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

by James K. A. Smith

and a few philosophers to staff the local Starbucks.

Ouch

To be blunt, our Christian colleges and universities generate an army of alumni who look pretty much like all the rest of their suburban neighbors, except that our graduates drive their SUVs, inhabit their executive homes, and pursue the frenetic life of the middle class and the corporate ladder “from a Christian perspective.”

Such a transformation of Christian faith into a belief system unhooks Christianity from the practices of Christian worship, and thus keeps its distance from the radical revisioning of society that is implicit in Christian liturgy (see chapter

What’s the alternative? If Christian education is not merely about acquiring a Christian perspective or a Christian worldview, what is its goal? Its goal, I’m suggesting, is the same as the goal of Christian worship: to form radical disciples of Jesus and citizens of the baptismal city who, communally, take up the creational task of being God’s image bearers, unfolding the cultural possibilities latent in creation—but doing so as empowered by the Spirit, following the example of Jesus’s cruciform cultural labor. If the goal of Christian worship and discipleship is the formation of a peculiar people, then the goal of Christian education should be the same. If something like Christian universities are to exist, they should be configured as extensions of the mission of the church—as chapels that extend and amplify what’s happening at the heart of the cathedral, at the altar of Christian worship. In short, the task of Christian education needs to be reconnected to the thick practices of the church.

In doing so, the Christian university should contribute to the formation of radical disciples of Jesus who, while exploring the properties of protons and the surrealism of Dali, will have our desires (and hence knowledge) configured by the practices of Christian worship that prime us to be a peculiar people whose thick vision of the kingdom of God has led us to make baptismal renunciations of what the surrounding culture might consider “excellence.”

“It is clear that those who support Christian universities would be quite upset if the qualifier came to mean that the education students received might put them at a disadvantage for being a success in America.”[19] But at other times, I catch tiny glimpses that it could be otherwise: that perhaps a generation is coming that would see it as the calling and task of the Christian university to “corrupt the youth” precisely by making them citizens of the coming kingdom, thereby making them (thankfully) useless and unproductive for what currently passes for “society.”

The unique nature of residential higher education provides an opportunity to create intentional communities within the dorms that not only gather for Bible study and prayer but also engage in a range of full-bodied Christian practices, including liturgical practices such as prayerful observance of the Daily Office or “Divine Hours.”[22] Such intentional community could also include commitments to common meals; Sabbath observance; works of mercy in the neighborhood; weekly acts of hospitality for students, faculty, or those outside the university community; fasting together once a week; worship together at a local parish; a yearly service project; and more. Together these practices would constitute a rich fabric of formation that would nourish the imagination and prime the community for thinking Christianly in their learning and scholarship.

liturgical animals whose desire is shaped by material practices, how odd it would be to think a distinctly Christian education could be effected by what Bradford Hadaway calls “read and talk” courses.[27]