Faith-work integration outlined

The following is the sketch . . . of an outline . . . of a treatment of “faith-work integration.” It is very from-the-hip, and I’m not sure if or when it will see publication daylight.

An imagined book about “integration,” serving the Christian study center (or “centers for Christian thought”) movement could attend to both faculty and student vocation formation as a reintegration parallel to faith-learning reintegration. The book could address other areas of integration as well, framing all within a cautious non-procrustean historical narrative of original integration, modern disintegration, and the reintegrative task today.

(1) Vocation today: Expressive individualism, self-platforming, the “Disney narrative” of vocation, and the decline of the professions’ ethical codes

(2) Old Testament attention to work

a. Genesis’s account of work: e.g. our vocation as God’s representatives charged to be fruitful and to cultivate and keep the earth; then the curse on work and the promised redemption

b. Exodus, First Kings, and Second Chronicles: Bezalel’s craftsmanship and the building of the tabernacle including the ark of the covenant; slavery in Egypt; Solomon’s construction of the temple

c. Work in Babylon: exilic consciousness in work (see Paul Williams, Exiles on Mission, ReFrame)

d. Ecclesiastes: despite the “vanity” of earthly pursuits, nine injunctions to “take joy in your work” (see Daryl Charles, Wisdom’s Work and Wisdom and Work)

e. Overview: ancient Hebrew attention to work in worship (Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship)

(3) New Testament attention to work and calling

a. Jesus the carpenter

b. The New Testament on the Christian calling (our primary vocation)

i. Jesus’ calling of the disciples, e.g. in Mark 1:16-20 and Matthew 9:35-38.,

ii. Eph 4:1-3 on our calling to the Christian life

iii. 1 Corinthians 12:4-7 on the complementarity of members’ work in the body of Christ

c. The New Testament on work (our secondary vocations)

i. The parables (e.g. of the sheep and goats, the talents, the workers in the vineyard, etc.) – see e.g. Robert Sirico, The Economics of the Parables

ii. Paul’s injunctions to the Thessalonians

iii. Paul on “working as unto God” in Colossians

(4) Early church attention to work in worship (Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship; cf. newly released Kaemingk book, Leading Worship for Workers: How to Design Liturgies for All of Life [Equipping Church Leaders to Create Meaningful Services That Speak to the Joys and Challenges of Every Calling], with Kathryn Roelofs)

(5) Monasticism and faith-work integration

a. Augustine, Gregory, and later Christian thinkers on the active and contemplative lives

b. Pseudo-Dionysius and its neo-gnostic tendencies dividing faith from the human person and earthly work

i. Hilton

ii. The Cloud of Unknowing

iii. The Theologia Germanica (note: an influence on Luther)

c. Late-medieval lay mystics on the recovery of the value of work vis-à-vis contemplation

i. Eckhardt

ii. Tauler

d. The Benedictine tradition on work

i. Rhythms of prayer and work

ii. Hospitality

iii. The rise of the hospital and compassionate care

iv. Monastic commercial work and innovation/entrepreneurship and its comfortable relationship with the Opus Dei

e. Monastic intellectual work – an introduction

d. The work of creating and disseminating knowledge

i. The medieval development of the university at Bologna, Paris, Oxford

ii. The medieval and early modern foundations of modern scientific and technological work

(6) Medieval monastic and priestly vocations as “higher”

(7) Luther’s recovery of a “doctrine of vocation” (e.g. in Wingren’s Luther on Vocation, David Loy, and Veith’s two books)

(8) The twentieth-century rise and limitations of the “faith and work movement” (e.g. David Miller)

a. Catholic approaches

i. The Social Encyclicals and work

ii. The Catholic Worker’s Movement

iii. Opus Dei

b. A brief history of the (largely Protestant) “faith and work movement”: David Miller, God at Work

c. Work and vocation in worship (e.g. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, Kaemingk and Willson, Work and Worship, eucharistic dimensions of human work in the Catholic ressourcement theologians)

d. The PTEV*-related literature on formation for vocation, e.g.:

i. Clydesdale, Purposeful Graduate

ii. Sullivan, Liberal Arts as Quest for Purpose

iii. Schwehn, Leading Lives that Matter

iv. Placher, Callings

v. Other Lilly-supported volumes at faith-vocation-learning intersections

[PTEV = Lilly’s “programs for the theological exploration of vocation,” begun in the early 2000s with an initial funding of 88 Christian (or historically Christian) undergraduate institutions. The program was initially aimed at helping college students discern calls to churchly vocations (e.g. pastor/priest), but based on the colleges’ responses the program soon expanded to address all vocations. See this article for more context.]