Auden, W. H. “Vocation and Society.” In “In Solitude, for Company”: W. H. Auden after 1940: Unpublished Prose and Recent Criticism, edited by Katherine Bucknell and Nicholas Jenkins, 15–30. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995. Find online.
A 1943 lecture on pedagogy and the task of inspiring students to discover their vocations as a form of love.
Clydesdale, Tim. The Purposeful Graduate: Why Colleges Must Talk to Students about Vocation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Find online.
A sociological work directed toward parents, students, and administrators that argues for institutions of higher learning to recover of a focus on purpose rather than economic success.
Cunningham, David S., ed. At This Time and In This Place: Vocation and Higher Education. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Examines and offers practical suggestions for the integration of faith and learning across the disciplines.
Cunningham, David S., ed. Vocation Across the Academy: A New Vocabulary for Higher Education. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Interdisciplinary call for students and faculty to reflect on meaning and purpose.
Davis, Darin H., ed. Educating for Wisdom in the 21st Century. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2019. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Various reflections on seeking, teaching, and cultivating wisdom as the fundamental aim of higher education.
Essay describing the need for educating for wisdom and how the university might learn from the church (including through the Soundings Project).
Evans, C. Stephen. “The Calling of the Christian Scholar-Teacher.” In Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation, edited by Douglas V. Henry and Bob R. Agee, 26–49. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Establishes a spectrum of academic disciplines based upon their relationship to faith or lack thereof.
Garber, Steven. Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2007. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Explores ways that parents, faculty, administrators, and ministers can help students make and sustain connections between their faith and the way they live in the world.
Calls students to let their Christian faith shape their college years rather than letting the values of secularism, neopagan excess, and disciplinary isolation shape them. These years are a time of significant moral formation and students should see their time at college as their “calling” for that period.
Henry, Douglas V. and Bob R. Agee, ed. Faithful Learning and the Christian Scholarly Vocation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
A series of essays exploring the integration of faith and learning—both its importance and its challenges—from a theological perspective.
Argues that the proper pursuit of faith nourishes the openness and curiosity necessary for the life of the mind.
Jones, L. Gregory. “Negotiating the Tensions of Vocation.” In The Scope of Our Art: The Vocation of the Theological Teacher, edited by L. Gregory Jones and Stephanie Paulsell, 209–24. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Suggests that Christians should consider how their personal callings have points of congruence with the vocation of the institutions where they serve.
Explores how Christian faith can contribute to contemporary scholarship and argues that American universities should be more open to explicit expressions of faith as a valid perspective that can benefit scholarly endeavors.
Academic study of how evangelical Christianity—with its commitment to the uniqueness of Jesus and biblical authority—can robustly engage with postmodernism, post-liberalism, and religious pluralism.
Blog with frequent posts on vocation by members of NetVUE. NetVUE also has a podcast, Callings.
Newman, Elizabeth. “Beyond the Faith-Knowledge Dichotomy: Teaching as Vocation.” In Professing in the Postmodern Academy: Faculty and the Future of Church-Related Colleges, edited by Stephen R. Haynes, 131–48. Issues in Religion and Higher Education 1. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2002. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Explores how understanding teaching as a vocation can mitigate against the harmful assumption that one should separate one’s faith from one’s work of passing on knowledge in the classroom.
Examines the reasons for evangelicalism’s lack of contribution to rigorous intellectual scholarship in North America and identifies resources within evangelicalism itself to support an increasing involvement in broader intellectual life.
Builds on the work of the Lilly Endowment’s Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation and argues that educating for vocation gives students a kind of freedom that emerges from taking responsibility for their beliefs and choices.
Scales, T. Laine, and Jennifer L. Howell, eds. Christian Faith and University Life: Stewards of the Academy. New York: Palgrave, 2018. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Exploration of Christian faith in higher education through the concept of stewardship.
Schwehn, Mark R. Exiles from Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Argues that education should focus on moral formation—which has communal implications—rather than merely on faith-informed research—which is individualistic.
Schwehn, Kaethe and L. DeAne Lagerquist. Claiming Our Callings: Toward a New Understanding of Vocation in the Liberal Arts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Perspectives from fourteen professors about the critical importance for the goals of liberal arts of focusing on calling rather than success or credentials.
Surveys the current conversations about Christian vocation and what difference it makes to consider teaching as a Christian vocation rather than just one among many career options.
Wadell, Paul J. and Darin H. Davis. “Tracking the Toxins of Acedia: Reenvisioning Moral Education.” In The Schooled Heart: Moral Formation in American Higher Education, edited by Douglas V. Henry and Michael D. Beaty, 133–54. Studies in Religion and Higher Education 4. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Gives a diagnosis of the reason for the current crisis of disengagement and loss of purpose in higher education and argues for a recovery of vocation as part of moral formation of students.
Weil, Simone. “Reflection on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God.” In Waiting for God, 32–37. Translated by Emma Craufurd. New York: Routledge Revivals, 2009. Find in the Baylor library. Find online (HarperCollins edition).
Classic essay exploring the relationship between academic study and communion with God.
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education. Edited by Clarence W. Joldersma and Gloria Goris Stronks. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. Find in the Baylor library. Find online.
Collection of essays dealing with the purpose of Christian higher education and learning, which connects with the biblical notion of shalom in the sense that the formation of students should prepare them to be peacemakers in their various social contexts.
