A “stick to beat you with”? Advocating for a Critical Close Reading of ‘Vocation’ Among Evangelical Medics in England

Abstract

Evangelical Christianity and healthcare work are two contexts in which vocation is often an important discourse. Exploring uses, understandings and implications of vocation for evangelical medics thus offers a rich opportunity to critically interrogate vocation from two important perspectives. In addition to identifying a three-tiered construction of vocation, on macro-, meso- and micro-levels, this paper suggests that to fully understand its manifestations among a sample of English evangelical medics, a critical, Weberian-style reading is valuable. This latter conclusion resonates with those drawn by scholars who extend a critical view across constructions of medical vocation more broadly, not least given concerns regarding workplace burnout.