Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works

Cultural Liturgies #2

by James K.A. Smith

How does worship work? How exactly does liturgical formation shape us? What are the dynamics of such transformation? In the second of James K. A. Smith's three-volume theology of culture, the author expands and deepens the analysis of cultural liturgies and Christian worship he developed in his well-received Desiring the Kingdom. He helps us understand and appreciate the bodily basis of habit formation and how liturgical formation—both "secular" and Christian—affects our fundamental orientation to the world. Worship "works" by leveraging our bodies to transform our imagination, and it does this through stories we understand on a register that is closer to body than mind. This has critical implications for how we think about Christian formation.

Professors and students will welcome this work as will pastors, worship leaders, and Christian educators. The book includes analyses of popular films, novels, and other cultural phenomena, such as The King's Speech, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and Facebook.

Includes xx pages of Introductory material, 191 pages of text, and 5 pages of indices.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Christian, Christianity, Cultural, Education

198 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2013

Reviews

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imagining the Kingdom is the second part of James K.A. Smith's Cultural Liturgies project. Originally, Smith wrote the first volume Desiring the Kingdom as a popular introduction with some philosophical heft, but it turned out to be a bit difficult for popular consumption and not philosophically rigorous enough for philosophers and theologians. Smith has decided to continue the middle-level discourse in this work, including tons of sidebars and digressions to illustrate the arguments made in the body of the work. I have no qualms with Smith's decision here: the church needs his voice, and these volumes would have lost many readers had they been pure scholarly monographs on theological anthropology. Here are my thoughts:
1) I'm irked at the font used in the digressions and sidebars. The fonts are harsh and 'computer-ish', and thus aesthetically displeasing. I would say this is a minor critique, except that a central thesis of the book is Christian formation requires a 'aesthetic and architectural intentionality' as well as 'the right wallpaper' (181). If we are to refuse the form/content distinction that undergirds 'worldview' thinking (a central interlocutor for Smith in this series), then why did Smith not seek a more pleasing, less distracting font for these sections of his book?
2) The book covers a lot of the same ground as Desiring the Kingdom. I found myself wondering at certain points why he didn't simply drop a footnote and say 'cf. my earlier volume in this series'. The book could have been considerably shortened by doing so. Of course, one of Smith's central theses in the book (181-6) that Christians, especially evangelicals, should fear repetition a lot less than they do because repetition is the way stories become the background to our desire, cognition and behavior, so perhaps the repetition is intentional.
3) Smith uses Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu prolifically in this book. I'm not sure this really works for the pastoral audience that is one of the targets of this work. While these voices allow him to make some astonishingly brilliant moves in constructing a theological anthropology, he doesn't need to 'show his work' quite as much as he does. My sense is that pastors and educated laypeople will become impatient with the jargon here - 'cognitive narratology'; the 'habitus'; the 'kinaesthetic' quality of art and literature, and so on.
4) The work on narrative and liturgy is utterly and completely brilliant. The project here, of a piece with Desiring the Kingdom is to situate rationication by reasoning about how we reason. Behind the act of cognition is an 'environment' of desire formed by narratives which 'story' the world for us, tell us how we are to inhabit it, what we are to love, what is worth living for, and so on. These stories are themselves worlds. There is an excess to story that, pace analytic philosophy, evangelicalism, and literary Darwinism, cannot reduced to a propositional version. The story exceeds what it says, or better, means how it says: 'The truth of art--the truth of the aesthetic aspect of our existence--does not reduce to mere representation or correspondence. A story or poem does not merely communicate 'a truth' that I can also 'get' in some other way. Rather, the truth of a story or poem is carried in its form, in the unique affect generated by its cadences and rhythm, in the interplay and resonances of the imaginative world it invokes, in the metaphorical inferences that I 'get' on a gut level....To understand the logic of a story is to have intuited a flow and an arc, to have absorbed a world and lived with characters, to have dwelt in a world of words whose connotations and resonances play on the strings of our imagination to generate meaning'(134-5). The story in its 'kinaesthetic' dimension conscripts our imaginations, more or less consciously, into a way of perceiving and loving the world. 'we don't choose desires: they are birthed in us' (125).
These stories do their work in us when they are 'formed in us as habits'. This only happens as we participate and are incorporated into a social body that faithfully repeats a narratival vision of the world such that we internalize this narrative as our own. You see where he's going with this: these stories are liturgies, and they operate on us at a pretheoretical level, forming our desires and hence the field within which we reason and act. Smith asserts that Christians have been operating with a defective toolkit in this regard. The 'secular' culture of consumption understands perfectly well the power of imagination and desire and the relative immunity to rational revision of the mind of a person who has been captivated by a particular gestalt of the world (140). Smith thinks that the only way, then, to escape the field of action and belief provided by a bad story about the world is to be conscripted by a better story, a more beautiful and elegant story, that empowers a different sort of being in the world. But one must inhabit this story so that it is formed as a habit within one, so that one is incorporated into the social body that tells this story about itself. In order to inhabit the story in this way, however, one must be captured by the drama of the arc of the story itself, not merely convinced by a paraphrase of the story's content: 'If we are going to agents of teh coming kingdom, acting in ways that embody God's desires for creation, then our imaginations need to be conscripted by God. It is not enough to convince our intellects; our imaginations need to be caught by--and caught up into--the Story of God's restorative, reconciling grace for all of creation. It won't be enough for us to be convinced; we need to be moved. Otherwise we'll just be reading Wendell Berry in Costco; we'll be convinced but not transformed' (157).

In short, I have some quibbles with this book, but by and large I believe this is a book that the church in the west needs very much at this point in history. The future of the church is catholic, evangelical, and charismatic, and Jamie Smith's particular way of putting back together these divergent streams of the church offers a hopeful way forward for theology that is pro ecclesia.

[Avery Amstutz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book and am currently rereading Desiring the kingdom. James KA Smith provides language for learning to love and picture the kingdom. I’m rereading Desiring the Kingdom and am looking forward to reading the last book in the series. If you haven’t read the Cultural Literature series, I’d recommend it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worthwhile exploration into the structures and methods by which our hearts come to love and our minds come to know. Ironically, or perhaps not, it is through our hands, Smith presents, our bodies and physical presence that knowledge enters the soul. Precisely in this truth do we find his suggestion that worship is formed through the habits, the liturgies, which infect the mind through the body by grabbing us through story and imagination. Ultimately, Smith hits us hard again with a world-reshaping account of how we work, and all serious practicioners of the faith should consider giving this ample time to work through and ruminate on.

