The Ethics of Doing Nothing Rest, Rituals and the Modern World

In this thought-provoking volume, Andrew Blosser draws readers into an “odd investigation:” reconsidering our culture’s false equation of “work” with “life;” and re-centering ourselves, personally and collectively, on an opposite conviction: “that the point of life is to observe the goodness around us in charitable communion with others.” In fact, our work and social-economic policies ought to enable and serve the higher values of inoperativity, rest, and  Sabbath. Far from promoting sloth or passivity, Blosser shows how a critical, theologically grounded “ethics of doing nothing” is essential for animating the “rest-focused activism” and practical changes that addressing systemic challenges like poverty and climate change will require. Insightful, enlightening, readable; highly recommended.

Blosser's book offers a rich and sophisticated analysis of rituals of rest that couldn't be timelier or more thought-provoking for us exhausted, overwhelmed moderns.

In this insightful, compelling, and timely book, Blosser examines the importance of ‘doing nothing’ as a subversive force that reveals the fundamental nature of the human in a society that would reduce the human to the instrumental and productive.  He draws out the (literally) universal implications of this critique, especially for the crisis of climate change.  The richest resources for such an ethical critique, he argues, are found in the worship and rituals of religion, particularly those of marginalized groups.