May 1

Beltane, International Labor Day, the end of the Atlantic slave trade, and Klymentiy Sheptytsky

Author

David Barnhart
May 01, 2025

Maypops with bees, 2023. Own photo.

The first of May has often been celebrated as a half-way point between the spring solstice and the summer equinox. The ancient Celts celebrated Beltane, and Roman Catholics have observed Mayday as a celebration of Mary. 

May the first was also the original “Labor Day,” which began with a call for governments around the world to regulate an eight-hour workday in 1884. Two years later, the largest labor demonstration in the world happened in Chicago. But on May 3, violence between police and protesters killed seven people. This galvanized a world movement to recognize May 1 as “International Labor Day.” But because the anti-union movement associated this day with communism, American Labor Day was recognized as the first Monday in September. 

Today in 1807, the British Empire abolished the Atlantic slave trade. It would take decades more, though, before enslaved people were emancipated. 

Today is also the feast day of Klymentiy (Clement) Sheptytsky, who died on this day in 1951 in Soviet captivity. He was a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest who hid Jews from the Nazis, but was also persecuted and arrested by Soviet forces for refusing to renounce his faith and join the Moscow Patriarchate. His story continues to echo in the present as Ukraine asserts its independence of government, culture, and religion against Russian bullies. 

Reflection:

The 1908 Social Creed of the Methodist Episcopal Church says

The Methodist Episcopal Church stands:

• For equal rights and complete justice for all (people) in all stations of life.
• For the principle of conciliation and arbitration in industrial dissensions.
• For the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, injuries and mortality.For the abolition of child labor.
• For such regulation of the conditions of labor for women as shall safeguard the physical and moral health of the community.
• For the suppression of the “sweating system.”
• For the gradual and reasonable reduction of hours of labor to the lowest practical point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the condition of the highest human life.
• For a release from employment one day in seven.
• For a living wage in every industry.
• For the highest wage that each industry can afford, and for the most equitable division of the products of industry that can ultimately be devised.
• For the recognition of the Golden Rule and the mind of Christ as the supreme law of society and the sure remedy for all social ills.

Most of mainline Protestantism has forgotten its role in the labor movement of the last century, but now that we are living in some of the most extreme wealth inequality in human history, some Christians are beginning to wake up and find their voices in calling national leaders to account. 

I can’t help wonder what would happen if pulpits all across America started calling for “the gradual and reasonable reduction of hours of labor to the lowest practical point, with work for all; and for that degree of leisure for all which is the condition of the highest human life.”

Prayer: Giver of the Sabbath, remind us that work has its boundaries, that wealth is meant to be shared, and that rest and play are holy. Restrain the forces of greed and rapacious acquisition that give neither your people nor your land their required rest. Amen.