{"id":1936,"date":"2016-03-08T16:43:37","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T16:43:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=1936"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:48","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:48","slug":"steve-webb-83-giving-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2016\/03\/08\/steve-webb-83-giving-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Webb \u201983: Giving Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

“To be given a voice is to be set free,\u201d Professor Steve Webb \u201983 told us in Salter Hall during his\u00a0LaFollette Lecture in October 2003<\/a>.”\u00a0He was referring, in part, to\u00a0the way \u201cearly Christians remade the world by their words,\u201d but he was also talking about the work of teaching.<\/p>\n

\u201cWabash is still a College made out of sound, where the chime of the Chapel carillon, the roar of Chapel Sing, and the yells of the crowd after a Little Giant touchdown can be heard campus-wide,\u201d said Webb, who died March 5.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cWhere students step onto the stage, raise their voices and sing, act, and debate; still a place that offers students the intimacy of hearing their professors in close quarters, where we know each other through the spoken word, and where community is built upon speaking and listening.<\/p>\n

Read remembrances of Professor Webb\u00a0at www.afterhours180.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWabash is also place where we still say you are not educated until you know how to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a teacher who loved the minds of young men, Steve was determined to help them find that\u00a0voice. He reveled in the chase. He found joy in challenging students\u2014close-up and face-to-face\u2014to find their voices in his classroom, in his office at the west end of the second floor of center hall, and in conversations across campus.<\/p>\n

It was a commitment to teaching the whole man that was modeled by his own mentors in the religion department he became such an essential part of\u2014a shared dedication I first encountered interviewing and photographing Steve and Professor Bill Placher \u201970 in my first year working at Wabash.<\/p>\n

That was the moment I learned that a Wabash education was as much about relationships as ideas, and much more about connections than Commencement.<\/p>\n

Bill and Steve had different methods, temperaments, and personalities\u2014Steve captured that difference for posterity in his interview with Bill in his book\u00a0Taking Religion to School.<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>But they had similar goals.<\/p>\n

They were also extraordinary writers with missions to reach readers outside academia, with different though complementary styles.<\/p>\n

For me as editor of\u00a0Wabash Magazine,<\/em>\u00a0their words were a great gift I had the honor to pass along to our readers.\u00a0For me as a person of faith, those words were life-giving.\u00a0Bill opened my eyes to wonder anew at the mysteries of God; Steve helped me see new ways they were alive in an ever-changing world. His most recent posting on First Things<\/a>, “<\/a><\/em>God of the Depressed,“<\/i><\/a>\u00a0is so keenly observed, compassionate, and heartbreakingly true, it just might be a life-saving touchstone for those\u00a0of\u00a0us who struggle with depression.<\/p>\n

“Many depressed Christians instinctively turn to God-help, not self-help, literature, but there is little of that out there, and God himself is distant to their cries,” Steve writes. “Perhaps that can serve as a theological definition of depression: When your need for God is as great as your feeling of God\u2019s absence.”<\/p>\n

You can get a sense of Steve\u2019s insightful, honest, provocative, and generous writing in some of the other\u00a0excerpts and links I’ve listed below. But I encourage you to search beyond these to more recent works, as well.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll find the words of a man who not only found his voice, but helped so many of us, students and friends, find our own.<\/p>\n

\u2014Steve Charles, Editor, WM<\/em><\/p>\n

Some works by Stephen Webb in WM:<\/em><\/p>\n

Gyms and the Making of Small-Town America<\/a><\/p>\n

The Sound of God and the Future of Public Speaking<\/a><\/p>\n

Read more about Professor Webb on the Wabash Web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“To be given a voice is to be set free,\u201d Professor Steve Webb \u201983 told us in Salter Hall during his\u00a0LaFollette Lecture in October 2003.”\u00a0He was referring, in part, to\u00a0the way \u201cearly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1939,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-class-notes","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2016\/03\/stevegrins-copy-1024x699.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1936"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2592,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1936\/revisions\/2592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}