Author JAMES K.A.SMITH
Publisher BAKER ACADEMIC
ISBN 978-0-8010-3577-7
Please note Baker Academic publishes this book and this indicates that it is indeed, something of a book with a good deal of content for those more used to the language of the academy. The subtitle is “Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation,” which, being interpreted basically means the book attempts to bring home the fact that the human ‘animal’ is essentially first and foremost a worshipper and not a thinker. Worship precedes worldview, and worldview, in the writer’s opinion, is the result of a dominantly cerebral activity. He attempts to counterbalance the “I think, therefore I am,” dogma and there is a lot of truth in the somewhat labored argumentation that brings this fact home. I think it is probably true that this author, who is himself a professor in Calvin College, is seeking to balance rather than rubbish the worldview emphases so popular in Christian colleges and schooling nowadays. This is a thought-provoking book. The things written here need to be faced fairly and squarely, especially by the more mentally geared Christian churches. We all know the use of ‘the head and the heart’ idea in church circles. “The truth only reaches and instructs the head but does not sink down into the heart” is the kind of expression of that. A bit simplistic perhaps, but we know there is truth in the statement. Then there is the opposite emphasis where we are to leave our minds at the door and ‘worship’ and experience the Divine ‘zap!’ An overstatement no doubt, but in this book we find some very reasonable arguments to help us consider these matters afresh. Some of what Smith writes is particularly geared toward presenting a different vision for Christian Schools and Colleges, one that does not simply emphasize a Christian Worldview but show how what he calls the ‘liturgies’ of worship that pertain in the professional sport venues and immense shopping malls afford graphic illustrations of how the human heart worships and works. We are given to understand that this particular book is the first of a series of three and I myself look forward to getting to read the other two when they are published simply because I think this author has something that is both challenging and relevant to westernized Christianity in particular.
