PrefaceIntroduction: Beyond "Perspectives": Faith and Learning Take PracticeMaking the Familiar Strange: A Phenomenology of Cultural LiturgiesThe End of Christian Education: From Worldview to Worship (and Back Again)Picturing Education as Formation in Orwell's Road to Wigan PierElements of a Theology of Culture: Pedagogy, Liturgy, and the ChurchPart I: Desiring, Imaginative Animals: We Are What We Love1. Homo Liturgicus: The Human Person as LoverFrom Thinking Things to Liturgical AnimalsFrom Worldviews to Social ImaginariesFrom Spheres to Aims: Liturgical Institutions2: Love Takes Practice: Liturgy, Formation, and CounterformationWhy Victoria's In on the Secret: Picturing Discipleship at the Moulin Rouge"Thick" and "Thin" Practices: Ritual Forces of Cultural FormationFormation, Mis-Formation, and Counter-Formation: Liturgies Secular and Christian3. Lovers in a Dangerous Time: Cultural Exegesis of "Secular" Liturgies"Reading" Culture Through the Lens of WorshipConsuming Transcendence: Worship at the MallMarketing (as) EvangelismPicturing the Liturgy of Consumerism in The PersuadersSacrificial Violence: The "Military-Entertainment" ComplexCathedrals of Learning: Liturgies of the UniversityPicturing the University's Liturgies in Wolfe's I Am Charlotte SimmonsApologetic Excursus: The Persisting Witness of IdolatryPicturing Resistance in 1984Part II: Desiring the Kingdom: The Practiced Shape of the Christian Life4. From Worship to Worldview: Christian Worship and the Formation of DesireThe Primacy of Worship to WorldviewThe Sacramental Imagination: Resisting Naturalism and SupernaturalismPicturing the Sacramental Imagination in Graham Greene and Anne SextonExcursus: The Shape of Christian Worship5. Practicing (for) the Kingdom: An Exegesis of the Social Imaginary Embedded in Christian WorshipLiturgical Time: Rhythms and Cadences of HopeCall to Worship: An Invitation to Be HumanGod's Greeting: Hospitality, Community, and Graced DependenceBaptism: Initiation into a Royal Priesthood/Constitution of a New PeopleSong: Hymning the Language of the KingdomConfession: Brokenness, Grace, HopeLaw: Order, Norms, and Freedom for the GoodThe Creed: Situating BeliefPrayer: Vocalizing DesireScripture and Sermon: Re-narrating the WorldEucharist: Supper with the KingOffering: Kingdom EconomicsSending: The Great Commission as Cultural MandateWorship, Discipleship and Discipline: Practices Beyond Sunday6. A Christian University is for Lovers: The Education of DesireA New Monasticism for the University: Why Christian Colleges Should Corrupt the YouthChristian Education Takes Practice: Three Monastic OpportunitiesExcursus: Christian Worship as Faculty Development: From Christian Scholars to "Ecclesial" ScholarsIndexes

A Philosophical Theology of CulturePhilosopher James K. A. Smith reshapes the very project of Christian education in Desiring the Kingdom. The first of three volumes that will ultimately provide a comprehensive theology of culture, Desiring the Kingdom focuses education around the themes of liturgy, formation, and desire. Smith's ultimate purpose is to re-vision Christian education as a formative process that redirects our desire toward God's kingdom and its vision of flourishing. In the same way, he re-visions Christian worship as a pedagogical practice that trains our love."James Smith shows in clear, simple, and passionate prose what worship has to do with formation and what both have to do with education. He argues that the God-directed, embodied love that worship gives us is central to all three areas and that those concerned as Christians with teaching and learning need to pay attention, first and last, to the ordering of love. This is an important book and one whose audience should be much broader than the merely scholarly."--Paul J. Griffiths, Duke Divinity School"In lucid and lively prose, Jamie Smith reaches back past Calvin to Augustine, crafting a new and insightful Reformed vision for higher education that focuses on the fundamental desires of the human heart rather than on worldviews. Smith deftly describes the 'liturgies' of contemporary life that are played out in churches--but also in shopping malls, sports arenas, and the ad industry--and then re-imagines the Christian university as a place where students learn to properly love the world and not just think about it."--Douglas Jacobsen and Rhonda Hustedt Jacobsen, Messiah College; authors of Scholarship and Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation"This is a wise, provocative, and inspiring book. It prophetically blurs the boundaries between theory and practice, between theology and other disciplines, between descriptive analysis and constructive imagination. Anyone involved in Christian education should read this book to glimpse a holistic vision of learning and formation. Anyone involved in the worship life of Christian communities should read this book to discover again all that is at stake in the choices we make about our practices."--John D. Witvliet, Calvin Institute of Christian Worship; Calvin College and Calvin Theological Seminary