{"id":5787,"date":"2022-07-27T20:20:14","date_gmt":"2022-07-27T20:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/?p=5787"},"modified":"2022-07-27T21:17:29","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T21:17:29","slug":"reimagining-vocation-queer-lutheran-with-room-for-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learn.elca.org\/jle\/reimagining-vocation-queer-lutheran-with-room-for-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Reimagining Vocation: Queer, Lutheran, with Room for All"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe do theology because we want to collaborate fundamentally in bringing about a different kind of world in the here-and-now.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0–M. Shawn Copeland<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Vocations and Challenges to Vocation<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[1] Can you recall a time when you felt truly welcomed and accepted? Can you remember a moment when you brought the fullness of yourself to what you were doing? Were you making music, playing sports, spending time with friends, earning money, making love, or helping others? Do you recall the freedom and grace that you felt?\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] Some of us have had the luxury of experiencing the integrity and joy that comes from bringing the fullness of ourselves and our gifts into community to serve others. The Lutheran tradition teaches that <\/span>all<\/span> persons have an equal vocation to serve God and neighbor in the world. From this perspective, almost any role or work counts as a vocation: baking or banking, planting or parenting. Much of the current literature on Christian vocation posits that vocations involve a (a) call from God, or community, or self; (b) using one\u2019s gifts and passions; (c) and serving others in creation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[3] The word vocation has its roots in the Latin term <\/span>vocare<\/span><\/i>, meaning to call. In his commentary on the <\/span>Book of Genesis,<\/span><\/i> Martin Luther describes vocation in the following way. \u201cThus every person surely has a calling. While attending to it [they] serve God. A [monarch] serves God when [they] are at pains to look after and govern [their] people. So [does] the [parent] of a household when [they] tend [their] baby\u2026and a pupil when [they] apply [themselves] diligently to [their] studies.\u201d(1)<\/span> Luther also recognized that every person engages in several vocations at the same time. \u201cHow is it possible that you are not called? You have always been in some state or station\u2026.Are you a [spouse], and you think you have not enough to do in that sphere to govern your [spouse], children, domestics, and property so that all may be obedient to God?\u201d(2)<\/span> Scholar Marc Kolden says that Luther recognized that each person is in multiple relationships (or offices) and therefore has numerous vocations simultaneously. Kolden writes, \u201cat any given time one will have a vocation that involves many different offices\u2026spouse, parent, student\u2026citizen, community member, etc.\u201d(3)<\/span><\/p>\n

[4] All persons should have the right and the opportunity to bring the fullness of who they are and their gifts to the world. However, far too many LGBTQIA+ persons are prevented from equitably pursuing their vocations because it is not safe or acceptable for them to be honest about their lives and loves in their multiple vocations.(4)<\/span>\u00a0Heteronormative stereotypes about vocation, work, family, biological sex, and gender identity, as well as essentialist interpretations of identity, often function in ways that make it difficult for queer folks to be authentically who they are as they live out their vocations.(5)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[5] I teach at Augsburg University, which is a university of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). As part of their required studies, all Augsburg students explore their vocations instead of merely focusing on their careers. Staff and faculty encourage students to ask, who am I? What type of person do I want to be? What kind of life am I being called to live? Who is calling me? What am I called to do? What are my gifts? And what are the needs of the community that I hope to address? These are vocational questions\u2014inquiries about life\u2019s meaning and purpose. Augsburg students and alums report that the university\u2019s vocational framework of call, gifts, and needs of others helps them form their vocational identities and deal with complex life choices.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[6] However, after teaching about vocation for almost 20 years\u2014while also teaching queer theory and queer theologies\u2014I\u2019ve observed that many models of vocation and texts about vocation frequently are not useful for LGBTQIA+ students.(6)<\/span>\u00a0In fact, some of these resources actually harm and marginalize some students and community members. Too many vocational texts assume that all persons are heterosexual and cisgender, that vocation flows from a true and unchanging<\/span> self, and that vocation requires participating in heteronormative, family-centered, capitalist consumerism.