Home > Author > James K.A. Smith
61 " What draws people away from traditional, institutional religion is largely the success of consumer culture — the “stronger form of magic” found in the ever-new glow of consumer products "
― James K.A. Smith , How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor
62 " When we gather, we are responding to a call to worship; that call is an echo and renewal of the call of creation to be God’s image bearers for the world, and we fulfill the mission of being God’s image bearers by undertaking the work of culture making. "
― James K.A. Smith , Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation
63 " we are witnessing to the fact that God’s action in the cross and resurrection has made it possible for humanity to be human, to take up their creational vocation "
64 " Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. "
― James K.A. Smith , You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit
65 " What if the primary work of education was the transforming of our imagination rather than the saturation of our intellect? And what if this had as much to do with our bodies as with our minds? "
66 " Because our hearts are oriented primarily by desire, by what we love, and because those desires are shaped and molded by the habit-forming practices in which we participate, it is the rituals and practices of the mall—the liturgies of mall and market—that shape our imaginations and how we orient ourselves to the world. "
67 " The core claim of this book is that liturgies[ 8]—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. "
68 " the Creator in whom we find our “rest” is only all too eager to welcome us into communion. "
69 " In short, God’s welcome is a gracious way of reminding us of our utter dependence, cutting against the grain of myths of self-sufficiency that we’ve been immersed in all week long. "
70 " This dependence and lack of self-sufficiency is then often affirmed horizontally, as it were, by encouraging the congregation to greet one another, expressing welcome "
71 " so too we extend mutual greetings because God has welcomed us. "
72 " How does that happen? I’m suggesting that Christian education has, for too long, been concerned with information rather than formation; thus Christian colleges have thought it sufficient to provide a Christian perspective, an intellectual framework, because they see themselves as fostering individual “minds in the making.”[6] Hand in hand with that, such an approach reduces Christianity to a denuded intellectual framework that has diminished bite because such an intellectualized rendition of the faith doesn’t touch our core passions. This is because such intellectualization of Christianity allows it to be unhooked from the thick practices of the church. When the Christianity of “Christian education” is reduced to the intellectual elements of a Christian worldview or a Christian perspective, the result is that Christianity is turned “into a belief system available to the individual without mediation by the church.”[ "
73 " so too we extend mutual greetings because God has welcomed us. As recipients of God’s greeting, we become imitators of God by extending welcome to our neighbors and brothers and sisters. "
74 " singing is a full-bodied action that activates the whole person—or at least more of the whole person than is affected by merely sitting and passively listening, or even reading and reciting texts. "
75 " In short, music and song seem to stand as packed microcosms of what it means to be human. "
76 " Second, singing is a mode of expression that seems to reside in our imagination more than other forms of discourse. "
77 " Music gets “in” us in ways that other forms of discourse rarely do. "
78 " A song gets absorbed into our imagination in a way that mere texts rarely do. "
79 " This knitting of song into our bodies is why memorization of Scripture through song is often so effective. Song soaks into the very core of our being, which is why music is an important constitutive element of our identity. "
80 " Third, the church’s music and songs constitute what Richard Mouw describes as a “compacted theology. "