Smith’s “core claim . . . is that liturgies—whether ‘sacred’ or ‘secular’—shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. . . . [i.e.,] liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love” (25)
james k a smith
Book Response: Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, by James K. A. Smith
Truly the church is an apologetic in which one is renewed and transformed by God as part of a people living in a disciplined, liturgical community (28-30, 25, 99) across particular times and places to interact with “the lens of an interpretive framework governed by ultimate beliefs” through the Scriptures by the sanctification of the Spirit (54-56).
James K.A. Smith on “Liturgical Discipleship”
Discipleship, becoming Christ-like, empowered by the Spirit to image God to the world is not magic. Nor is it merely intellectual. It’s a matter of re-forming our loves, re-narrativing our identities, re-habituating our virtue. And that is centered in the practices of the people of God gathered by the Spirit around Christ’s Word and the table. Love […]
Book Review: Imagining the Kingdom
Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works is the second in a series of three books on cultural liturgies. Click here for a review of the first in the series, i.e., Desiring the Kingdom. In this volume, James K.A. Smith elaborates the ideas he developed in the first book, that we are desiring creatures and that Christian formation should take this into […]
Book Review: Desiring the Kingdom
Once in a while a book comes along that crystallizes the things you have been thinking and takes you further down the road. This was such a book. James K.A. Smith contends that we are primarily “desiring animals” who think rather than “thinking things” who happen to have desires. He thinks much of Christian education […]