Vocation and Suffering: The Paradox of Lament and Appreciation

Richard T. Hughes, Author

Deanna A. Thompson, Author

Jason A. Mahn, Author

About Richard T. Hughes

Richard Hughes serves as Scholar in Residence in both the Center for Christianity and Scholarship and the College of Bible and Ministry at Lipscomb University. He has worked at the intersection of religion and American culture over the course of a 50-year career, specializing in the history of Churches of Christ, religion and American identity, religion and race in America, religion and American higher education, and the role of Christian primitivism in American life. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 18 books including Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Eerdmans, 1996); Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories that Give Us Meaning (University of Illinois Press, 2018); and The Grace of Troublesome Questions: Vocation, Restoration, and Race (Abilene Christian University Press, 2022).

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About Deanna A. Thompson

Deanna A. Thompson is Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community and the Martin E. Marty Regents Chair in Religion and the Academy at St. Olaf College. Since her diagnosis of incurable cancer, Thompson has published several books related to suffering and vocation, including Hoping for More: Having Cancer, Talking Faith, and Accepting Grace (Cascade, 2012); The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World (Abingdon, 2016); and Glimpsing Resurrection: Trauma, Cancer, and Ministry (Westminster John Knox, 2018).

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About Jason A. Mahn

Jason A. Mahn is Professor of Religion, Director of the Presidential Center for Faith and Learning, and the Conrad Bergendoff Professor in the Humanities at Augustana College. He is the author of Fortunate Fallibility: Kierkegaard and the Power of Sin (Oxford University Press, 2011); Becoming a Christian in Christendom: Radical Discipleship and the Way of the Cross in America’s “Christian” Culture (Fortress, 2016); and Neighbor Love through Fearful Days: Finding Purpose and Meaning in a Time of Crisis (Fortress, 2021).

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Beyond Deep Gladness: Coming to Terms with Vocations We Don’t Choose

Volume 1 | June 6, 2022

Deanna A. Thompson, Author

Theme: Pedagogy, Suffering and Death, Vocation

Discipline: Religious Studies, Theology

Back in the 1990s, St. Olaf and many other campuses across the country were infused with grants from the Lilly Endowment to explore the concept of vocation. Lutheran institutions of higher education lift up vocation in part due to the prominent role it plays in Lutheran tradition and identity. Vocation comes from the Latin vocare…

Article

Purpose and Meaning in a Time of Crisis

Volume 1 | June 6, 2022

Jason A. Mahn, Author

Theme: Pedagogy, Suffering and Death, Vocation

Discipline: Religious Studies, Theology

In his profound and troubling book, Fear and Trembling, the Danish religious writer Søren Kierkegaard remythologizes the story of the binding of Isaac from Genesis 22. I say “remythologizes” rather than “analyzes” or “understands” because Kierkegaard takes pains to attend to all the unthinkable components of the story—to the narrative elements that resist translation into takeaway ethical lessons or airtight conceptual categories.

Article

Discerning Vocation through Loss, Suffering, and Death

Volume 1 | June 6, 2022

Richard T. Hughes, Author

Theme: Pedagogy, Suffering and Death, Vocation

Discipline: Religious Studies, Theology

In September of 2002, exactly one year after the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, essayist Mark Slouka reflected on how those events had challenged the American psyche, defined for so long by the myth of happy endings. Here in the New Canaan, in the land of perpetual beginnings and second chances,…