“Much of Christian ethics is concerned with the decisions we should make concerning the great issues of life and death. In this wise and richly pondered book, Brent Waters reminds us that most of our lives are taken up with the mundane routines of everyday living, and that it is here that Christian discipleship forms us in the habits that enable us to flourish. Whether or not you dislike household chores as much as he does, these timely reflections may well open up a path to glimpsing God’s glory right there amidst the dishes.”—Robert Song, professor of theological ethics, Durham University

“Waters gives us a lucid and theologically rich account of the centrality and power of the ordinary in moral life as Christians understand it. In particular, he offers insight into the deformations that ensue when the framing realities of God’s extraordinary love are lost, so that meaning must be injected by artifice and hyperbole into the everyday acts and relationships that are intended as the school of charity.”—Sondra Wheeler, professor emerita of Christian ethics, Wesley Theological Seminary

“Brent Waters is one of the most insightful theologians I know, and his new book Common Callings and Ordinary Virtues is no exception to what we’ve come to expect from him—sound theology, relevant to important aspects of real life. This time Waters brings his theological acumen to bear on the so-called mundane aspects of everyday life. He shows the formative power of the ‘dailyness’ of life to shape us and enable us to become more Christlike. I highly recommend this work, in which Waters’s characteristic insight is applied to an area of life that we might not have thought very deeply about in the past, though we surely will now.”—Scott Rae, dean of faculty and professor of Christian ethics, Talbot School of Theology

“I hope Brent Waters will take no offense when I say that this book could not have been written by a young man. Wide-ranging in the topics it takes up, the fruit of much reading and much living, simultaneously respectful and politically incorrect—it cannot fail to provoke thought about the shape of a life well lived.”—Gilbert Meilaender, senior research professor, Valparaiso University