Wobbly Religion: Tactical Formations of Religious Idioms and Space in the Industrial Capitalist City

Abstract

This article presents an approach to studying religion, class, and labor that does not focus on workers’ religiosity or religious affiliation. Rather, through three examples from the archive of the Industrial Workers of the World in the early twentieth century, I examine religion where it flared up, not necessarily as an enduring ideology or position, but emergent in particular material settings in the context of labor protest in urban streets. The concept of wobbly religion recognizes that religion is always situated in dynamics of power, its elements available to be assembled in the name of the status quo or repurposed for tactical goals. The study of religion, this article argues, should be more attentive to the ways that the spaces of the industrial city (and any spaces, for that matter) shape the possibilities and limitations of ideological, cultural, and social expression, and the ways that tactical use of religious space and religious idioms take up and mobilize the energies of religion.