1. Our faith traditions require human beings to co-create the world through honorable work not on the back of Earth or on the backs of other human beings, but as part of Earth and part of the human community – and also require that honorable work must bring an honorable, adequate livelihood to the worker. Everyone must have the opportunity to work and be paid. (See the Book of Ruth, where even an immigrant from a pariah people is absolutely entitled to glean from fields she does not own.) Today this means effective intervention by governments to make sure all would-be workers can find a job at a living wage with livable hours, especially meeting social needs for swift rail transport, schools, health centers, art centers, up-to-date water and sewer systems, etc.

2. Everyone is entitled and obligated to rest and to allow the Earth to rest. This is the teaching of Shabbat (the Sabbath) and the sabbatical and jubilee years, and of traditions of meditation and festive celebration. In America today, millions are overworked and millions are disemployed. Part of the way to redress that imbalance is to reduce the normal work week to 32 hours with no reduction in pay. (Swollen corporate profits would absorb the difference.) This change would not only share the work but also free our people to take time with families, neighbors, grass-roots civic and political action, and spiritual reflection.

3. All religious traditions teach that the web of life on the earth is sacred, and must be protected and celebrated by human communities.Today that web is endangered by the climate crisis caused by the overuse of fossil fuels. Job creation must focus on swiftly shifting from the fossil economy to providing green energy sources, transportation, building, lighting, and heating, to our country as a whole.

4. Most Jewish tradition and many other religious communities apply tough standards to whether any given possible war is both absolutely necessary in self-defense and is carried on so as not to do any more damage than is absolutely necessary. (The Talmud teaches: "If one comes to kill you, kill him first." [Him, not his cousins and his friends and his community.] AND – "If you can prevent him from killing you by taking any action less violent than killing him, and you choose to kill him anyway, then you yourself become a murderer." The present US military and mercenary actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are neither just, proportionate, nor effective. They spill American and other blood and waste resources that are desperately needed to rebuild America and give grass-roots aid to grass-roots communities in those countries. And the present US military budget, even aside from these wars, is swollen with useless weapons systems and unnecessary overseas bases. The Congressman Barney Frank "25% solution" -- transferring 25% of the present military budget to civilian needs -- is feasible and desirable.

5. Much of the present degradation of American society and the dangers to our planet come from the use of top-down, unchecked, undemocratic power by enormous global corporations – Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Banking, and the Military-Corporate Complex -- and their use of money to control elections and politicians, abetted by the recent Supreme Court decision giving corporations the free-speech rights of human beings. From the history of Pharaoh, Caesar, and the power elite of Mecca onward, religious communities have known that such unchecked power is a form of idolatry and must be replaced by the empowerment of the people..

6. It is forbidden to whip up hatred against any group of people as Pharaoh did against the ancient Hebrews in the Biblical story of slavery in Egypt. Corrupting the human spirit with hatred leads to violence and war. The recent surge of Islamophobia in the US is rooted in fear and anger about the collapse of the American economy, the American future, and American culture. It is fueled by deep ignorance about Islam, by rage at attacks on America by self-proclaimed Muslims, by the frustration caused by involvements in un-winnable wars, and by the disastrous level of job loss and home foreclosure. The US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan both win support from Islamophobia in American life, and worsen the Islamophobia. Faith communities must work against Islamophobia by truth-telling about Islam and by interfaith action (not only "dialogue") for jobs, against the present wars, by intercongregational visits to end the "strangeness" of Muskims in mamny and for vigorous US action to bring peace among Israel, Palestine, and the rest of the Muslim world.

7. As the Christian and Jewish communities move toward Passover (April 18-26, 2011) and Holy Week (April 17-24), they should develop educational and action materials to address both the concrete issue of "Jobs Not Wars" and "the issue behind the issue" -- Power. "Who/ what today are Pharaoh and Caesar? What institutions exert top-down, unchecked and destructive power? How do we create new forms of community as did our ancient communities in responding to Pharaoh and Caesar? Parallel materials should be developed this spring by and for the other American faith communities.

We affirm two teachings by Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: Returning from a voting-rights march alongside Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama: "I felt as if my legs were praying." And in a lyrical essay on prayer: "To worship is to join the cosmos in praising God. . . . Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehood."