Christian Calling and Volunteering

Abstract

In “Christian calling and volunteering”, Johan von Essen and Jacques Haers show how, in various Christian perspectives such as the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions, the invitation to neighbourly love calls the faithful to volunteer and thus, as it were, imposes an understanding of volunteering on the basis of religious adherence. Free will, a crucial concept in the history of ideas in the western world and a key element in all definitions of volunteering, is understood in the Christian tradition as taking responsibility in the common life and requires processes of discernment that clarify the deep bonds and interactions that characterize both creation and the understanding of the future world. The presentation of the Lutheran and Ignatian traditions shows the variety of perspectives that are possible in the Christian faith and its churches, while also illustrating how religious faith offers possibilities to clarify motivations for volunteering even in a highly secularized world in which, more often than not, the idea of free will has come to be equated with individual choice.KeywordsVolunteeringTheologyIgnatius of LoyolaMartin LutherFree will