Spiritual
Radford College is an Anglican School within the Diocese of Canberra and Goulburn and seeks to live as a Christian community.
The Christian faith is positively presented as a meaningful and relevant way of life. This is achieved by bearing witness to the teachings of Christ in all aspects of College life.
Through formal and informal study of the Scriptures, students are encouraged to know about this God-given guide for living a Christian life. Corporate worship based on the practices of the Anglican Church aims to enhance the significance of worship and of belonging to a Christian community, both in the present and in life beyond the School.
Students meaning found in intellectual disciplines, in other religious faiths and in the personal lives of individual members of the School community. The Chaplains are available to parents, students and staff for counselling, help, support and spiritual direction.
The practical aspect of Christianity is encouraged through support of a wide variety of charities and community services. Radford College attempts to challenge students to think for themselves in order to discover the meaning and purpose of life.
Contact the Chaplains - Reverends Richard Browning & Nikolai Blaskow Nikolai Blaskow
- Religion and Philosophy (RAVE)
If you really want to know what RAVE is all about, (from the perspective of one of the College Chaplains), who couldn't think of a better analogy than that recently put forward by Richard Holloway, former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, quoting an aphorism framed by the Russian thinker V.V. Rozanov:
'All religions will pass, but this will remain, simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.' To which Richard Holloway retorts reversing the aphorism: 'Religion will endure as long as we sit in the chair and look in the distance.'
Distance gazing is what RAVE is all about; it is the ultimate business of religion, asking about the meaning of this extraordinary universe of which we are a part, and the meaning of the intensity and at times desperation of our own living.
It is not the business of RAVE to try and argue our students into seeing the way we see things. We are not trying to persuade them or sell them a package. We simply want them to witness what we see and feel as representative human beings, drawn from the particular knowledge and life experience that we have.
For us, as it was for Dennis Potter, the British playwright dying of cancer, religion is always the wound, not the bandage. We seek to bring our students to respect the Biblical vision, without demanding that they see that we are right, and that they are wrong. As Yehudi Amichai, a Jewish poet rightly observed in his poem From the Place Where We are Right:
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow in the Spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled like a yard.
But doubts and loves dig up the world
Like a mole, a plough.
We seek rather to bring our students to recognise that the hard certainties of religious rhetoric may crucify us with their certainties, while 'doubts and loves' will set us free. That to worship our own certainties at the expense of tolerance and reality is to commit idolatry. Far better for that 'God' to die. After all, 'Gods' are always dying, and they need to die, because if they become too important to us, they cease to be God, they become instead an idol.
Rather we point our students to Jesus, the great iconoclast, and as some of the political and theological structure of Christendom seem to come crashing down around us, we continue to sit with our students and gaze into the distance through all that dust, and rubble, and continue to see Jesus of history who stands behind it all. And the key to the understanding of that angry, compassionate man, the Son of God, the Son of Man, we present to our students as the 'placelessness' and 'worldlessness' of Jesus, without which experience, we cannot understand neither Jesus nor God, or for that matter, ourselves.
In the end, none of us can possess the truth. The truth possesses us. Jesus said, they that are of the truth, will hear my voice. Our task as educators is to bring our students to hear that voice for themselves.
God knows that if we and they no longer can hear it, that still small voice, we become like the hooded falcon in WB Yeats' poem The Second Coming who had lost contact with the Falconer, and we can only expect that 'things fall apart.'
Spiritual in Junior School
Religious and Values Education in Years 5-6 is integrated into the curriculum and has a primary focus of helping students to think about who they are and how they interact with their communities. This complements the work of the College Chaplains, who take Year 8-10 RAVE classes in the High School. In addition to some introductory work on Biblical stories, the course explores some basics of logical thinking and explores "meaning" - through language, science, religion and faith, personal experience and involvement with other people. One of the Chaplains is attached to the Middle School and has an input into curriculum across all KLAs as well as participating in classroom activities.
Spiritual in High School
Religious and Values Education in Year 7 is integrated into the curriculum and has a primary focus of helping students to think about who they are and how they interact with their communities. One of the College Chaplains works closely with the Year 7 staff and participates in class room activities. This complements their work with the Year 8-10 RAVE classes in the High School. In addition to some introductory work on Biblical stories, the course explores some basics of logical thinking and explores "meaning"- through language, science, religion and faith, personal experience and involvement with other people.