Reread, Sept 2020:

Still a deeply compelling book on the depths by which our “being-in-the-world” is fundamentally lived on a register that is embodied, physical, and aesthetic- driven by a pre-conscious bodily attunement that is both shaped for us and shaping us. His argument that we understand on a level unknown to us - our bodies “know” what our minds may not understand - is powerful and demands a reckoning with the daily uses and abuses put on our bodies as they are conscripted in habits, liturgies, and social imaginaries that train our telos away from the Kingdom. What he calls misforming liturgies in Desiring the Kingdom.

The first time through, one of my primary takeaways was the necessity of restorying the world, reorienting the telos of the Church (and myself) around an eschatology of hope. I read Wright’s, Surprised by Hope as a result. I can’t tell you how powerfully true Smith’s thesis has been in my own life as a result. How as I began to build a life of bodily attunement to the world that saw it in light of re-creation, that postured my body in a way that “believed” in it’s coming consummation, I began to live and think differently. And the difference existed in a way I wouldn’t have noticed without the kind of reflection this book engenders, because it was on the level of incarnate significance, not theoretical knowledge. To read this book and not follow it up with the profound project of learning and emBODYing hopeful eschatology is to miss its central claim.

This time through, I found myself much more appreciative of its discussion on the church’s inheritance of liturgical traditions in worship, and Smith’s emphasis that worship is meant for mission- as in being sent into the world as agents of redemption and re/co-creation. Our purpose doesn’t end in the church service. That’s only the commissioning. This is part and parcel to the telos which he casts vision for, and which is fundamentally tied to the telos of the four chapter gospel, because the Biblical story is one cohesive, comprehensive story.

To be commissioned well into that story, Smith argues, is to have imbibed an aesthetic (which he defines as a means of human understanding more largely) that knows the world for what it is (a redeemed and being-redeemed creation of beauty and opportunity) even without being able to explain it. AND to know our place and call in that world (multiplication and dominion - “coloring in the rest of creation” as Dr. Bill Fullilove would say), so that we become active citizens of that world with an instinct tuned to its joys, longings, and hope. The path to that place is through story, metaphor, and habitual posturing that receives the world as it truly is and one day will be.

I also gained a new appreciation for the mysteries of art, particularly of poetry in this second read, for which I am grateful. It’s definitely a call to invest more time into that craft.

Though, on its whole, I wish he had driven deeper into the discussion on practical applications of embodied habits and forms which “carry” a teleology of creation consummation. That’s the culmination of this book, and he leaves the work largely to the reader, though I recognize that’s not necessarily ineffective or indefensible, since the project is ultimately an ultimate one.

Be prepared for a philosophically heavy read, but with large doses of fascinating stories and fun examples. Not for the easily bored.

[Karen (Living Unabridged) · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, so much to chew on here. I saved loads of quotes and will be mentally processing for a while.

Short summary: I have been disastisfied for some time with the Christian emphasis on "worldview" (and yes, I know I have a worldview category here on Goodreads. I didn't say I'm always consistent.) and this book really addressed why that's an inadequate definition and what would be a better replacement.

Also, I wish I had realized this was book #2 in an academic trilogy because it might have helped through some of my confusion near the beginning. But, then again, maybe it wouldn't have.

Short review: well worth your time and consideration. And I recommend buying a paperback copy instead of the Kindle edition if you like to mark up your books and really wrestle with what the author is saying. I borrowed my e copy from my library but didn't come close to finishing in the 21 day window so had to borrow it again. (Fortunately my Kindle Fire remembered exactly where I was when it came back to me.)

*Will possibly return to this review later to add quotes.*

[Amanda McClendon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mostly enjoyed this because Smith taps into a lifelong interest of mine--namely, how we as humans live inside of stories, and how we use ritual and liturgy and habit to tell those stories and get them into our lives. Dr. Smith pointed me in the direction of some philosophers and stories that I need to check out in pursuit of that interest. It's quite dense and I think people who aren't used to heavily academic language would be better served by checking out his other book You Are What You Love, but I commend that work or this one to anyone who's involved with public worship.

[Ben Robin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps it’s my fault for misunderstanding the book’s genre or intention, but I wanted more Bible and theology in a work attempting to construct a Christian anthropology.

[Tim Norman · Rating 4 out of 5]

James K. A. Smith's two volumes, Desiring the Kingdom and Imaging the Kingdom, offer a challenge and a new paradigm for Christian growth and discipleship.

This volume is a little heady. So, it might not be for everyone. He shows how culture shapes us through the stories it tells us (what is the good life?), the practices it involves us in (like staring at and touching your phone as if it is an intimate friend), and the metaphors that dominate our imagination. He argues that Christian discipleship succeeds when we are shaped by God's stories, intentionally take part in practices that shape our hearts and imaginations in the Godward direction, and allow the right metaphors to shape our imaginations.

A good book for those who are involved in shaping spiritual formation for others.

[Zach Hollifield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really, really important. And will prove to be more so as we enter further into a post-Christian ministry context in the West.

[David Goetz · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are already quite a few excellent reviews of this book, so I'll be brief.

Smith is quite good here, if a bit repetitive. As one other reviewer suggested, some of the repetitiveness might be due to Smith's attempt to walk the genre-line between popular and academic.

In Desiring the Kingdom, Smith argued that the human person is a "liturgical animal"-- homo adorans, a worshiping being. I agree wholeheartedly. Scripture teaches pretty clearly that we become what we worship, which implies that worship bears tremendous formative power. He also makes regular reference to "secular liturgies," drawing our attention to how many Christians have been conformed to the pattern of the world because they've embraced a sort of Cartesian intellectualism and therefore have let their guard down and unconsciously imbibed alternative stories, alternative visions of the good life, through these secular liturgies. We need, in other words, to understand ourselves as bodied creatures.

In Imagining the Kingdom, Smith moves this project forward. He argues, basically, that any adequate liturgics requires both a kinaesthetics and a poetics. In plainer terms, if we want to understand how the human person is formed and re-formed, we need to understand both the impact that our physical postures and practices, enacted in our various communities, have on the way we see the world and also the power that stories have to constitute the self.

The first part of the book, which focuses on the kinaesthetics of the human person, seemed quite a bit richer to me than the second part. In that first part, Smith interacts lucidly with Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Bourdieu. In conversation with Merleau-Ponty, Smith demonstrates that our bodies possess a certain know-how that is by and large pre-cognitive. In conversation with Bourdieu, Smith shows that practices (Christian or otherwise) contain their own logic and consistently "extort what is essential from what is banal" (98). Again, really rich stuff here: I found myself writing in the margins on almost every page throughout this first part of the book. His side-bars, where he interacts with novelists and short-story writers and essayists, among others, were especially good in this first part.

