Theology
Desiring the Kingdom Formation, Education, Liberation, 2nd ed.
James K. A. Smith CULTURAL LITURGIES
The first edition of Desiring the Kingdom has been widely used in a variety of educational settings. In this substantial revision, popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith rearticulates his core argument—that human beings are lovers shaped by litur- gies—for a new context. Smith helps us recognize the way cultural practices form—and deform —us. At the heart of Desiring the Kingdom is an account of Christian assimilation to rival gospels. In this new edition, Smith shows how cultural phenomena from the Apple Store to Instagram, from the football stadium to the frat house, immerse us in the liturgies of neoliberalism, turning us into consumers who confuse happiness with acquisition and consumption. When we fail to see cultural practices as liturgies, we end up turning the church into a den of robbers with the best of intentions, often in the name of “relevance.” This makes Smith’s account of Christian worship and education urgent. Reframing worship as a pedagogy of desire, Smith reframes liberal arts education as liberating. A holistic education will also be critical, teaching us to see through the smoke screens of ideology and liberating us from our unconscious captivation to idols. The goal is an education in character that, far from producing mere moral conformity, teaches us to want what God wants for the world. FROM THE BOOK This revised edition of Desiring the Kingdom reweaves the tapes- try of my argument by pulling a thread that was tacitly woven in footnotes in the first edition. As the first volume of the Cultural Liturgies trilogy, this project of a philosophical theology of culture was always meant to be in the service of cultural criticism. Desiring the Kingdom is fundamentally a work of constructive critique, what we might call a “critical theory.” Like all critical theory, it is funda - mentally a “reading” of practice (what we do instead of what we profess; how we live as opposed to what we say); and as a form of critical theory, it aims to animate a different form of praxis. In other words, both the topic and the goal of the Cultural Liturgies project is practical. This is why, ultimately, its hoped-for effect is liber- ation—liberation from covert cultural forces that have co-opted hearts and minds, making us subservient to ideologies bent toward pseudo-kingdoms and rival gods.
DECEMBER 2026 • 280 pp. • $27.99p • 9781540968838
James K. A. Smith (PhD, Villanova University) is the author of nu- merous influential books, including You Are What You Love , On the Road with Saint Augustine , How to Inhabit Time , and How (Not) to Be Secular . He is professor of philosophy at Calvin University, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed The- ology and Worldview. Smith served as editor in chief of Comment magazine (2013–2018) and Image journal (2019–2024).
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR YOU ARE WHAT YOU LOVE 224 pp. • $26.99c • 9781587433801
43
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease