James K. A. Smith. Imagining
the Kingdom: How Worship Works. Cultural Liturgies: Volume 2.
Grand Rapids: Baker Academic. 198 pp.
$22.99, ISBN: 978-0-8010-3578-4.
James
Smith’s 2009 Desiring the Kingdom was
the first of a three-part series on envisioning ‘Cultural Liturgies’ to enrich
Christian spiritual and education formation.
Imagining the Kingdom
continues the narrative and exhortation, insisting that imagination must lie at the center of Christian formation. Smith’s Imagining
the Kingdom is arranged in two major Parts (Incarnate Significance;
Sanctified Perception) of two chapters each that follow a lengthy but necessary
introduction. In my estimation, there is considerable rich material to mine throughout Imagining the Kingdom, certainly too
much to cover in this review. Instead, I
will give a brief outline of Smith’s arguments, insights, and suggestions, and engage
a few essential elements of the book.
Smith’s
helpful Introduction (1-28) recaps thesis in Desiring the Kingdom. Smith
argues that humans are inherently liturgical creatures; if we do not worship
God (through Christian liturgies), then we will engage in secular liturgies
that set something else up as the object of worship. Hence, Christian education needs to be
formative, not just informative—shaping loves, not just teaching us what to
love. Accordingly, Smith insists,
worldview education is inadequate; we are creatures of desire and imagination,
not of thought or belief.
Smith
extends his anthropology, arguing that we are embodied, narrative
creatures. The shaping of our loves,
desires, and imagination thus happens primarily through the imagination (not
intellect) via story (not proposition).
“In short, the way to the heart is through the body, and the way into
the body is through story.” (14) Smith helpfully defines imagination (in terms
that echo C. S. Lewis[1])
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, and
specifically ways that are fundamentally aesthetic [bodily] in nature.” (19)
Part I
(Incarnate Significance: The Body as Background) focuses on the habituated
nature of the human body and the influence that bodily perception and
imagination have upon action. Chapter 1
(Erotic Comprehension) interacts approvingly with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.[2] Along with Merleau-Ponty, Smith argues that
an accurate anthropology embraces our embodiment and rejects mind-body
dichotomies in favor of “our ‘betweenness’ and . . . peculiar preconscious
knowledge.’” (43-44) Human “horizons” and perception of the world are neither
consciously thought through nor “hardwired givens.” (51) Instead, “I am
regularly ‘making sense’ of the world on a register that has nothing to do with
logic or . . . ‘intellectualism.’” (51) Thus, Christian education and formation
“will require attending to the formation of our unconscious, to the priming and
training of our emotions, which shape our perception of the world.” (38)
Christian formation is about proper and intentional teaching and training of
the body and its habits, not just imparting correct doctrine.
Chapter 2
(The Social Body) carries Smith’s anthropological embodiment into the social
realm, drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological theory of habitus.[3] Smith, through Bourdieu, rejects the twin perils
of intellectualism and determinism—seeing all of our actions as either
rationally chosen or mechanically determined.
A habitus, unlike an
autonomous decision or a determined action, is “a communal, collective
disposition that gets inscribed in me.” (81) A habitus is more than a habit; it is “the nexus of dispositions by
which we constitute our world without rational deliberation or conscious
awareness.” (82) It is the pre-theoretical lens through which we see the world
and our place within it; a “practical sense” that provides its own type of
logic that allows us to “feel” and understand life appropriately. Significantly, a habitus is socially inscribed—it is not an individualistic
construct, but rather the result of the rituals into which we are initiated. Finally, Smith notes that the development of
a habitus is largely unconscious and
primarily kinaesthetic.
Having
laid out his philosophical anthropology, Smith considers Christian formation in
Part 2 (Sanctified Perception). Chapter
3 (We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: How Worship Works) focuses on
the narrative nature of human beings.