The second part focuses more on the poetic nature of the human person. The basic insight is that form matters and that form communicates narrative. This has all sorts of implications. In one interesting section, Smith suggests that our physical relationship with our smart phones might create the same sort of dis-ordered thinking and living that watching pornography creates--namely, the thought and posture that the world exists to be accessible to me. He suggests that this narrative can be imbibed even apart from any particular content taken in through the phone itself; merely the process of touching one's phone, of drawing up information on anything under the sun at one's own whim--this shapes us in ways we don't carefully consider. But, mercifully, we can re-narrate ourselves. But we can do this only by adopting alternative practices that bear an alternative story and thereby inculcate an alternative habitus. In short, we need to consider how the liturgies of our lives are forming us into or against Christ, the perfect icon of the invisible God.

I'm very much looking forward to volume 3 of the Cultural Liturgies project.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read and enjoyed Desiring the Kingdom, even though it disappointed me in the end. I had lower expectations for Imagining the Kingdom and unfortunately I think Smith missed even those again. Not because his ideas are poor or unimportant. No, I think they are vital and necessary for the church today. Instead this hybrid book, somewhere between the academic and the popular, promised so much more than was delivered. What was delivered would probably make one good and thoughtful article. Our formation is a matter of imagination and habit. Worship and education need to be more than just intellectual/data transfers but instead form God's people to take the right things for granted.

Smith continues to do marvelous short readings of other literary texts, but they are not enough to carry this book along. Wasting the first half of the book on a quote-laden and repetitive recounting of French theorists (and I really do love a good recounting of French theorists) to support a vantage I had little argument with in the first place is not a good way to begin. It becomes all theory and not enough practice. If you want to begin with French theorists (albeit a different pair) - learn from Daniel Bell's method of succinct and to the point summary in his Economy of Desire, a book in a series Smith edits. In the end the first two chapters (almost half the book) really can be skipped by all but the most devoted. The final two chapters are more to the point, but like the first book it seems Smith does better describing secular formation (whether social media or consumer culture) than explaining how it might work for the church. At one point he includes a two page chart comparing liturgy in various traditions but does not explain its purpose or role. If it was supposed to be self-explanatory, it was not. That was not the only time I had that feeling as I was reading.

With all this criticism the book does remain provocative in its goal of shaping the imagination in worship and education. Christians do need to hear their Story and have their desires, imaginations and intellects formed by it. Just wish Smith gave us more playful and clear material to encourage us in doing that work.

[Ian Caveny · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is hard to sum up all that I'm thinking after reading Imagining the Kingdom. To tell the truth, Desiring the Kingdom was a light taste on my palate of something I longed to read - a story that I knew needed to be told, and, yet, I couldn't find it anywhere - and yet it did not fully satisfy. But, wow, did Imagining the Kingdom come through on its promise! James K.A. Smith wisely suggests that the philosophy readers focus on the footnotes (that made me happy).

Far more importantly than making philosophy readers happy, Smith proposes a brilliant (and excellently-articulated) account of human being-in-the-world according to Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Pierre Bourdieu that accurately takes into account the Christian claims of Christ's incarnation, the goodness of Creation, and our embodied existence. Hacking down the evangelical and mainline heresies of practiced-Gnosticism, Smith confronts the Christian reader with a bodily-founded epistemology, sourced in cognitive science (not to mention Piaget's constructivism), that provides a suitable critique of our rationalist (re: Kantian, re: Cartesian, re: intellectualist, re: unbiblical) presuppositions whilst also articulating a practical understanding of Smith's proposed "liturgical reasoning."

The "how" question takes on incredible significance as one begins to get the sense that we are always already being discipled into one or another form of discipleship. Our act of choosing is not that which disciples; it is that which chooses acts that disciple us. And, all-too-often, well-meaning Christian people choose acts with the intentions of being formed into Christian practices, but with the end results of actually becoming... less Christian, in practice. Smith navigates this tension incredibly well. He sometimes overemphasizes what he's not saying (because there are particularly influential critics who will inevitably take umbrage with him), but that's understandable.

Overall, the work is an intellectual and theological masterpiece and ought to be part of the required reading for any Christian theologian. Otherwise, I fear, we will all-too-often succumb to our pre-conditioned secularism and mis-understand the radical nature of the Christian church entirely.

[Jason Morrison · Rating 3 out of 5]

Resisted a 2 star rating because I like Smith’s project in general. Desiring the Kingdom was important for me 6 or 7 years ago, and after finishing For the Life of the World (Schmemann) I decided to revisit this trilogy. Some of the virtues of the Desiring the Kingdom are present here — a parental warning about the formative power of technology here, a jab at the liturgies of capitalism there.
Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the book is that it’s boring. But this aesthetic shortcoming is a byproduct of a theoretical problem.
For all the talk of “unconscious” this and that, the index of this book lacks a single psychoanalytic reference, and I doubt it’s because Smith is ignorant of that tradition. Foucault is also conspicuously absent, though not in some of Smith’s other work. But if the theory of practical and erotic formation Smith explicates (the book is more an introduction to a strand of phenomenology) is a kind of plea to cognitivists to read some fiction and poetry without reducing it to bastardized paraphrases of psychological and sociological doxa (the reigning ideologies of the day), it is impotent precisely because of these omissions. In fact, the endless repetition of “we are aesthetic beings!” becomes a dead end because convincing people of this using the masters’ tools is a doomed endeavor. To be fair, at this point I’m not really the target audience — if you don’t have the disease (cognitivism) you don’t need the cure. Still, I have to suspect this work falls flat due to a lack of imagination.

[Logan Vlandis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I *erotically comprehended* this book to a moderate degree.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all know that worldviews (hereafter w-v) are inescapable. Worldviews rarely move beyond the intellectual dimension. Smith doesn’t want to do away with w-v talk, but to place it within a larger whole. We are not simply isolated intellects, but situated intellects--situated and embodied. We are always embodied individuals and we experience the world as being-in-the-world (per Heidegger).

And we are not Gnostics. Rather, “The Spirit marshals our embodiment in order to rehabituate us into the kingdom of God (15).”

What is imagination? Smith defines imagination as “a kind of faculty by which we navigate and make sense of our world, but in ways and on a register that flies below the radar of conscious reflection” (19). This is why using concepts like “social imaginary” or “plausibility structure” is much superior to w-v. W-v rightly highlights the inescapability of presuppositions on our thinking. We do not deny that. Smith notes, however, that social structures and our bodily being-in-the-world also function in a “pre-theoretical” (per Dooyeweerd) manner.

Knowing in the Body and By Stories

Liturgies are not only aesthetic, but kineasethic. They come to us in the body and tell a story.

Perceiving by Stories

*Who we are is shaped by the stories we encounter and imbibe. “We live into the stories we’ve absorbed; we’ve become characters in the drama that has captivated us” (32).
*narrative trains our emotions and those emotions condition our perception of the world.
*we are not disembodied choice machines.

