Message from the Director, Dr. John Glavin: "Ward's The Politics of Discipleship"

In trying to adapt the notion “It Shoots,” the keynote introduced in the initial blog, you may encounter difficulties prompted by one or more of the following positions or attitudes. The list comes from a remarkable book, “The Politics of Discipleship,” by Graham Ward, currently the Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.  (The Rex in that Regius was Henry VIII who established the professorship in the sixteenth century.) According to Professor Ward, these attitudes individually and in combination hallmark contemporary culture, the culture which we call postmodernity (though that term is now fading into disuse).

1. Individual freedom should be infinite.  We ought now to be liberated from all forms of dependency and experience full emancipation.
2. Unlimited consumption ought to be possible, guaranteed by the eternal sustainability of that which we desire to consume.
3. The forces that ultimately direct and control human lives are transcendent and inevitable, beyond individual human control.
4. Because of technology, Time and Space are ceasing to be, or will soon cease to be, significant limits on humane experience.
5. It ought to be possible to establish an international community that is dependable, stable, and beyond conflict.  The continued inaccessibility of this community is the fault of the world’s leaders.
6. Human life ought to be enchanting, full of wonders, pleasures, and surprise.  A disenchanted experience of the world is the fault of those who oversee or profit from it.

How might these attitudes surface within the framework of the college experience?

1. Anything in my life that I didn’t choose is an imposition on that life. Nothing and no one should have the power to constrain my freedom to do as I please, where and when I please. 
2. My needs and desires should not be affected by any limit on supply or availability. 
3. Good things that happen to me happen largely through my efforts; bad things that happen to me are the fault of others. I am not responsible for what I miss, lose, or fail to achieve. 
4. I should be able to set my own calendar, my own clock, and therefore my own deadlines and schedule; and, I should also be able to turn any space, no matter what its public designation, into the space -- and use -- I need at the moment. 
5. Anything that goes wrong or comes up short in my life is the responsibility of those nominally in charge. If they were doing their job, I wouldn’t be disappointed. 
6. I ought to be able fully to enjoy the College Experience and thereafter to enjoy a prosperous, successful, and fulfilled life. It’s my right as a human being. 

Of course, these attitudes surface in other situations with somewhat different expressions, but the point is the same. If you view your life in the way “It Shoots” suggests, you have to see that the undesired (not of course the evil or criminal) is equal in validity to the desired. It’s not your life if you start editing the pieces.

JG