Description
Book SynopsisBy critically surveying various approaches to Christian ecological ethics alongside the vexing moral ambiguities of the Anthropocene, Ecology of Vocation offers an integrative approach to responsible living vis à vis one of Protestantism’s key theological resourcesthe doctrine of vocation. Drawing on H. Richard Niebuhr’s germinal ethical framework with a decidedly ecofeminist perspective, Kiara A. Jorgenson demonstrates how vocation’s emphasis on right relationship over right behavior or intentions practically speaks to the embodied realities of planetary interrelatedness. By excavating the ecological promise of the early Reformers’ democratized renderings of calling and linking their concerns to the contemporary context, she argues that vocation cannot be reduced to the particular aim of monetized work, nor to an elitist escape from it. Rather, vocation must be recast as the dynamic and vibrant space between the myriad roles any of us inhabits at any given time in a particular place. When understood in this light, vocation signals much more than a job, a passion, or a quest for self-discovery. An alternative understanding of vocation’s very ecology can extend Christian conceptions of the neighbor beyond the human and lead the church to more faithfully pursue lives characterized by humility, restraint, wisdom, justice, and love.
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Surveying the Land: The Shape of Discourse in Christian Ecological Ethics
Chapter 2 Vocation as Kinship with Clod and Ape: The Planetary Promise of H. Richard Niebuhr’s Responsibility Ethic
Chapter 3 New Decalogues: Luther, Calvin, and the Democratization of Vocation
Chapter 4 Embodied Work: Ecology and the Protestant Doctrine of Vocation Since the Reformers
Chapter 5 Voices From the Wilderness: Critical Principles for Contemporary Christian Vocation From the Perspective of A Pastor, Scholar & Poet
Chapter 6 The Ecology of Vocation: The Reclamation and Reformation of a Vital Protestant Doctrine