Smith aims to capture “the creational conditions of human action” (33).
Perception and evaluation are intricately linked.
*“Affect and emotion are part of the ‘background’ I bring with me that constitutes the situation as a certain kind of situation” (35).
*“Stories are means of emotional prefocusing that shape our tacit ‘take’ on the world” (38).
*Antepredicative know--the affective register upon which narrative operates--is processed by the body below the cognitive level (Merleau-Ponty).

Pre-cognitive perception breaks down the traditional epistemology of subjects and objects. "The world is not what I think, but what I live through” (Merleau-Ponty). Our being-in-the-world is between instinct and intellect (43). We aren’t just thinking-things. “We don’t have being-in-the-world; we are being-in-the-world” (44).
More on Stories

A story has a “flow” and “rhythm” that simply isn’t reducible to a string of facts. A string of facts is not a story. It’s a memo. No one dies for a memo. No one’s embodied life is transformed by a data brief. But people do die for the Story of Matthew, for instance.

“The material meaning of a poem means uniquely because it is meant on the register of motor intentionality” (Merleau-Ponty). Kineaesthetic and Poetics are interconnected.

Worship: Story as Liturgy

Smith doesn’t add too much on Reformed liturgies. He does apply his earlier insights into how it shapes stories, drawing on scholarship on John Calvin. We can rejoice that more Evangelicals are moving away from “3 songs and a lecture, 3 points and a poem.” People don’t die for that, either. So, good stuff here.

We live at the nexus of story and body--a “between” space where the aesthetic power of a story captures our imagination because it resonates with our body. And all good liturgies tell an implicit story. The Holy spirit reconfigures our neural maps.

Liturgy is a shorthand term for those rituals that are loaded with a Story about who and what we are (139). It is an imaginative social practice that captures our imaginations by becoming the stories we tell ourselves in order to live.

Criticisms:

Smith admits he has a hard task: steer a middle course between popular literature and the scholar. He kind of succeeds. His thesis is fascinating and I believe (literally) life-transforming. Still, one gets the feeling he is often “Dancing on the edge” rather than “diving in for the kill shot.” As a result, a lot of sections seemed to “go on” in a way that repeated earlier chapters.

[Joshua]

A more philosophical treatment of the liturgical anthropology introduced in Desiring the Kingdom. A bit repetitive at points, but a solid follow-up to DTK and quite good on its own.

Overall I'm quite sympathetic to Smith's project, but have a couple criticisms:

-Smith is focused on habituation, formation, and the like, and ITK is not presented as an exhaustive treatise on anthropology and ethics. But I would like to see more discussion of how mortification plays into formation. Smith speaks much of reorienting desires, but little about repenting of desires (my friend Peter Jones first pointed this out).

-With a book subtitled "How Worship Works," I expected a bit more unpacking of the sequence, actions, and implications of Christian worship. Smith doesn't really get to this until the last chapter and his treatment could have been more detailed.

[Zan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. Very dense. I wish I had followed this message better years ago. It seems like the kind of person you become largely depends on the the habits you form in all details ranging from big to small. Basically, this books makes me wish I'd developed more disciplined habits younger. And it makes me want that for my kids.

[Albert Hong · Rating 2 out of 5]

Wow, this was a labor to get through. Really provocative and inspiring premise, that we are formed more by environment and actions than our intellect (or at least as much as our intellect). I kept waiting for the application and was ultimately disappointed.

The large bulk of the book was completely inscrutable to me.

Read the 1st and last chapter and skip all the rest.

[Ned Bustard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this. It changed my thinking and impacted my imagination. My only complaint was some unusual typographic choices. I understand why the publisher designed the book this way but I found it worked against the flow of the book.

[Sebastian Vestergaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ekstremt vigtige pointer enhver formidler og leder bør kende til. Hvordan bliver et menneske dannet?

Imagining the Kingdom er James K.A. Smiths 2 bog i trilogien om hans liturgiske antropologi.

Mange ting går selvfølgelig igen fra første bind Desiring the Kingdom. Men første bind handlede om vores menneskelige væren-i-verden som primært engageret som aktører, der ubevidst hele tiden er styret af vores længsler og kærlighed mod det, vi forestiller os som det ultimativt gode. Påstanden er, at alt i vores liv er gennemtrængt af vores længsel.
Han udlægger i første bind, hvordan alle mennesker—kirken inklusive—er indhyllet, indlejret i et samfund med dets kulturelle “liturgier”, som basically bare betyder kollektive praksisser, der præsenterer os for et billede af det gode liv og vækker vores længsel, vores ubevidste affektive/passionale orientering i verden, mod det billede og dermed former vores vaner og handlinger.

Dette leder Smith til andet bind, Imagining the Kingdom, som indrømmet var sværere at komme igennem (på grund af to crazy fænomenologer, Merleau-Ponty og Bourdieur). Man er i selvsskab med mange vigtige tænkere igennem hans værker, hvilke præsenterer én for Smiths meget overbevisende teser og argumentation. Han har set noget, vi skal høre om.
Jeg mener oprigtig, at alle kristne ledere bør læse første bind.

Smith er en vigtig samtalepartner til den måde, hvorpå kristne skal forstå sine vilkår for at være i et samfund. Men også helt afgørende for, hvordan vi skal forstå, hvad gudstjeneste og liturgi er, og hvad disse gør ved os.

Vigtigst i andet bind er Smiths tanker om, at vores forestillingsevne er mere før-kognitiv og kropsligt forankret som en perception (jeg har lyst til at sige “fornemmelse”) af verden. Vi har brug for at få formet vores fornemmelse af verden for at kunne se den som Guds. Det kræver vanemæssig deltagelse i gudstjenestelig liturgi, hvorfor vores fornemmelse af verden vil blive “helliggjort”. Han bruger meget krudt op at vise dette, som munder ud i mange gentagelser undervejs.

Sidste del er helt vildt spændende, fordi han endnu engang (ligesom i sidste del af første bind bare med fokus på længslen) formår at vise, hvorfor vi skal gøre en dyd ud af vores gudstjenester, liturgi og være “refleksivt intentionelle” i vores udformning af samt deltagelse i disse. Gud former vores fornemmelse af verden, der vil udmunde sig i kristen levevis som kulturskabere og vidner om Kristi død, opstandelse og himmelfart i håbet om hans genkomst i herlighed.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Imagining the Kingdom: How Worship Works", builds off of the inaugural book in James K.A. Smith’s Cultural Liturgies trilogy. Two of the main themes of "Imagining the Kingdom" are our imaginations and our habits. According to Smith, much of Christianity, particularly some streams of evangelicalism, have prioritized an intellectualist approach to faith – the best faith is one that upholds correct, orthodox doctrine. Yet Smith contends that all human beings – Christian and non-Christian alike – are DESIRING creatures. He contends “Pedagogies of desire form our habits, affections, and imaginations, thus shaping and priming our very orientation to the world. So if a Christian education is going to be holistic and formative, it needs to attend to much more than the intellect…Attention to intellect is insufficient precisely because there is an irreducible, unique understanding that is only carried in practices – and it is this nonconscious understanding that drives our actions.” (p. 13). We tend to emphasize our conscious actions but actually, our unconscious is just as much a part of us as our conscious and most of our daily life is not lived out of the conscious; at the same time, the unconscious is not a “hard wired biological reality” but can be trained and formed” (p. 31-32). In other words, the habits and inclinations that have formed us train us to react to a situation in a certain way (p. 36). Another effect of a prioritization of the intellect neglects how we have been MALFORMED. Again, it tends to overestimate our consciousness.

