Desiring the Kingdom (): Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Cultural Liturgies Book 1)

by James K. A. Smith

While university brochures and hopeful (perhaps naive) parents might still think about the university as a place of “higher learning” in which big ideas and marketable skills are implanted in eager receptacle-minds, students and those who otherwise “sell” the university know that the university is much more (and sometimes less) than that. The university is an experience, a rite of passage, a glandular adventure, both a postponement of and a rehearsal for the proverbial real world. A ritual analysis of the university might be inclined to consider the official rites of the learning community: the robed, ceremonial events of convocation and commencement or the more mundane routines of attending lectures, writing papers, and taking exams. While these are certainly important and remain central, my sense is that it is the unofficial liturgies of the university that might be more formative.