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Back to Subjects - Religion

Utopia

Utopia Thomas More believed in private and corporate vocations. His beliefs are evident in his book Utopia. He said that everybody has a vocation and it is their responsibility to live up to what gifts they have been given by God. Private vocations exist with the individual person. Married, single, or religious life? Also, what kind of job one does is considered a vocation because you must use your God given gifts to perform your job correctly. Corporate vocations exist within the community and what kind of society exists. In Utopia, a perfect society exists in which everybody has a vocation that creates a corporate vocation making a perfect society. Utopia means “no place.” This meaning can be easily comprehended because there is no such thing as a perfect society. So it wouldn’t exist anywhere, no place. In Thomas More’s utopian society, everyone has a purpose to add to the community’s vocation, which is how the private and corporate vocations are linked together. Also in this utopian society, people live together in harmony. This is because every person needs the next person to survive. Everyone has a religion, but beyond that they can do what they want. Whether it is a farmer like most people, married, single, or a religious person. It’s hard to say whether or not every person would take his or her religion to the same extent as the other, but they all have a religion that keeps the peace between the people. Thomas More sees physical labor as very important. Not only to survive, but so that everyone contributes to society. Idleness can be a disease. There must be a balance to work. Everybody in Utopia does some farming. Farming was considered a very noble occupation back then. Today we have many noble occupations, but just to pick one to compare a doctor can be used. Obviously, they didn’t have all the technology we have today, so they didn’t have as many occupations as we have now. Everybody did some farming to keep in touch with nature and creation. Keeping in touch with nature is a way of connecting to God. Not only then, but today too. Farming was the main vocation in Utopia. The people farmed to produce food so that they can eat. With this vocation came prayer because as said earlier it was a way to connect with God and creation. Farming was a private vocation. Everybody in Utopia shared his or her wealth and physical labor. To go along with this, they also balanced work with prayer. Into that calculation, you can fit rest. There must be a balance to work as said earlier. Everyone must rest, it is part of being human. Too much rest, idleness, can be a disease, so it is imperative not to take too much rest or you will never get back to work. The time of rest for Utopians was the Sabbath. Obviously, it was the Sabbath because that’s the day God says to rest in the third of his Ten Commandments. Resting on the Sabbath could also be seen as a private vocation because it was each person’s responsibility to rest and not do any work on the Sabbath. Even this vocation adds to the total corporate vocation. In this sense, it would help the community to unite together and pray with one another. All these things add to the utopian society where everyone lives in harmony. Another private vocation that everyone shared was gardening. Everyone had a garden at his or her home. Maybe to have part of nature at home, as well as at work when they are farming. This is part of balancing work with prayer and vice versa. Moving on the corporate vocation, it gets a little more complicated. This is because, as said before, everybody’s private vocation adds to the whole corporate vocation. The main corporate vocation in Utopia would be city planning. This was a plan that Thomas More came up with in his book. He thought that cities are where the future is. He was right. A modern city today that was developed by city planning is our very own Philadelphia. This is a corporate vocation because everyone helps to build the city to make the future for the generations to come. It is the private vocation of all those who help to build the city and when everyone has the same private vocation it creates a corporate vocation. City planning was an important corporate vocation, but the most important has to be observing the Sabbath. By observing the Sabbath, everybody rests and stays happy and content with other people an their surroundings. Everybody has to rest if they are human and by doing it all on the same day they come together and pray which helps to keep the harmony in society. Thomas More hates war, as do most people. But you must have an army constantly training to avoid war. Having a well-trained army will scare enemies and keep people from attacking them. This is yet another corporate vocation. Everyone in the army has a private vocation to protect the city and the people within so this creates another corporate vocation. The army protects the farmers and religious and the farmers provide food for the soldiers and the religious pray for the army as well as the farmers. So it all comes together into one large corporate vocation. Regarding the book itself, it ends with worship because it is the way to live. Bibliography:

Word Count: 917