What if your calling didn't come roaring into your ears like thunder rolling down from the mountains, so loud it was impossible to ignore? What if instead it hovered about like a pestering fly with a low, intermittent hum? What if you still can't quite hear that call? …What if a calling isn’t just about what you do but how you do it? What if it isn't just about doing a certain thing but also about being a certain way?" (2)
It is an incredible honor to share this conversation with acclaimed author and scholar, Karen Swallow Prior, where we discuss her latest book, You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful (Brazos Press).
In this episode, we unpack the subtle yet pervasive ways identity is tethered to occupation, particularly within American culture and evangelicalism. Karen challenges the narrowness of the question “What do you do?” by reframing vocation as not merely personal fulfillment but a means of participating in a larger communal and theological calling.
Our conversation also explores the philosophical and theological roots of vocation, drawing on the work of Martin Luther, Iris Murdoch, and Elaine Scarry to emphasize the importance of decentering the self and responding to beauty as a call to justice. Karen also highlights the work of James K.A. Smith, who calls us to consider how our desires are culturally formed and spiritually shaped—an essential insight for understanding both personal formation and the current crisis of malformation within faith communities.
As the conversation deepens, we address the temptation of platform culture and the need to recover dignity in ordinary, daily work—be it feeding others, writing, or serving coffee. Karen reminds us that calling is not hierarchical and that hidden lives can be eternally significant.
Whether you're discerning your own vocation, wrestling with the pressures of productivity, or trying to integrate faith with everyday work, You Have a Calling offers a rich, unhurried reflection on what it means to be called.
You can learn more about Karen and all her incredible work on her website. She also writes regularly on Substack at The Priory.
—
Karen Swallow Prior (PhD, SUNY Buffalo) is the author of You Have a Calling: Finding Your Vocation in the True, Good, and Beautiful; The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis; and On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books; She is coeditor of Cultural Engagement: A Crash Course in Contemporary Issues and has contributed to numerous other books. Prior is a frequent speaker, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum, a contributing writer at The Dispatch, a research fellow for Comment, and a monthly columnist at Religion News Service.
📝 Show Notes
The American habit of defining people by what they do
Vocation vs. occupation: why they’re not the same
How Protestant theology shapes our understanding of calling
Beauty and radical decentering (a la Iris Murdoch & Elaine Scarry)
How desire is formed by culture, liturgy, and God’s grace
Platform culture vs. quiet faithfulness
The sacred work of feeding others—physically and spiritually
Honoring everyday callings
📚 Resources
Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
The Soverignty of Good by Iris Murdoch
You Are What You Love by James K.A. Smith
Experiencing God by Blackaby
Middlemarch by George Eliot
A Hidden Life (film by Terrence Malick)
