the Catholic, west of Germany. That as Claudia heel points out, and as Kitner talks about, that's always been underplayed. So part of my goal in this chapter was simply to make, a whole series of trends much more known than they have been,

04:46 - and, to give people sources where they can go themselves and, and read more. So that, that was the idea. The Greek world, for example, Aristotle and Plato talked about, laborers as, and slaves who did most of the labor as talking tools. They weren't human beings. They were, you know, in the Greek world, and understanding people had different sorts of souls. So there were different sorts of people.

05:18 - And the laborers, the, the slaves were barely human. And of course, the barbarians, were not really considered human at all. Judaism had this rather odd view of saying that everyone, every human being was created by God, and so they're all equal. So in Jewish law, even the non-Jew, even the slave, the servant person, et cetera, all of them, for example, had the Sabbath

05:55 - because God created the Sabbath for the human. If you were a human, you had the Sabbath. It, there wasn't a separate rule for, the Jews and everybody else. It was for all humans. The idea that, you should love your neighbor as yourself, as Mati says, that's the whole of the Torah. Everything else is simply commentary makes the role of working or workers very, very different.

06:31 - Suddenly, you're not a talking tool, you're another human being. To put it in, sort of the later Christian terms, the Imago day, which the Jews agree with everybody, of course, is made in the image of God. So that's one big thing. The second thing is from, the idea of what's work in Genesis, by the sweat of your brow, you'll eat your bread

06:59 - until you return to the ground. Well, that's the curse of Adam. But there's a funny thing about that curse. The curse is actually part of one's salvation. Work isn't just drudgery. That tends to be the way that the Protestants Slater would look at it. It's also the way Hobbes Locke, the entire modern world looks at it. It's an instrumental thing for the Jews and the Catholics.

07:28 - Work was a way of cooperating, as the rabbis put it. God created the world, but God gave the gift to humans of, of being able to participate in the completion of creation. That makes work a wholly different thing. That's not to say that there's not drudgery and work. Face it. Washing dishes, doing the laundry. I dug ditches for a summer as a job. It wasn't big fun. On the other hand, in this, there's a dignity of work

08:02 - that centers it and is the way in which, this does go back to the ancients, but certainly the, Jewish and, Catholic traditions pick it up. We make ourselves to be what we are by what we habitually do. We are self-Creating selves decent work is pretty important because if you're, if you're a human being and are owed, we use the term dignity,

08:34 - but it's more than dignity, more than respect. If you're owed that, if I'm to love you the way I love myself, then I have to be careful about the sort of things you do. Your work is a way of cooperating in your own salvation. Work has both a vertical and a horizontal aspect to it. The horizontal aspect, of course, is that when we do work, we're trying to serve others. we do things simply for ourselves,

09:06 - but much of what we do is in cooperation for others, trying to serve others. So when I teach or write, when you, your journalism communicating ideas, it's for others who live in our time. and that's obviously extremely important thing, but there's also a vertical aspect to it. The vertical aspect is not only what we inherited from our fore parents, the sciences, the arts, literature, culture,

09:38 - but it's also what we're going to leave for others. It, it's our, we become part of a tradition that lives beyond us. So for better or for worse, whatever we're doing, we're leaving to the next generation. So that work creates solidarity. It creates solidarity not only in time, but across times. And it binds people who never met, who never breathe the same air at the same time,

10:09 - but nevertheless are living in, in a way, very much as part of a, a common set of decisions or value, et cetera. One of the reasons that we don't understand either American labor law, especially collective bargaining law, is that we've never understood really where it came from. The roots of the National Labor Relations Act in the United States are very, very Catholic. it comes, in fact, the New Deal largely grew out of, Catholic social thought.

10:51 - The advisors to FDR point out that what they were doing is looking at, the papal statements. Senator Wagner, Robert Wagner, who wrote the National Labor Relations Act, who wrote, the, fair Labor Standards Act, along with lots of other legislation, said that all he was trying to do, this is an interview he gave just, at the beginning of World War ii. So the New Deal era was coming to an end, to an end.

11:26 - He said, all I tried to do was to enact in law what the Popes had told us good social policy looks like. Now, the interesting thing about this, I have colleagues, at the University of Florence who have written on corporatism and the roots of corporatism. There are many, but part of that, kind of what I might call healthy corporatism is reflected in something like the National Labor Relations Act. It's the idea that if you form self-governing bodies

12:03 - and provide the support for them, you can allow people to engage in their own ordering. So the famous, Weimar, constitution, paragraphs 1 65 and 1 56, which called for, very, works councils and then, regional councils, and then a national council to set economic policy and to build labor, terms, who goes inheimer, the father of a, of German labor law. the father, really of European labor law, who,

12:47 - had to flee Germany as a Jew, just prior to the war. he was the one who wrote those paragraphs. The, oddly enough, in the nation as they were writing this in a 1919 article, the, correspondent from the nation said, this is really interesting. The bishops and the socialists seem to be working very closely together, and they're giving us a new way of understanding what the world could look like.

13:20 - People don't, and especially in the United States, don't tend to know that, and a lot of Europeans have forgotten it. So, that really, if I'm trying to do anything, it's to get us a different way of looking at institutions that we think we understand, but we truly don't. As a young, as a young lawyer, you write articles saying, you know, the court misunderstood this, doctor if they just do this. And then you wait for the courts to say, thank you,

13:47 - professor Kohler for clarifying the world. They don't seem to do it. So the implications are, I hope, I have a lot of people do read my stuff in various places, and, I've had the opportunity to lecture actually a lot in Japan, a lot in throughout Europe as well as the United States. I try to lay out ideas so other people can pick them up, find something interesting in them and rethink what they're working on that are,

14:25 - are common areas, our common thoughts. Second thing I'm trying to do is, to bring the religious voice seriously into the legal discussion. an awful lot of what passes as religion really isn't it's ideology, but the anthropology, these deep philosophical theological questions that play themselves out in how to live. Of course, that means law, that means economics, that means political structures.

15:01 - This is part of a serious conversation. So I'd like to bring that as into the conversation. I'm finishing a work now, a long study, a book on, the notion of solidarity and where it came from. it's a term unknown to Americans that might not surprise you. I'm not the only one to have said that. Nathan Glazer said that for fraternity and solidarity are two words unknown to Americans, and it would be interesting to know why.

15:32 - well, I can tell you why. And this study looks at the roots of this idea that actually comes out of, German, romanticism, which grows up with what becomes Catholic social thought. And it's not just the Germans, obviously, lots of people are talking about this and become part of this conversation, but that's a theme that most of us don't know anything about. So I, I like picking up things

16:04 - that people don't know anything about, trying to explain it to them.

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