By James K. A. Smith
Desiring the Kingdom is a book for educators, but I think it is also a book for parents and students, and for the people who influence their educational choices.
Why?
Because Jamie Smith drives home this important point:
That education is not primarily a heady project concerned with providing information; rather, education is most fundamentally a matter of formation, a task of shaping and creating a certain kind of people. What makes them a distinctive kind of people is what they love or desire--what they envision as "the good life" or the ideal picture of human flourishing (26).
If so, parents and prospective students navigating the constellation of collegiate choices should weigh a college's "practices, rituals, and routines" every bit as much they do the educational acumen or pedagogical practicums. What is the vision of the good life they offer? A better job? More money? An out-of-this-world, four-year-experience? Smith is going to argue for something more:
Instead of focusing on what Christians think, distilling Christian faith into an intellectual summary formula (a "worldview"), this book focuses on what Christians do, articulating the shape of a Christian "social imaginary" as it is embedded in the practices of Christian worship (11).
This is not to say that information is not it important. It is. But information is runner-up to formation. And since it is, then those institutions that pride themselves on being distinctly Christian must examine their environments and formational practices just as carefully as the instruction they are giving.
My role as an educator:
Smith has me taking second and third looks at the talk I give to prospective students and parents. In Desiring the Kingdom he asks: "Just what is a 'Christian' education for?" In my mind I respond that our mission is educating Christian students to think and live a biblical worldview, and to proclaim Christ by serving him in the Church and society. But Smith asks a second important question, namely, "what is a Christian worldview?" He writes,
If we think about learning in terms of liturgy--pedagogy as liturgy--then I think we need a rearticulation of the end of Christian education, which will require a re-consideration of worldview-talk as it has come to dominate conceptions of Christian education (27).
Smith re-frames a worldview dialog that aims "below the head."
The core claim of this book 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. In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and, what defines us is what we love(25).
Smith postulates that behind every pedagogy is a philosophical anthropology, that is, how we function as a person.
What I appreciate about Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation:
1. The emphasis on the local church.
I appreciate this emphasis, not because I have decades of pastoral experience, but because of the way he postulates the primacy of worship to worldview. The church points us to Christ and worship of him as the summum bonum. The biblical narrative from Genesis to Revelation is Christ, and the church community, creed, liturgy, sermon and song all direct our hearts to that vision. And if so, how can the church be anything but primary in the Christian college experience. To put it another way, it is impossible to hold a Christian worldview that does not hold the church primary.
Smith is not advocating for gold-star attendance, but for the importance that--in the community church--God is disciplining your mind and heart for that for which you were made. I found chapter five, "Practices (for) the Kingdom" particularly enlightening. Read it. I think you will come away with a new appreciation for liturgical time, place, and pace; from the call to Worship to the Sending as Witnesses, God uses "church" to form a pedagogy of desire (204).
2. His emphasis on liturgy. Liturgy is formative, an embodied practice that shapes our heart (our "love pump") to pursue God (149). The university is a identity-forming institution, so (1) What telos does it "glorify"? What does the university want us to love? (2) What are the rituals and practices that constitute the secular liturgy of the university (104)?
3. The role of campus chapel. It is not "to stir our emotions or merely fuel our 'spiritual' needs; rather, it is the space in which the ecclesial university community gathers to practice (for) the kingdom by engaging in the liturgical practices that form the imagination" (224).
4. Pedagogy of desire. "Worship," writes Smith, "is not some odd, extravagant, extra- human thing we do an add-on to our earthly, physical, material nature; rather, 'worship is the epiphany of the world.' Worship is the ordering and reordering of our material being to the end for which it was meant" (143). Since worship is (or should be) the predominant educational focus, how we create space and place as well as foster that desire is a critical component of our pedagogy.
5. The emphasis on Christian faith as a form of life, not a set of doctrines (134).
My pushback:
My one pushback amidst all this praise has to do with the great commission. If the commission is worked out in "words and deeds," it seems Smith urges the deeds (witness by service), but misses the importance of using words (witness by proclamation) to call people to life in Christ. Paul writes, Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people (2 Corinthians 5:11 CSB). Re-read 205-207. I felt the call to passionate persuasion took a back seat to "not-so-simply" living as image bearers.
My recommendation:
James K.A. Smith has done for me what Neil Postman, David Dockery, Os Guinness, Alvin Plantiga, Nancy Pearcey and a host of others have done -- got me thinking about worldview. But Smith has provided the most compelling call to see worship as integral if not paramount to worldview, and consequently the pedagogy of desire as an essential component of biblical higher education. I heartily recommend Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation.
