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0403bc9
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To be human, we could say, is to desire the kingdom--some kingdom. To call it a "kingdom" is to signal that we're not talking only about some personal, private Eden--some individual nirvana--but that we all live and long for a social vision of what we think society should look like too. That's why there's something ultimate about this vision: to be oriented toward some sense of the good life is to pursue some vision of how the world ought t..
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James K.A. Smith |
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494e3b8
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Thus each household and family does well to take an audit of its daily routines, looking at them through a liturgical lens. What Story is carried in those rhythms? What vision of the good life is carried in those practices? What sorts of people are made by immersion in these cultural liturgies?
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James K.A. Smith |
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1d8218b
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We (allegedly) haven't "imposed" a normative vision of human social arrangements except the maxim "Be autonomous." The result? Erosion of family stability (especially for the poor) and widening inequality, exposing the most vulnerable to even more social threats, eviscerating the working class, and amplifying inequality--none of which looks very just, even if it is the result of observing a kind of procedural justice." --
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James K.A. Smith |
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7469c62
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But one of the dangers of eagerly diving in to the political sphere is that it tends to underestimate the strength of the currents already swirling around in that "sphere." In other words, such Pylesque eagerness tends to think of politics just as a matter of strategy (and hence getting the right strategy in place), as something that we do, and underestimates the formative impact of political practices, that they do something to us.16 It is..
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James K.A. Smith |
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61d527b
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In other words, the public practices of the empire are idolatrous practices because embedded in them is a very different telos, a rival version of the kingdom. The political refuses to remain penultimate.
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James K.A. Smith |
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dc42202
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Too many readers regularly overestimate Augustine's affirmation here and seem to regularly ignore his persistent affirmation that "justice is found where God, the one supreme God, rules an obedient City according to his grace, forbidding sacrifice to any being save himself alone" (19.23). Because this is de facto ruled out as a possibility in the earthly city (whose very origin is the misdirection of the fall), the earthly city can never be..
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James K.A. Smith |
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57998d1
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There is no politics that isn't ultimately religious.
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James K.A. Smith |
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c11a5b6
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But it is a principled pluralism because it simultaneously argues that all confessions and directional orientations should have the same opportunity and access. And so it ends up making a meta-argument for what I'm calling a kind of macroliberalism wherein a "just" society is one in which different confessional communities are free to pursue their visions of the good."
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James K.A. Smith |
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0d835d1
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As James Davison Hunter has commented, "There have never been 'generic' values."52 The issue is a kind of "sources of the self"53 concern: Does a secularized, post-Christian, increasingly antireligious society have the sources (formative communities) to engender the dispositions/virtues needed for "a modest unity" and a tolerant pluralism?"
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James K.A. Smith |
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dacfa98
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In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin makes this point with a Tocquevillian accent: in many ways the ideal of a pluralistic liberal society has lived off the borrowed (formative) capital of "illiberal" (mostly religious) communities--including the family--as incubators for the dispositions of good citizenship. But insofar as both liberalism and capitalism54 tend to devour and erode just these institutions and communities, they end up being..
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James K.A. Smith |
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a906a90
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So we don't shuttle between the jurisdictions of two kingdoms; we live in the seasons of contested rule, where the principalities and powers continue to grasp after an authority that has been taken from them.
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James K.A. Smith |
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7b5784d
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Christendom, then, is a missional endeavor that refuses to let political society remain protected from the lordship of Christ while also recognizing the eschatological distance between the now and the not-yet.
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James K.A. Smith |
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91f83d1
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The call to follow Christ, the call to desire his kingdom, does not simplify our lives by segregating us in some "pure" space; to the contrary, the call to bear Christ's image complicates our lives because it comes to us in the midst of our environments without releasing us from them."
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James K.A. Smith |
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10f9799
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Through his embedded experience in the Montgomery bus boycotts, Reverend King came to see the limits of Niebuhr's abstract public theologizing. "Abstractions cannot empower acts of compassion and sacrifice," Marsh summarizes, "or sustain the courage to speak against the day. Niebuhr's much-heralded Christian realism was about working out ethical problems within the framework of options provided by Western liberalism. It was not about having..
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James K.A. Smith |
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5c5f98a
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Marsh goes on to observe: "The boycott year had renewed the mission of the church. The boycott showed the world a church whose power stemmed from its deliberate discipline, whose moral authority was the hard-earned result of its suffering and willing to love the enemy--religious passions, it should be noted, that Niebuhr's thin ecclesiology could never embrace"
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James K.A. Smith |
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9af03e4
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One of the responsibilities of the pastor as political theologian, then, is to help the people of God "read" the festivals of their own polis, whether the annual militarized Thanksgiving festivals that feature gladiators from Dallas or the rituals of mutual display and haughty purity that suffuse online regions of "social justice." Our politics is never merely electoral. The polis doesn't just rear to life on the first Tuesday of November. ..
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James K.A. Smith |
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25e6adc
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Every political theology is exorcising demons--the question is which demons.
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James K.A. Smith |
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4c691ba
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The Godfather amounts to a visual parable of a challenge and critique that dogs the Cultural Liturgies project: while I extol the formative power of historic Christian worship practices, it would seem that there can be--and are--people who have spent entire lifetimes immersed in the rites of historic Christian worship who nonetheless emerge from them not only unformed but perhaps even malformed.2 Or, to put it otherwise: clearly, regular pa..
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James K.A. Smith |
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e8dbd7a
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If liturgy forms us by conforming us to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29), then why are Christians so often conformed to the world (per Rom. 12:2)?
