Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies Series, Vol. 1)
Overview
Desiring the Kingdom focuses education around the themes of liturgy, formation, and desire. The author contends—as did Augustine—that human beings are "desiring agents"; in other words, we are what we love. Postmodern culture, far from being "secular," is saturated with liturgy, but in places such as malls, stadiums, and universities. While these structures influence us, they do not point us to the best of ends. Smith aims to move beyond a focus on "worldview" to see Christian education as a counter-formation to these secular liturgies.
His ultimate purpose is to re-vision Christian education as a formative process that redirects our desire toward God's kingdom and its vision of flourishing. In the same way, Smith re-visions Christian worship as a pedagogical practice that trains our love. Desiring the Kingdom will reach a wide audience; professors and students in courses on theology, culture, philosophy, and worldview will welcome this contribution. Pastors, ministers, worship leaders, and other church leaders will appreciate this book as well.
- Contains an index of all Subjects covered
- Includes a list of Sidebars and Figures
Top Highlights
“Being a disciple of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it’s a matter of being the kind of person who loves rightly—who loves God and neighbor and is oriented to the world by the primacy of that love. We are made to be such people by our immersion in the material practices of Christian worship—through affective impact, over time, of sights and smell in water and wine.” (Pages 32–33)
“In order to recognize the religious power and formative force of the mall, we need to adopt a paradigm of cultural critique and discernment that thinks even deeper than beliefs or worldviews and takes seriously the central role of formative practices—or what I’ll describe in this book as liturgies.” (Page 24)
“Christian education would not be primarily a matter of sorting out which Christian ideas to drop into eager and willing mind-receptacles; rather, it would become a matter of thinking about how a Christian education shapes us, forms us, molds us to be a certain kind of people whose hearts and passions and desires are aimed at the kingdom of God.” (Page 18)
“There is no neutral, nonformative education; in short, there is no such thing as a ‘secular’ education.” (Page 26)
“A social imaginary is not how we think about the world, but how we imagine the world before we ever think about it; hence the social imaginary is made up of the stuff that funds the imagination—stories, myths, pictures, narratives.” (Page 66)
James Smith shows in clear, simple, and passionate prose what worship has to do with formation and what both have to do with education. He argues that the God-directed, embodied love that worship gives us is central to all three areas and that those concerned as Christians with teaching and learning need to pay attention, first and last, to the ordering of love. This is an important book and one whose audience should be much broader than the merely scholarly.
—Paul J. Griffiths, Duke Divinity School
In lucid and lively prose, Jamie Smith reaches back past Calvin to Augustine, crafting a new and insightful Reformed vision for higher education that focuses on the fundamental desires of the human heart rather than on worldviews. Smith deftly describes the 'liturgies' of contemporary life that are played out in churches—but also in shopping malls, sports arenas, and the ad industry—and then re-imagines the Christian university as a place where students learn to properly love the world and not just think about it.
—Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, authors of Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation
This is a wise, provocative, and inspiring book. It prophetically blurs the boundaries between theory and practice, between theology and other disciplines, between descriptive analysis and constructive imagination. Anyone involved in Christian education should read this book to glimpse a holistic vision of learning and formation. Anyone involved in the worship life of Christian communities should read this book to discover again all that is at stake in the choices we make about our practices.
—John D. Witvliet, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship; Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary
- Title: Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation
- Author: James K. A. Smith
- Series: Cultural Liturgies
- Volume: 1
- Publisher: Baker Academic
- Print Publication Date: 2009
- Logos Release Date: 2012
- Pages: 238
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Christianity and culture; Christianity › Philosophy; Liturgical adaptation; Liturgics
- ISBNs: 9781441255259, 9780801035777, 1441255257, 0801035775
- Resource ID: LLS:DESIRKINGDOM
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:16:20Z
Reviews
2 ratings
Chad Ethridge
9/29/2014
John Goodman
1/21/2014
