The End of Work explores the "problem of labor" from a theological perspective. Addressing both theologians concerned with how Christianity might engage in social criticism, as well as secular philosophers and political theorists, this book explores the connection between Marxist and Radical Christian Romantic traditions.

Surveying twentieth-century theologies of work and contrasting various approaches to the topic, this book looks at the relationship between divine and human work, explores debates about labour under capitalism, and, through a thorough reading of Weber's Protestant Work Ethic, argues that the triumph of the "spirit of utility" is crucial to understanding modern notions of work. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Romantic and Catholic writers are then drawn upon to resist this with an alternative theo-aesthetic vision of the redemption of work as ultimately liturgical.

John Hughes is Curate of St David's with St Michael's Exeter and holds a Cambridge PhD. He has published a number of articles in top journals such as Telos and Modern Theology.