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The core themes of post-modernism as we have mentioned are explicitly outlined

within On the Way to Life. Through a critique of contemporary culture it outlines
(among others) three features of our prevailing culture that become significant for

understanding both the ethos of the contemporary police service, and indeed the
challenge faced by those undertaking pastoral ministry within it. What these features

have in common is the ‘turn to the subject’ that in post-modernism places an
increased emphasis upon the individual. The first of these themes is concerned with

how in the absence of any higher transcendent and external authority, truth or rather
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meaning becomes localised and domestic . In effect I become the focus of my own
meaning, or rather as the Manic Street Preachers suggest, This is My Truth Tell Me

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Yours . This subjectivity establishes the individual as the focus of an authority that is
self-authenticating (2005:16-17), and inevitably this creates a tension with those

external sources that remain. A division emerges between the global and the local, or
the organisational and the personal contexts, and these affect the police service as
we shall explore as it seeks to determine its priorities.

The second key cultural feature concerns how the ‘turn to the subject’ exerts a

pressure on the human person as individual experience becomes the primary source
of meaning (2005:16-17). Communication technology intensifies this pressure,

compressing time and space and obscuring the boundaries between work and
leisure, so that ‘the home and the office’ become blurred and our ‘public and private

selves merge’. A performance culture emerges with a ‘high expectation of
performance and delivery in every area, even in me-time, so that if we fail to deliver
our sense of adequacy and belonging is threatened’ (CES 2005:23-25). The

influence of economic forces cannot be underestimated as financial priorities
contribute to work becoming intensified and depersonalised, both through increased

volume and also the market’s 11 desire for accountability, scrutiny, and greater
performance competency (McGrail & Sullivan 2007:92-93). We shall explore how this

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On the Way to Life does acknowledge that in making truth so relative and subjective it can be hard to reclaim.
Critics of post-modernism turn this argument upon post-modernism itself suggesting that the term is itself empty
and can mean whatever any particular author wishes it to mean at any given time (CES 2005:78).
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This is the title of their (1998) album (Epic Records).
11 On the Way to Life identifies that the economic free-market as the religion that can “be discerned in capitalism”
in that it is perceived as having a value system that is external and transcendent, and which is directed toward
salvation by economic means. As such it is seen as one of the greatest threats to religion (CES 2005:20-21).
McGrail & Sullivan identify the intrusion of “managerialism” as the key metaphor of how market forces are coming
to dominate public bodies. It is the means by which ever greater efficiency and control is exerted with a view to
assisting government led social engineering and entrepreneurialism (2007:92-93).