To desire is to want something to happen or to want something that we do not yet have. If we are hungry we desire food but once our hunger is sated we no longer desire food. Sometimes we will obtain our desires, but I think we need to also pause and consider that our DEEPEST desires will never be perfectly fulfilled in this life. I think in evangelical circles we DO tend to speak about “being filled,” etc…but perfect fulfillment will only be enjoyed in the next life. I think this has relevance for questions of divine immanence and transcendence. If God is wholly immanent then we should expect to be filled in the present (I think we communicate a sense of immanence by when we domesticate God by making Jesus our “buddy” and ignoring some of the problematic passages of Scripture).

Smith explains the formative role of liturgies, stating:

“Liturgies are formative because – and just to the extent that – they tap into our imaginative core. As compressed narratives and tactile poems, the formative power of liturgies (whether secular or sacred) is bound up with their aesthetic force. Such liturgies are pedagogies of desire that shape our love because they picture the good life for us in ways that resonate with our imaginative nature. Over time, we are formed as a people who desire a certain telos because we have been immersed in liturgies that have captured our imagination by aesthetic means. This isn’t a matter of simply learning new ideas and content; it is a matter of TUNING. We are ATTUNED to the world by practices that carry an embodied significance” (p. 137)

Again, Smith asserts human beings exhibit a liturgical anthropology which “is rooted in both…an appreciation for the ‘bodily basis of meaning’ (kinaesthetics) and a recognition that it is precisely this bodily comportment that primes us to be oriented by story, by the imagination (poetics)” (p. 29).

God uses and enters by His Spirit into the practices and rituals of our liturgies. We are material creatures and so our spiritual formation cannot ignore our embodiment. Smith comments “our incarnating God descends to inhabit these practices precisely in order to lift us up into union with Christ. This is HOW our hearts are lifted up to the Lord and recalibrated to be aimed at the kingdom of God: through material practices that shape the imaginative core of our being-in-the-world” (p. 15).

However, Smith points out that this same process is at work in “secular liturgies.” Secular liturgies have ingeniously tapped into our embodiment as well and these liturgies can form us in ways antithetical to the Gospel.

As we acquire and hone our habits, we become “native” to the communities of which we are a part. Our habits become a “second nature” to us so that we act in certain unconscious ways instead of fretting, humming-and-hawing (p. 92-93). These habits seep so deeply into us and shape us that it becomes virtually impossible for us NOT to act according to our habits (p. 93).

Smith astutely points out the role of social media in our social imaginaries, using the example of Facebook, which he insists is “loaded with a Story about what matters, and who matters” (p. 148). I know that the more “likes” a post of mine receives, the more I think of it as a successful post and I confess I often strategically post when I can see a high number of my friends are online to maximize my chances of receiving a “like.” But as well, we use Facebook to show ourselves off – whether it’s our meal at a restaurant, our haul at the bookstore, or our vacation spot.

Smith insists our worship and formation must not ONLY be aesthetically pleasing but must “tap into our incarnate significance,” evoke a visceral reaction (p. 158). Related to this, Smith observes that there is a tendency (I think most common in evangelicalism) to view Christianity as a message that does not really require attention to form (p. 168). On the one hand, this has allowed Protestant evangelicalism to be wildly successful since one can input the “content” of Christianity into a variety of mediums – whether that’s contemporary Christian music, faith-based movies like "Courageous" and "Fireproof," or evangelical books. But, Smith cautions, “(perhaps unwittingly), we then treat the historical, received forms of Christian worship as a kind of disposable husk that can be shucked (and chucked!) as long as we keep the kernel of the gospel ‘message.’ When this distinction and attitude are wedded to our late modern penchant for novelty, we begin to approach Christian worship as an event for disseminating the message and thus look for forms that will be fresh, attractive relevant, accessible, and so on” (p. 168). Smith continues that though we think we are being missional by sanctifying mediums like rock music (“Why should the Devil have all the good music?”), we forget that this reduces “the gospel to a (propositional) ‘message’ AND (because of that) completely miss[es] the formative power of the forms themselves” (p. 168). I would contend there is something different about singing a hymn from a hymnal as a congregation accompanied by minimal instrumentation and the full rock-band experience and lyrics on the screen.

The main points raised in this book are the importance of our imagination and our habits in Christian formation.

[Joseph Bouchoc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smith highlights all of the “non-conscious ways we inhabit the world” and argues for the importance of formative, repetitive practices to shape our imaginations as Christians so that we imagine the world through the lens of the Christian story.

I think his main thesis is very important. If you’ve read Desiring the Kingdom, it isn’t surprising. I do think that there should be more intentionality put into it than just traditional liturgical habits, and it’s hard to practically understand how to begin to infuse my teaching, and other ministry responsibilities with they story of the Christian faith.

Also, I don’t think Smith is that good at summarizing difficult texts. In my opinion his summaries are just as difficult as the original texts, just shorter.

[Dustin Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent addition to James K. A. Smith's Cultural Liturgies. It's a bit dense in the beginning, covering some philosophical ground, but the book does an excellent job of unpacking exactly what the subtitle says: How worship works. The focus is on whole-body engagement as well as imagination and the form of worship. All leading to how God shapes us in worship.

[Jonathan Latshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not sure how much I actually disagree with here. But man, the form and writing style of this book made it a bit of a slog to get through. As has often been cited before, his intended audience is both the church and the academy. Instead of finding the sweet spot uniting both groups, the writing felt more like awkwardly timed swings back and forth between the two groups. I would just recommend people read “You Are What You Love”, which is excellent.

[Stephen Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

[I]f the gospel is going to capture imaginations and sanctify perception we need painters and novelists and dancers and songwriters and sculptors and poets and designers whose creative work shows the world otherwise, enabling us to imagine differently—and hence perceive differently and so act differently. (163)

Growing up I was often confused and conflicted about worship, and I was very nearly an early casualty of the “church music wars.” Choruses came into my life in a big way when I was young, and though they left me frustrated and uneasy, it seemed equally useless to argue for hymns. Arguing about music seemed pointless because both sides were beginning from differing premises. Worship was either a commodity to consume or a means of didactic instruction: was there better theology in the hymns or greater emotional (and thus "spiritual") resonance in the choruses?