Story moves us in ways that arguments and propositions cannot. Smith sees liturgies as “compressed,
repeated, performed narratives that, over time, conscript us into the story
they ‘tell’;” (109) hence the significance of intentional liturgics. Smith leans heavily on Mark Johnson’s theory
of narrative and meaning[4]
throughout chapter 3, noting particularly the centrality of metaphor and
poetics in connecting with the human imagination. A liturgy, Smith states, emerges from this
understanding: “Liturgy is the shorthand term for those rituals that are loaded
with a Story about who and whose we are, inscribing in us a habitus by marshaling our aesthetic
nature.” (138) Secular and sacred liturgies both “work on the imagination” to
conscript us to a particular vision of the good life (140).
Chapter 4
(Restor[y]ing the World: Christian Formation for Mission) brings the payoff of Imagining the Kingdom: Smith’s insights
and suggestions for renewing Christian education and worship to give a
significant place for embodied liturgies that enact the Christian story. Smith begins by drawing on John Calvin’s
vision for reviving social life in Geneva, noting that “for Calvin . . . the
way to ‘clothe’ oneself with the virtues of Christ was to be immersed in the
practices of prayer and worship.” (156)
Calvin wisely understood that Christian discipleship and formation
required bodily habituation and practice.
In rethinking worship, then, Smith notes several essential aspects that
have marked traditional Christian worship since the fourth century, and
expounds upon their continued importance today: bodily posture that comports
with the Story being told; meaning in liturgy that goes beyond the words spoken;
corporate engagement or involvement in expressing the truths embraced; the
necessity of repetition in worship to enable the Story of the Gospel to become
deeply entrenched in our very being.
As an
evangelical Baptist, I was both chastened and inspired by Smith’s exhortation
to repetition in worship. Smith notes
that evangelicals seem to have an “allergy” to repetition in worship, even
though we embrace its necessity in other areas (181). Smith correctly notes that such allergy stems
from three sources: Reformation Protestantism’s association of repetition with
“dead orthodoxy” and vain ritual; modernistic individualism that values
sincerity above all and thereby denigrates the repeated as unoriginal and
therefore inauthentic; and the postmodern culture of novelty, where the new and
innovative is automatically better than the traditional. Smith’s incisive critique reveals that my
worship tradition has much to learn from his liturgics.
Imagining the Kingdom is both rigorously thought-through and
winsomely written. Smith has the ability
to put complex thoughts and theories into both readable and beautiful prose,
making his book both pleasing and enriching to read. One of the most helpful aspects of Imagining the Kingdom is Smith’s
effective use of sidebars. He engages
with various cultural products in ‘Picturing This’ sidebars that illustrate
particular teaching points, and draws the reader into deeper reflection through
‘To Think About’ sidebars. While some
sidebars did not resonate with this reader (e.g., I did not relate to the Jane
Campion film ‘Bright Star’ on page 46), others were brilliantly engaging (e.g.,
Smith’s interaction with Nicholson Baker’s The
Mezzanine on page 103, and his thoughtful reflections on ‘Catching’ Sleep
on page 65).
On the
whole, Imagining the Kingdom is
insightful and beneficial. There are,
nonetheless, a couple of areas of concern I will briefly address. These are not intended as unmitigated
criticisms, but rather avenues for further conversation.
First,
Smith seeks throughout to dance on a tightrope constructed between notions of
‘autonomy’ and ‘determinism’. Smith
insists that cultural liturgies do not mechanically determine one’s actions—to
do so would illegitimately remove personal accountability. At the same time, he rejects notions of
personal autonomy or pure rational deliberation—the modernistic ideal of an
objective and free thinking subject. The
result is a delicate balancing act.
