Vocation : Why We Work

Your job is not your vocation.

Everyone hungers for work that has meaning and purpose. But what gives work meaning? Vocation, or “calling,” is the answer Protestant Christianity offers: each person is called by God to serve the common good in a particular line of work. Your vocation, evidently, might be almost anything: as a nurse, a wilderness guide, a calligrapher, a missionary, an activist, a venture capitalist, a politician, an executioner… Yet, as Will Willimon writes in this issue, the New Testament knows only one form of vocation: discipleship. And discipleship is far more likely to mean leaving father and mother, houses and land, than it is to mean embracing one’s identity as a fisherman or tax collector.

This issue of Plough focuses on people who lived their lives with that sense of vocation. Such a life demands self-sacrifice and a willingness to recognize one’s own supposed strengths as weaknesses, as it did for the Canadian philosopher Jean Vanier. It involves a lifelong commitment to a flesh-and-blood church, as Coptic Archbishop Angaelos describes. It may even require a readiness to give up one’s life, as it did for Annalena Tonelli, an Italian humanitarian who pioneered the treatment of tuberculosis in the Horn of Africa. But as these stories also testify, it brings a gladness deeper than any self-chosen path.

Also in this issue:

- Scott Beauchamp on mercenaries
- Nathan Schneider on cryptocurrencies
- Stephanie Saldaña on Syrian refugee art
- Peter Biles on loneliness at college
- Phil Christman on Bible translation
- Michael Brendan Dougherty on fatherhood
- Insights on vocation from C. S. Lewis, Thérèse of Lisieux, Mother Teresa, Eberhard Arnold, Dorothy Sayers, Jean Vanier, and Gerard Manley Hopkins
- poetry by Devon Balwit and Carl Sandburg
- reviews of books by Robert Alter, Edwidge Danticat, Matthew D. Hockenos, Amy Waldman, and Jeremy Courtney
- art and photography by Pola Rader, Dean Mitchell, Mark Freear, Timothy Jones, Paweł Filipczak, Mary Pal, Harley Manifold, Sami Lalu Jahola, Marc Chagall, and Russell Bain.

Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.