News

Cultivating an ‘attitude of gratitude’ is uncontroversial, obviously beneficial, a thoroughgoing good. Especially for a community with the privileges and opportunities enjoyed by University of Oxford postgraduates.

Or so we thought when we included it as one of the core virtues in our programming. But criticism is growing of what is currently a thriving cottage industry in the academic study and social promotion of ‘gratitude’.

Two pieces of content included in this newsletter challenge an unthinking celebration of gratitude from two very different perspectives.

As a political and social activist, Barbara Ehrenreich highlights the irony of using the practice of gratitude selfishly, as a means of boosting feelings of well-being and happiness. As she pithily puts it: ‘It’s possible to achieve the recommended levels of gratitude without spending a penny or uttering a word. All you have to do is to generate, within yourself, the good feelings associated with gratitude, and then bask in its warm, comforting glow. If there is any loving involved in this, it is self-love, and the current hoopla around gratitude is a celebration of onanism.’ Her article for the New York Times may be found HERE.

As a theologian, Revd Dr Peter Leithart, has delved deep into the cultural history of gratitude from its pre-Christian, classical past right up to its modern present. Counterintuitively, Leithart shows that the first Christians were known for a lack of gratitude. By teaching that God is the ultimate source of all benefits, the Christian community unpicked and dissolved the complicated webs of favour and obligation that ruled the ancient world. ‘Christian givers impose no debts; Christian recipients acknowledge no debts, except to love.’ A talk given by Leithart at Trinity College to participants of the Oxford Character Project may be found HERE.

So, what is an appropriate, healthy, Christian approach to gratitude?

Learning from Ehrenreich and Leithart, we reject gratitude as self-help, mood modifier, and as the oil in the machinery of social intercourse, smoothing our upward trajectory by flattering those who have or might promote us.

Instead, we focus on gratitude as virtue, an appropriate response to the abundant generosity of God, and to others’, sometimes sacrificial and costly, contribution to our lives.

Friends undertaking cutting-edge research at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtue have recently argued that the virtue of gratitude is complex, incorporating intellectual, emotional, perceptual and behavioural elements. We must understand what gratitude is and where and when it is merited. The virtuous person will feel gratitude in appropriate circumstances. And, correctly interpreting the situation, we will act, expressing our gratitude in ways that bless and encourage those around us.

One example of the benefit of a life lived with a sense of gratitude towards God may be seen in the experience of Frances Cossar, a member of our 2016-17 Christians in Academia cohort writing a DPhil in Development Studies:

‘People come to development and can be very idealistic, thinking “I’m going to change the world,” and they can be very dejected when they realize they can’t. The unique place of Christians is to say yes, it’s frustrating, but there’s a bigger God who’s redeeming the world. This allows us to sit in that place of working hard to make things better but not burning out and being overly frustrated, but really trusting that God is building the bigger picture.’

Read the full interview HERE

Practising the virtue of gratitude takes the weight off our shoulders. We are not so reliant on others that we become caught up in sticky webs of obligation and debt, nor are we so in awe of autonomy and self-sufficiency that we feel the need to put ourselves (or even the entire world) to rights. If we recognise that every good and perfect gift comes from our Father above (James 1:17), we recognise that our lives are in our Father’s hands, as is the world, and for that we can all be grateful.