Smith seeks to appropriately nuance his position, but it is clear that
he is reacting against those who embrace (perhaps uncritically) the modernistic
ideal of human nature. Hence he (over-) emphasizes
the power that habits learned unconsciously exert in determining (influencing)
our actions. Readers who are in a
different intellectual context, perhaps a naturalistic context where embrace of
instinct and biochemical determinism govern academic dialogue, will likely
respond very differently to Smith’s thesis, desiring instead to (over-) emphasize
the role that unique Created individuals have in influencing or choosing their
direction and actions. In short, while
Smith seeks admirably to maintain the balance between the two poles of rational
autonomy and mechanical determinism, he too often leans to (falls on?) the
deterministic side.
This is
perhaps most evident in his powerful sidebar entitled “Picturing the
Limitations of Worldview: Reading Wendell Berry in Costco.” (9-10) Smith
confesses that he is intellectually convinced by Berry’s argument, but his
“habits” have not yet been co-opted or altered, because the habitus is not the result of rational
deliberation or conscious choice (hence he finds himself reading Wendell Berry in Costco, the antithesis of Berry’s thought). What is needed, Smith argues, is not to think
differently, but rather “to change . . . environment and practices, thereby
absorbing different habits and undoing old ones.” (10) When reading the sidebar (and several other
sections which mirrored the argument), I questioned Smith’s lack of room for
conscious deliberation in acquiring new habits.
First, I thought, we are rationally convinced that the status quo is
unhealthy; second, we see that there is a better alternative; third, we choose
a different model to pattern ourselves after; and fourth, we seek to establish
that alternative model as a new habit. Unfortunately,
none of these elements were present.
At the
very end, however, Smith turns to such considerations, laying out very much the
argument. Coming back to his Wendell
Berry/Costco example, Smith concludes: “Being convinced of the importance of
practice for ‘automating’ my behavior, I will then choose to submit myself to different rhythms and habit-forming
routines in order to rehabituate my wants and desires to a different telos.” (186) Smith’s conclusion finally
comes to an appropriate balance between thoughtful reflection and bodily habitus; but the balance needed to come
about 175 pages earlier than it did. The
majority of the book was unfortunately lopsided.
Second, it
seems that Smith often misrepresents or misunderstands what he alternatively
characterizes as ‘intellectualism’ and ‘worldview’ thought. His sustained critique is twofold. On the one hand, Smith insists that worldview
thought represents an unsatisfactory anthropology that dichotomizes mind and
body, elevating intellectual reflection above considerations of the body and/or
heart. Such intellectualism, Smith
argues, fails to do justice to the embodied nature of human beings as creatures
of God. On the other hand, Smith insists
that worldview is inadequate and insufficient for proper Christian formation.
Both
critiques miss the force of much contemporary worldview thought. Arguably the two most prominent contemporary
evangelical worldview proponents are James Sire[5]
and David Naugle.[6] Both emphasize the embodied and
pretheoretical nature of worldview, and the prevalence of Story in shaping one’s
heart-orientation, which then forms the center of one’s worldview.[7] Insofar as Smith does not provide examples of
intellectualist worldview thought which elevates mind and denies heart,
narrative, and embodiment, he seems to be constructing a straw man—a version of
worldview thought that does not exist in contemporary thought.[8]
Furthermore,
no worldview proponent that I am aware of suggests that worldview is sufficient for Christian
formation. Smith admits that worldview
thought is helpful and even necessary; he just insists that it is not, on its
own, adequate. I share Smith’s
perspective, but worry that this is another straw man. Smith does not cite any worldview thinker who
does suggest worldview is adequate or sufficient. It seems to me, then, that Smith could more
helpfully and consistently acknowledge throughout his book that he is setting
forth both worship and worldview as equally essential in Christian formation:
neither sufficient on its own, but both a necessary part of the process.
Fully and
finally, after all, that is what Smith is pursuing in Imagining the Kingdom. As
Smith says in conclusion: “The goal of liturgical catechesis is to invite the
people of God to a more conscious, intentional awareness of what we’re doing
and why we’re doing it when we gather for worship—and that intellectual
understanding will solidify as a conviction that then moves us to be committed
to immersion in the practices.” (188) It is essential to note, Smith says, that
“a truly holistic Christian education will be formation of both heart and mind,
both intellect and affect.” (190) To that end, all readers will be able to
offer a heart ‘Amen!’