Choruses or hymns—either way, it was still all about me. I remember feeling a hunger for worship—for something—that pushed me out of the spotlight and yet still did something fundamental to me that wasn’t just the addition of a certain feeling or information. I had lots of conversations with youth leaders trying to help me sort this out. (And it was patient mentors who kept me searching for answers within the Church, who made it clear that my questions were okay and that Christianity was big enough for me to find my answers within.) They explained that some people connected more emotionally and others connected more intellectually and that I just needed to find the right means of connection for me.

Part of me still agrees with this to some extent. I am an epistemological post-modernist: I hold that there are multiple ways of searching for and engaging with truth. I know enough of the history of human thought to recognize the validity of such a claim. But at the same time I felt (and continue to feel) there is something objectively lacking in much contemporary evangelical worship and that simply saying some people are too “intellectual” for worshipping that way doesn’t really work. Moreover, I think some of our forms of worship are doing active harm to those who practice them.

This is where James K. A. Smith’s second volume of his Cultural Liturgies series, entitled Imagining the Kingdom, becomes so incredibly helpful—for those who can wade through the philosophical apparatus Smith feels he needs to construct to make what seem like largely intuitive points. Smith examines the importance of forms of worship. Worship, he believes, is missional—it’s a call to action. But, as he spends most of the book explaining, the mistake most evangelical Christians make is assuming that humans are rational actors, that we act primarily on the knowledge that we have. If this is the case, then experiencing Christianity would be absorbing knowledge through hymns, sermons, Sunday School, etc. But this is not the case. Instead, worship, according to Smith, should be the education of our imaginations.

[P]erhaps the mind of Christ is also something that is acquired through practice and formation, something that emerges as a result of sanctification rather than an informational deposit. (114)

Smith marshals a host of psychologists and philosophers to argue for a philosophy of action based on something deeper than intellect, based on our “embodied knowledge” and habitus. He discusses this in a few different ways, but his argument at the core is one I think most would agree upon: that our cultural forms predispose our perceptions on a largely unconscious level and that every day we act on these assumptions prior to conscious thought. These “lenses” or “frameworks” (and Smith has to bracket a lot of his expressions in scare quotes throughout the work) Smith argues are shaped in two primary and related ways: through “embodied knowledge” and through narrative. The first is based on the fact that our bodies learn over and above our minds huge amounts of social and cultural cues that unconsciously effect our actions. He uses the example of learning to properly hold a fork or eat at the table. That physical habits embodies a whole spectrum of cultural and social knowledge that we learn by “feel” rather than intellect.

I “think about” the world second; first I’m engaged in it as an actor whose motivations and ends are practical and largely “unconscious.” It is habitus that is “the basis of perception” and all subsequent experiences. Indeed, in some significant sense, experience is only possible because of habitus. (83)

In regards to narrative, Smith argues that the stories were are taught (and the stories we embody) also inform our actions prior to conscious thought. The panhandler on the street, for instance: our initial, unthinking response is shaped by whether we have imbibed a narrative of personal responsibility and American opportunity or a narrative about generosity and the value of all as children of God. That narrative shapes our perceptions themselves, not simply how we chose to act on those perceptions. It is narrative that trains our emotional perceptual apparatus to perceive the world as meaningful. (108) Narrative is the unconscious framework structuring our perceptions prior to though. Story is the lingua franca of incarnate significance. (160)

[W]e have too often pursued flawed models of discipleship and Christian formation that have focused on convincing the intellect rather than recruiting the imagination. Moreover, because of this neglect and our stunted anthropology, we have failed to recognize the degree and extent to which secular liturgies [consumerism, nationalism, egoisms] do implicitly capitalize on our embodied penchant for storied formation. (39)

If all that is the case (and much of the density of this book comes from Smith meticulously building up this case in a rigorous fashion that unfortunately makes it largely inaccessible to the audience I think he’s aiming for) Smith argues that the role of worship is to shape our habitus, to form our embodied knowledge and structure our narrative—not simply by giving us knowledge but rather by having us participate in physical practices that form our perceptions on a deeper level than intellect. Worship shapes the imagination. That means that the forms of worship themselves, especially our physical postures, are important. They are not (and this is critical for Smith) neutral “containers” that can be whatever form (traditional or contemporary) needed to most effectively carry the important stuff, the content. No, the forms themselves embody and articulate perception and postures and aesthetic awareness that shape the worshippers.

[I]f we aim to form Christian actors and agents of renewal, then dispositional deflection requires sanctifying perception—for it is our bodily comportment (praktognosia) that constitutes the world in which we are called and moved to act. To shape perception is to transform action because we transform the “world” in which we find ourselves. . . . We need nothing less than a Christian imagination. (157)

This is where Smith’s argument finds its teeth, but unfortunately it comes very late in the treatise. And, just as most readers will likely agree with Smith’s emphasis on the importance of non-intellectual factors to shape perception, I think many readers would follow Smith here as well. We all knew this on some level, once upon a time. We were taught that you dressed a certain way on Sundays and that you behaved in a certain way in the sanctuary. You spoke in a certain tone. You didn’t run in church. We learned the rubric of reverence before we had the intellectual tools to understand it, and by so doing we understood certain things about our relationship with God on a deeper level than conscious thought. Yet somewhere along the line that embodied knowledge, that habitus, was thrown out because it was seen as legalistic, as divorced from the important stuff: the knowledge about Christ, which could just as easily (and perhaps more “effectively”) be delivered by a preacher wearing jeans and flip-flops.

But Smith’s point is that we have indeed lost something, that the forms are not neutral. I wish he would have gone into more detail here, as this is I think where his argument finds its application and could be a prophetic voice for the larger evangelical church today. He gives basically one example, which again is familiar to most of us, the idea of the consumerist form of worship being considered a neutral package in which to deliver knowledge of Christ but actually and unconsciously forming us to view Christ as simply another commodity to be consumed. I could add my own example from my own experience: the form of worship as emotivist appeal, training us to think of worship as both a form of performance and entertainment and shaping us to view our narrative with Christ through individualist, emotivist lenses.

