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Ecology of Vocation: Recasting Calling in a New Planetary Era

“California’s Apocalyptic Fires” “Drought Conditions Expected to Worsen and Spread Farther” “Flooded Canadians Fear the Next Disaster” “Between Heat and Floods, England Endures Extremes” “Europe’s Floods are Latest Signs of Climate Crisis” This short sample of headlines from articles in the New York Times from the last few years provides evidence that we are living…
August 10, 2023
BlogBook Review

Hearing Vocation Differently: Meaning, Purpose, and Identity in the Multi-Faith Academy

Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, once quipped that universities have become “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.”Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 5th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 15. In this context, Kerr also introduces the term “multiversity.” While playful,…
August 3, 2023
Article

Liberation From and For: The Vocation of the Educated Person

In light of increasing challenges and pressures in higher education, small liberal arts colleges struggle to maintain their identity and sense of institutional vocation. In too many instances—and stemming from both external attack and internal loss of purpose—liberal arts institutions sometimes seem to have forgotten what it means to offer a broad-based, interdisciplinary, and transformative…
July 24, 2023
Article

Understanding Work as a Calling: Contributions from Psychological Science

Empirical research on work as a calling has grown exponentially over the last two decades; it is now a global and vibrant area of scholarship within the fields of psychology and organizational behavior. Results emerging from research on calling address questions of major interest to Christians, yet remain almost entirely overlooked within contemporary Christian discourse…
July 24, 2023
Article

Lay Vocation before the Reformation: Faith, Reason, and Friendship in the Middle Ages (and Today)

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther dramatically reformed the Christian concept of vocation, de-emphasizing the long-standing distinction between the clergy and the laity. Scholars rightly point to Luther as a key figure in this shift; however, he sometimes receives so much attention that one might easily miss the nuanced ways in which some earlier medieval…
July 24, 2023
Article

Embrace, Humility, and Belonging in the Undergraduate Science Curriculum

An infusion of vocational exploration within the undergraduate science curriculum could provide a path toward more effective healthcare and more significant scientific discoveries. students who pursue these careers often do so because they have a strong desire to help others; yet undergraduate science programs do not typically provide extensive training in communicating with others and…
July 24, 2023
Article

The Taylor Paper: God and Vocation in Christian Higher Education

Using a student assignment on the philosopher Charles Taylor as a case study, this essay argues that teaching about vocation and calling can help students see that a call from God need not be entirely nebulous, emotional, and individualistic in nature. Rather, although there are important nebulous and emotional aspects to vocation, the concept might…
July 24, 2023
Article

Being on Call, Learning to Love: Why Vocation is Good News for Us All

Over the past two decades, there has been a surprising resurgence of interest in, and appreciation for, the relevance of vocational exploration in higher education. Indeed, helping students see themselves as people who are called, and helping them discern how they might be called, seems increasingly timely, even urgent. This essay argues that vocational exploration…
July 24, 2023
Review Essays

Vocation and the Stewardship of Place

Reappraisal of the operative vocational theologies that dominate popular Christian scholarship and teaching are actively under way. As with many sub-disciplines and fields of theology, vocational theologies are being vigorously re-examined with greater attentiveness to context and the underpinnings of their guiding theological assumptions. Vocational theologies, maybe more but certainly not less than other fields,…
July 24, 2023
Book Review

Hearing Vocation Differently: Meaning, Purpose, and Identity in the Multi-Faith Academy

Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, once quipped that universities have become “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.”Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 5th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 15. In this context, Kerr also introduces the term “multiversity.” While playful,…
July 24, 2023