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James K.A. Smith |
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47ee962
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Mark Hamilton is surely right when he points out that we "allow athletics to dictate to us what school districts we will live in, what jobs to hold, how to spend our leisure time, whom we marry, what activities we place our children in, how we will spend large sums of money, or with whom to socialize. It reaches into every nook and cranny of life. We give it a power over us."
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James K.A. Smith |
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0fc72e4
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So we have a twofold challenge to the social task of forging life in common: the deep, confessional diversity that shapes how we think about a life well lived and the norms for a good society; and the corrosive, antisocial forces--often fostered by the pseudo-community of the market and the state--that incline us toward Randian self-interest and self-preservation. Atlas shrugs while the ties that bind fray to breaking.
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James K.A. Smith |
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560a27f
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Radner rightly presses us to recognize that pursuing the common good with gospel integrity requires both a healthy state and an ecclesial anchor. For some of us, that will mean rethinking our tendency to vilify "the state" and its procedures. For others of us, it will mean revaluing the centrality of the church as our political center--a body politic whose worship includes the regular confession of her sins while at the same time laboring f..
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James K.A. Smith |
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1dcf1a4
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I think we should first recognize and admit that the marketing industry--which promises an erotically charged transcendence through media that connects to our heart and imagination--is operating with a better, more creational, more incarnational, more holistic anthropology than much of the (evangelical) church.
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James K.A. Smith |
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7e042f1
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As lovers--as desiring creatures and liturgical animals--our primary orientation to the world is visceral, not cerebral. In this respect, ancient wisdom about spiritual disciplines intersects with contemporary psychological insight into consciousness. The result is a picture that should lead us to appreciate the significant role of the unconscious in action and behavior.
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James K.A. Smith |
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af6210e
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there are no box seats at this table, no reservations for VIPs, no filet mignon for those who can afford it while the rest eat crumbs from their table. The Lord's Table is a leveling reality in a world of increasing inequalities, an enacted vision of "a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine" (Isa. 25:6)."
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James K.A. Smith |
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7740177
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Taylor is not only interested in understanding how "the secular" emerged; he is also an acute observer of how we're all secular now. The secular touches everything. It not only makes unbelief possible; it also changes belief--it impinges upon Christianity (and all religious communities). So Taylor's account also diagnoses the roots and extent of Christianity's assimilation--and hints at how we might cultivate resistance."
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James K.A. Smith |
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983d32f
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often we look for the Spirit in the extraordinary when God has promised to be present in the ordinary.
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James K.A. Smith |
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e5c009b
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Those formed by such liturgies then become the kind of people who pursue and desire that end. So if we are unreflectively immersed in the liturgies of consumerism, we will, over time, "learn" that the end goal of human life is acquisition and consumption. "What is the chief end of man?" the consumerist catechism asks. "To acquire stuff with the illusion that I can enjoy it forever."
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James K.A. Smith |
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d225555
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Our most revolutionary political act is to hope
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James K.A. Smith |
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137a268
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You can't just think your way to new hungers. While Pollan and Berry may have successfully recruited my intellect, their books couldn't change my habits. Such rehabituation was going to require a whole new set of practices. And while their arguments could be intellectual catalysts for me--epiphanies of insight into how my hunger-habits had been deformed--unlearning those habits would require counterformative practices, different rhythms and..
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James K.A. Smith |
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e11e64a
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Do we tell ourselves we're "just going" in order to guard against the disappointment of never arriving? Do we call the road "home" to avoid the pain of never being welcomed?"
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James K.A. Smith |
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cc4645b
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the distorted understanding of worldview that dominates current models assumes a rationalist, intellectualist, cognitivist model of the human person; as a result, it fails to honor the fact that we are embodied, material, fundamentally desiring animals who are, whether we recognize it or not (and perhaps most when we don't recognize it), every day being formed by the material liturgies of other pedagogies--at the mall, at the stadium, on te..
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James K.A. Smith |
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f6c5707
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But once, in the light and warmth of an autumn afternoon, this writer saw on the bench of a public square, in a poor Parisian suburb, an old and poor couple. They were sitting hand in hand, in silence, enjoying the pale light, the last warmth of the season. In silence: all words had been said, all passion exhausted, all storms at peace. The whole life was behind--yet all of it was now present, in this silence, in this light, in this warmth,..
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James K.A. Smith |
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e40b90f
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We need to think further about how a Christian understanding of human persons should also shape how we teach, not just what we teach.
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James K.A. Smith |
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fa22134
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a virtue is a disposition that inclines us to achieve the good for which we are made.
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James K.A. Smith |
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4b899d9
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Theology must be political if it is to be evangelical. Rule out the political questions and you cut short the proclamation of God's saving power; you leave people enslaved where they ought to be set free from sin--their own sin and others'. Oliver O'Donovan, The Desire of the Nations
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James K.A. Smith |
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46e8466
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Instead of the bottom-up emphasis on worship as our expression of devotion and praise, historic Christian worship is rooted in the conviction that God is the primary actor or agent in the worship encounter. Worship works from the top down, you might say. In worship we don't just come to show God our devotion and give him our praise; we are called to worship because in this encounter God (re)makes and molds us top-down.
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James K.A. Smith |
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c77ab4b
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The liturgy is a "hearts and minds" strategy, a pedagogy that trains us as disciples precisely by putting our bodies through a regimen of repeated practices that get a hold of our heart and "aim" or love towards the kingdom of God. Before we articulate a worldview, we worship. Before we put into words the lineaments of an ontology or an epistemology, we pray for God's healing and illumination. Before we theorize the nature of God, we sing h..
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James K.A. Smith |
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ca1db5c
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All habits and practices are ultimately trying to make us into a certain kind of person. So one of the most important questions we need to ask is: Just what kind of person is this habit or practice trying to produce, and to what end is such a practice aimed?
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James K.A. Smith |