Wide swaths of contemporary Christianity have bought into a specious form/content distinction: we have assumed that Christianity is primarily a “message” and is thus defined by a “content” that is distillable from historical forms. Along with this distinction comes the assumption that forms are basically just neutral containers for the message, selected on the basis of taste, preference, or cultural relevance. . . .[W]e begin to approach Christian worship as an event for disseminating the message and thus look for forms that will be fresh, attractive, relevant, accessible, and so on.
. . .[S]uch strategies are inherently “intellectualist,” both because they reduce the gospel to a (propositional) “message” and (because of that) completely miss the formative power of the forms themselves. Because such “relevant” paradigms are unwittingly intellectualist, they fail to appreciate that we are liturgical animals shaped by practices that work on our cognitive unconscious. And so they also fail to appreciate that these forms are not neutral; the forms of the mall or coffee shop are not just benign containers that can carry any content. These forms are already “aimed and loaded”: they carry their own teleological orientation and come loaded with a complex of rituals and practices that carry a vision of the good life. So while we might think that reconfiguring worship to feel like the mall is a way of making Jesus relevant and accessible, in fact we are unwittingly teaching worshipers and seekers to treat Jesus like any other commodity they encounter in the mall, because the very form of the mall’s (“secular”) liturgy unconsciously trains us to relate to the world as consumers. (168-9)

I think Smith is largely correct in his evaluation, but I wish his treatment would have been one that was aimed for a more popular than academic audience. Most Christian thinkers who make it through this book would agree with Smith, but most worship leaders who really need to grapple with the concepts he’s laying out would likely be turned off by the length to which he goes to make them academically rigorous. The appeal to the forms of worship here and their urgency for the Church is real, but it gets rather lost (ironically) in a thicket of intellectual discourse, despite James’s valiant attempts to connect the concepts throughout with examples from contemporary poetry, literature, and film.

[Aaron Wine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jamie Smith continues his Cultural Liturgies trilogy by responding to the criticism of his first volume. In Desiring the Kingdom, Smith makes an intellectual argument to persuade the reader that intellect is not ultimate. It's an interesting critique, and one that he notes presents some issues. But, as he argues in this book, this philosophy of anthropology is not an either/or endeavor. Rather, we can become informed of the formative power of our practices so that our practices are even more formative.

Smith begins the book by showing that human being cannot not worship. So, then, the point of holistic Christian discipleship is not merely a transforming of the mind, but a reorienting of the heart. There is a kind of "understanding" in our bones, so to speak, that directs both how we contemplate reality and how we act within it. So, Smith embarks on a journey to build up the reader's lexicon through the work of Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu. First, we get the language of perception, a kind of "know-how" that exists in between our minds and our bodies, our reason and our instinct. Perception is what makes meaning of the world around us. And this perception is not static: it is constantly being formed and reformed through the various stimuli of reality. Perception is not merely reflex, or instinct. Rather, it is that "know-how" that leads us to wave our hands at a person when we want their attention, although we didn't think through the action before our bodies exercised it. Our perception creates "horizons" or "backgrounds" that map out reality so that we might live in it.

Smith uses the case study of Schneider, the victim of brain trauma, to help define perception. His mind and body are, in a sense, separated. He can listen to a story and regurgitate propositional facts, but he is simply unable to locate himself in a narrative. He cannot feel the truth in a story. This also explains the complete lack of sexuality. Anatomically, Schneider is in (relative) health). Cognitively, he is able to comprehend things that may be in front of him that usually produce arousal. But his body does not respond. He is utter objectivity. Something in between his brain and his body is missing or broken. To say it in another way, Schneider has lost his imagination. Merleau-Ponty calls this "praktognosia."

Regardless of what it's called, "it" is formed by habit. This brings Smith's original intent into the frame. Habits are the formative power that form and reform imagination, that shift our perception, that constitute different horizons or maps in which we live. And these habits are both kinaesthetic (regarding to movement, physicality, and location) and poetic (relating to story, art, etc.). Smith relates this to falling asleep. We "want" to go to sleep, so we prostrate our bodies and imagine being asleep, but we cannot simply make ourselves sleep. There's a kind of in-between reality going on between our actions and our thoughts that leads us to finally sleep.

Next, Smith introduces the reader to Pierre Bourdieu as one who believes that being wrapped up in the practices of a group, being a "native," is the only way to truly understand the practices and beliefs of that group. Being a native is to "unselfconsciously" act out the practices of a community. He coins the term habitus to describe " the complex of inclinations and dispositions that make us lean into the world with a habituated momentum in certain directions" (79). This habitus is also being constantly shaped. Smith deftly ties this idea to compatibilism; that while we do make free choices in life, they are nonetheless within the confines of a reality that is out of our cognitive control. A habitus "is a condition of possibility" (84).

In part 2, Smith expressed the begged questions of part 1: if our perception, or our habitus, is the seat of life formation, then how do we access it? How do "sanctify" our perception? First, we recognize that part of what it means to be human is to be situated into a story. We live as a character in the reality that we've imbibed. We must recognize that aesthetics and metaphor and art carry the weight of a "mode" of truth that propositional statements cannot carry. It's why a poem is greater than the factual content contained.

So, we go after the story. We aim to situate ourselves (through practices, through kinaesthetics) into a better narrative (poetics). Earlier development, with the aid of some kind of plasticity (114), leads to more effective results. The fact is, we are always forming ourselves in opposition to what has already been formed. It's not impossible for an old dog to learn new tricks, but it is exceedingly more difficult.

Still, we practice formation. And we do this through liturgy. Through these ritual practices, our horizons develop, and our imaginations are informed. Smith ends his book with a call to "Restory the world." The purpose of the church, or any Christian institution, is to gather so that they might send. So the church is centripetal in that it recenters us into life in the Spirit, but it is also centrifugal in that it propels us out into the world. Smith then leans on Boulton's work on Calvin, who argued for the "monkhood" of all believers. In other words, Christians should be following a different set of practices as they live in a fallen creation.

Smith argues for the importance of form (with nothing being neutral, like architecture). He writes, "gestures are not just something we do but that they also do something to us-that kneeling for confession is a kind of cosmological act that inscribes in us a comportment to God and neighbor, a way of being-in-the-world that sinks into our bones and becomes sedimented into the core of our being though the crackle of our old knees" (167).

Everything the church does forms our perceptions. How and what we do in the gathering matters. In all this, Smith calls for a formation of temperament that requires a specific environmnet alongside a specific propositional content. This requires repetition, which strikes unease in not a few evangelicals. But, that is the way forward to rehabituation.

Finally, Smith agrees with his critics. We do need to reflect on our practices. We do need to teach what we are doing. But that teaching is like x's and o's on a white board. The practice itself is more like putting on shoulder pads and stepping on to the field. Smith's point is that we must not exchange one for the other.