While
there may be some unfortunate (and unnecessary) bumps along the road, Smith’s
destination is worth the trip. I highly
recommend Imagining the Kingdom to
all who are involved in shaping the hearts, minds, and habitus of Christians young and old, in the academy and in the
church.
[1] See, e.g., Michael Ward, “The Good
Serves the Better and Both the Best: C. S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in
Apologetics,” in Imaginative Apologetics:
Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition, edited by Andrew Davison
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012), 59-78. “For C. S. Lewis, the imagination is our
capacity to apprehend meaning. … In Lewis’s view, reason could only operate if
it was first supplied with materials to reason about, and it was imagination’s
task to supply those materials. … According to Lewis, imagination is simply
‘the organ of meaning’.” Ibid., 59-61.
[2] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans.
Colin Smith (London: Routledge, 1962).
[3] Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard
Nice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990).
[4] Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2007).
[5] James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview
Catalog, 5th edition (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic,
2009).
[6] David K. Naugle, Worldview: The History of a Concept
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).
[7] Thus Sire: “A worldview is a
commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a
story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially
true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously,
consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and
that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being.” Sire,
The Universe Next Door, 21.
Thus also Naugle: “A worldview,
then, is a semiotic system of narrative signs that creates the definitive
symbolic universe which is responsible in the main for the shape of a variety
of life-determining, human practices. It
creates the channels in which the waters of reason flow. It establishes the horizons of an
interpreter’s point of view by which texts of all types are understood. It is the mental medium by which the world is
known. The human heart is its home, and
it provides a home for the human heart.” Naugle, Worldview, 329-30.
[8] In Desiring the Kingdom, Smith does note a couple of such scholars; it
seems, however, that those scholars are not guilty as charged. For example, Smith cites Kenneth Samples as a
worldview thinker who advocates “thinking worldview-ishly and [emphasizes] the
importance of ‘worldview-thinking’ by putting the Christian ‘belief-system’ at
the center of our cognition because ‘how a person thinks significantly
influences his actions.’” Smith
argues that, for Samples, “A worldview is construed as a set of implicit ideas.”
Smith, Desiring the Kingdom, 32.
On the surface, Smith’s critique seems fair. Samples
emphasizes the intellectual component of worldview. E.g., “The word worldview refers to the cluster of beliefs a person holds about the
most significant issues in life . . . These beliefs . . . form a big picture, a
general outlook, or a grand perspective on life and the world. . . . A
worldview forms a mental structure that organizes one’s basic or ultimate
beliefs.” Kenneth R. Samples, A World of
Difference: Putting Christian Truth-Claims to the Worldview Test (Grand
Rapids: Baker, 2007), 20 (italics original). Passages like those certainly
demonstrate the centrality of noetic structure in Samples’ worldview thought.
However, Samples goes on to acknowledge that “worldview
perspectives involve much more than merely a set of intellectual beliefs.”
Samples, A World of Difference, 21.
Samples sees the importance of a deeper understanding of worldview that
includes more than its intellectual components. He simply wants to insist,
against detractors, that there is an
unavoidable rational aspect to worldview. Smith’s critique, then, misses the
mark in the main—Samples is no more guilty of construing worldview solely in
rationalistic terminology, than Smith is guilty of rejecting worldview thought
altogether. For the latter accusation, see Elmer John Thiessen, “Educating Our
Desires for God’s Kingdom: Review Article of James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview,
and Cultural Formation,” in Journal
for Education and Christian Belief 14.1 (2010): 47-53; and Smith’s
response, “Two Cheers for Worldview: A Response to Elmer John Thiessen,” in Journal for Education and Christian Belief
14.1 (2010): 55-58.
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