Category: Unsolved Problems

What the Faith and Work Movement Can Learn From #ThanksForTyping

by  in Future of the Movement, Integration with the Church, Theological Discussions, Unsolved Problems

A provocative article about the hashtag #ThanksForTyping recently appeared on the website Ministry Matters: It had started with a few tweets by Bruce Holsinger, a literary scholar at the University of Virginia, noting that the acknowledgments in older academic work often included the author’s wife for her work in typing the manuscript. In some acknowledgments, the unnamed wife did much…

Human Work Should Be Fulfilling – So Why Does it Feel like a Burden?

by  in Future of the Movement, Theological Discussions, Unsolved Problems, Vulnerability

Ray Bradbury’s dystopian story “The Veldt,” published in 1950, depicts a future in which technology does everything, leaving humans to enjoy their leisure. Of course, they do not enjoy it. The parents, bored and anxious, smoke and drink too much. The children, spoiled and detached, create disaster. The reader is duly warned. This and other dystopian stories (I, Robot; The Matrix; the…

Dignity for All: Brookwood Community Offers Work to People with Disabilities

by  in Community, Unsolved Problems, Vulnerability

When Yvonne Streit’s young daughter Vicki suffered brain trauma back in the 1960s as the result of complications from mumps, she found nowhere to turn for help. Programs to aid those with physical and intellectual disabilities in finding a way to contribute meaningfully to society were scarce at best. So Yvonne created one. While it began as a tiny project…

Missionaries in a Mercenary World: The Fusion of Faith and Work

by  in Integration with the Church, Sociological Resources, Unsolved Problems

In my previous post, I introduced a new framework for thinking about how people maintain and overcome boundaries between faith and work. I proposed we consider two simple categories: overlap and separation—states that may obtain in spite of our intentions to integrate or segment faith and work. In this post, I consider the first category of overlap: fusion. By fusion,…

The Duke Divinity Crisis and The Perils of Our Language About Vocation

by  in Theological Discussions, Unsolved Problems, Vulnerability

One of TGR’s bloggers, Jonathan Malesic, has a provocative essay over at Inside Higher Ed, where he diagnoses the recent well-publicized problems at Duke Divinity School as stemming, in part, from what might be called an over-adequate doctrine of vocation: Judging from his emails, Griffiths seems to think of academic work as an exceptionally high calling, a vocation. He is hardly…

Missing the Night Sky: or, the Industrial Revolution and the Stars

by  in Future of the Movement, Theological Discussions, Unsolved Problems

I started reading this recent article from The New Atlantis thinking that it would be mostly about the technology of why we no longer see the stars. It turned out to be as much about the philosophy, even the spirituality, of why: “We used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars,” Matthew McConaughey’s character says…

I Desire This For My Sisters, Too: Book Review of A Woman’s Place by Katelyn Beaty

by  in Integration with the Church, Resource Reviews, Unsolved Problems, Vulnerability

By Melissa Lee Emerson When my pastor mentioned that he had just read and endorsed a manuscript about women and work, I naturally had to ask him to tell me more. I almost stopped listening after he told me that the title was A Woman’s Place, but I stomached the visceral reaction, asked for an extra dose of grace, and…