Powerful Quotes
"Cool, "objective" perception of the world will fail to properly understand the world and its call upon us-as the garden we are called to cultivate; as the tragic arena in which we are called to embody compassion and forgiveness; as the field of the Lord in which we are to both play and work, proclaim and praise. If we only learn to think "Christianly," we run the risk of becoming Schneiders: calmly and coolly seeing what's in front of us without perceiving what's at stake." - 62

"We come to "see" ourselves in a certain way, not by introspection or reflection, but because we have absorbed a narrative that now functions as the background drama of our existence. So it's not so much that I "see" myself in this way as that I act in accord with the character I've assumed. This is not an identity that I have chosen; it's more like an orientation I have assumed-a mode of comportment to the world that grows out of my implicit, tacit sense of who I am within an overarching story of the world. And such stories captivate and orient me not primarily didactively or instructively, but affectively and unconsciously: such stories are "understood" b the imagination at a "gut level" that turns out to be the incarnate core of my existence." - 127

On social media's formative power - "The competition for coolness never stops. She is constantly aware of herself-and thus unable to lose herself in the pleasures of solitude: burrowing into a novel, pouring herself out in a journal, playing with fanciful forms in a sketch pad. More pointedly, she loses any orientation to a project. Self-consciousness is the end of teleology." - 145-146.

On adapting common cultural aesthetics for churches - "So while we might think that reconfiguring worship to feel like the mall is a way of making Jesus relevant and accessible, in fact we are unwittingly teaching worshipers and seekers to treat Jesus like any other commodity they encounter in the mall, because the very form of the mall's ("secular") liturgy unconsciously trains us to relate to the world as consumers." - 169

"Christian worship needs to be an incubator for the imagination, inviting us into "the real world" by bringing us aesthetic olive leaves from the kingdom that is coming, helping us to then envision what it would look like for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven." 175, 178.

"If the Christian faith is a kind of temperament, then its formation requires the right environment. And if Christian education is going to form our sensibilities, then Christian churches, schools, and universities need the right wallpaper. They need to be environments in which the Story of the gospel is imaginatively woven into the entire ethos of the institution. And, while this clearly requires aesthetic and architectural intentionality, more important, it requires incorporating intentional, historic Christian practices of Christian worship as the "wallpaper" of a Christian sentimental education-not as mere pious decoration but rather as precisely the temperament-forming ethos and environment that shapes our affective comportment to God's world. It is the practices of Christian worship that should constitute the milieu in which we teach and learn, regularly weaving for us the tapestry of God's covenant faithfulness, immersing us in the Story so that we absorb it "insensibly, and without knowing the reason why."" - 181

The story on 184-185 is beautiful.

John Witvliet - "Spiritually speaking, the sin of hypocrisy is one of the most vexing antidotes to formation. In hypocrisy, our external actions are cut off from internal attitudes. We may even become well practiced at not meaning what we say or do"

[Jeremy Hendon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one helped solidify some things I’ve been thinking and wondering about for some time! There’s a lot to learn here on spiritual formation. Smith writes to both academics and to lay people which is a unique dynamic. This book made me want to read some of his other books too.

[Mathew · Rating 5 out of 5]

“When we worship on Sunday, it spills over into our cultural labor on Monday” (3).

Imaging the Kingdom is volume two of James K. A. Smith’s Cultural Liturgies series. I previously reviewed volume one Desiring the Kingdom. At the core, Smith argues, “[W]e are, primarily and at root, affective animals whose worlds are made more by the imagination than by the intellect—that humans are those desiring creatures who live off stories, narratives, images, and the stuff of poises” (xii). Smith’s stated goal is “the renewal of practice” (xvii). If the end of worship is action (going into the world) then we must “recruit our imagination” (6). Our imagination is what will grab our hearts as we go out into the world on the missio Dei. Love and our affections are at the center of his proposal (7).

Imaging the Kingdom splits into two neat parts. Part one reviews French theorists Mzerleau-Ponty and Bourdieu laying the foundation for his liturgical anthropology. Part two offers a more “tangible discussion” that the “theoretical toolbox” from part one furnishes (xvii). Part one is technical and more in depth as Smith explores Ponty and Bourdieu as a foundation for the more practical concerns of part two. I would encourage the average reader not to become discouraged as you read through. You may not catch everything, but these chapters are important as Smith connects all the links in part two.

One key take away. Smith argues again and again that many of our actions are not thought decisions, but more like embodied reflections of what we love (see below and also 106).

Read the entire review here.

[Adam Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been about six weeks since I have finished this book and I am still not sure how to write about it.

The general thrust of the book, that discipleship must be rooted in practice (liturgy) not just knowledge, I think is helpful and hard to counter. And I think it is important for Christians to really interact with the philosophical work at the beginning (even if it is a bit rough going at times.)

The second half is oriented not in the theory, but in the working out of the theory (although I am hesitant to call it practical because that seems a bit too trite).

My problem with the book is not really the book itself, but my own ability to make sense of the book. I am low church, not reformed, a part of a mega-church, with an intellectual (and introverted) bent. The coherence of Smith's vision makes theoretical sense to me, but practically in my background I am struggling with how that would really work out. I think I get his points about the Sunday morning worship but I am not influential in my church body so I can't really do anything about our worship (I would love it to be more focused on the sacraments, but that isn't going to happen soon.) I get his points about focusing catechesis on practice not knowledge (and when I teach my nieces and soon my daughter I will really try to make that the central place.) But my world is not as coherent and unified as Smith's vision of the world. So I am at a bit of a loss. I will try to read the first book in the series later this summer and re-read this again sometime in the fall and see if it makes more sense to me then.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/imagining-the-kingdom/ ‎

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I was at a bit of a disadvantage in reading ItK because I had not read its precursor DtK. But, my book club chose it so I read it anyway.

Smith presents some well thought out ideas about culture, liturgy, habitus, anthroplogy, philosophy, theology, worship, and more. Frankly, much more. It was like drinking from a fire hose in parts. I appreciated that Smith comes at worship from a completely different angle than I would ever think to take, but for a guy wired as I am it was hard to really get in sync with him on this book.

I was left with one big question and one small.

First, "OK, what Smith is saying seems to make sense, but HOW EXACTLY DOES HE RECOMMEND WE DO THAT?!?” I would have preferred more specific advice on what Smith considers a proper liturgy, proper form, etc.

Secondly, Smith seems to dislike "contemporary" forms of worship in favor of old school stuff. That's fine, but to me it seems like a pre-judgment, and not all that helpful to the contemporary man.

Part of me is glad I was forced to read this book, but it was a beating.

[Clifton Hickman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is everything that we do directly related to what we think or are we more teleological? Does what we do form us more than what we think? Do we cultivate affections through our everyday actions or does what we do form who we are? Most of the time, we put forth very little thought into our everyday decisions because we are liturgical beings. After all, the apostle Paul tells us to work out our sanctification instead of just think about our sanctification (Phil. 2:12-13). Sometimes actions produce feelings. This is the second book in Smith's series on how what we do is influenced more by our imagination being capture by story. Intellectual facts and thoughts do not capture our hearts as much as imaginative story.