(7)<\/span>\u00a0Some texts encourage readers to find and pursue their one, true single-path vocation. This works for a few individuals, but many people find that their vocations change depending upon their age, abilities, their call, and their community. The one-path approach does not work for them. Furthermore, many Christian frameworks about vocation ignore or condemn members of the queer community. (Here I use the word queer in a positive way as an umbrella term that includes persons who identify as LGBTQIA+).\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[7] Before offering my detailed critique, I wish to lift up the work of others who have put forward important challenges to teachings about vocation from their particular perspectives and social locations.(8)<\/span> Prof. K. Brynolf Lyon builds on the work of African American theologians Archie Smith Jr. and Dwight N. Hopkins and argues that too many models of vocation fail to acknowledge that racism and white privilege are inseparable from the broader context in which individuals live out their vocations. Lyon writes, \u201cVocation is racialized in the sense that it not possible to conceive of the means of vocation\u2026apart from the color-coded world and selves in which we create and discover vocation.\u201d(9)<\/span><\/p>\n

[8] Theologians Frances Young and John Swinton interrogate the ableism present in many teachings on vocation. They argue that the lived experiences of persons with physical and intellectual disabilities challenge ableist, capitalist models of vocation. Young contends that persons with disabilities \u201chave a vocation to enable that shift in values\u2026away from individualism, dominance, competitiveness, to[wards] community, mutuality\u2014a human ecology which has the potential to be \u2018angelic\u2019.\u201d(10)<\/span> Young and Swinton emphasize the beauty, vulnerability, and prophetic dimensions of the vocations of persons with disabilities.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[9] Theologian Timothy Snyder argues that too often vocation is offered as a sort of script that ignores how context shapes and limits an individual\u2019s vocation. Snyder writes, \u201cVocation as a theological script\u2026for meaning-making\u2026.is thin in that it fails to take into account the ways our everyday lives are limited by the social structures and constraints that define them.\u201d(11)<\/span> Finally, Caryn D. Riswold urges those who work in institutions of higher learning to see that technology, race, gender, class, sexual orientation and gender identity factor into vocational discernment (in both positive and negative ways). If vocation is to be a humanizing process, as Riswold avers, educators must understand that, \u201cVocational exploration and discernment\u2026.takes place at the intersection of the personal and the political, the social and the theological\u2026.It requires a recognition that human life is enmeshed in myriad systems and institutions that have bearing on who we understand ourselves to be, what we imagine we can do, and how we respond to the multiple callings we hear.\u201d(12)<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[10] Today, many LGBTQIA+ Christians are enmeshed in heteronormative systems and institutions that prevent their vocations from flourishing. All of these important critiques and re-imaginings of vocation are worth pursuing because they engage the heuristic (the script) of vocation and make it increasingly concrete and diverse, and therefore more useful to a greater number of people.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[11] In what follows in this essay, I critique the problems I find in\u2014what I call\u2014heteronormative (and frequently single-path) models of vocation.(13)<\/span>\u00a0I then weave together a queer, Lutheran theology of vocation. This tapestry includes seven vocational strands that provide a vision of call, gifts, and needs that encompass the identities and journeys of <\/span>all<\/span> persons, regardless of their biological sex, family configuration, embodiment, race, ability, or gender identity. And it also reflects and aligns with many current theoretical and theological commitments of queer Christians of all ages.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Traditional (Heteronormative) Models of Vocation Harm Queer People<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[12] Listening to the vocational stories of queer adults and young adults reveals how heteronormative and essentialist theories of vocation often function to harm and\/or exclude LGBTQIA+ persons. There are a multitude of books, articles, videos, podcasts, and blogs available today about vocation, and although <\/span>some<\/span> recognize the complexity of vocation, many still hold heteronormative and essentialist views of the gender identity and biological sex. A significant number tacitly accept the dominant heterosexist and consumerist vision of a successful life. I have identified eight specific ways (or operating assumptions) in which queer persons are often marginalized and harmed by heteronormative (single-path) theories of vocation. Some of these exclusions are secular and philosophical, while other discriminatory claims are theological.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[13] The following false assumptions operate in many resources about and models of vocation.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n