it's really interesting actually in Harriet's example when you've talked about unions and you're talking about this fading force of religion in America when you think of union say versus church the union to my mind is practicalities whereas the church is yes it's community just like a union would be but it's about existentialism right I'm not sure if you go to the union meeting to consider those big questions that you were talking about earlier on what is the meaning of life grappling with those big questions is yeah in the context of not organizing your workplace how those two sit together is an interesting issue because maybe I don't know if those two things are compatible but it is but the way there is compatibility is in what you were saying earlier about how should one be in the world or how should one act and a lot of the time if you're part of the union it's because you're aware that essentially you're being slighted to some degree you're being ripped off and that is not how to act in the world so that becomes the avenue in which you can open up those questions right what is a good way to live and all the values that might come with that

I think that's important because I think if you look at very highly organized church in the United States the Catholic Church it gave up on monitoring the whole field of capitalism it basically tries to monitor your sexuality but not what you do in business and how you cheat people and if you look at orthodox Judaism which is at least in New York is constant stabbings of diamond dealers in the Orthodox community killing one another and so on but they do kiss the Mazzo which is for their bible before they go in the door that there's a sense that morally it's abandoned one of the biggest forces in the United States which is capitalism how to make money how to succeed in the world and just concentrates on sexuality because it doesn't dare touch the world of business which is everywhere in the United States whereas the union movement as with its spiritual element that Martin Luther King wrote about talks about the spirit of unity between the workers of the world to make a better world and that God's on their side everybody claims God's on their side and that's in direct contrast to what the comedian Carlin said God will strike me dead if I don't believe in me okay God let's see and strike me dead I don't believe in you and of course nothing happens but I think what's happened in America is that there is no vision holding people together except the birchening union movement because the spiritual movement has become for profit in these individualist practices

yeah blinking that back into what we were saying about what actually would it involve doing and as you were saying Liam it might be difficult to imagine integrating some sort of spiritual practice existing things in the sense of when you're gathering a group of people in a housing union to go to a landlord and hand them demands you know necessarily want there and then to stop and have a group prayer or do have a mindfulness session in the landlord's office or anything like that that'd be quite funny but yeah quite good direct action but I don't think that's necessarily what it's I think it's more a case of yeah making those links between groups it can be anything from just having a reading group your revolutionary sort of organization having a reading group is a thing that's a common embodied practice already you get a bunch of different people into a room and you'll share a book and it doesn't you don't just need to do that with revolutionary texts why not have a conversation about how we might get people reading some Roland Boel about religion and Marxism and talk about those those kind of connections but on a more wider level I think it is more about making links between organizations trying to find like I say existing leftist kind of Christian groups and supporting them to grow and to work together so you've got more direct relations between unions between religious groups and not being in the US so I don't really know most of the groups but I used I see something around like the institution for Christian socialism and groups like this there's a lot of podcasts now and there's a lot of a growing sort of network of particularly Christian leftists in America who are obviously still small next to the huge particularly evangelical right but they are a sort of a growing presence they're growing in confidence and I think atheists leftists need to stop dismissing them and actually see them as part of a movement it's not to say you have to agree with absolutely everything and there will be moments whether they're going to be friction but that's a left as it is and I think yeah yeah and

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