We like to think of ourselves as rational beings—thinking machines perched atop bodies of meat and bone. James K. A. Smith calls our bluff. We’re a lot more like desiring animals than thinking machines. If Smith’s anthropological insight is true (and he makes a compelling case), then education should pay attention to training our desires as much as it does informing our minds.

What if education was primarily concerned with shaping our hopes and passions—our visions of “the good life”—and not merely about the dissemination of data and information as inputs to our thinking? 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? (18)

If we are primarily desiring animals, then an examination of “worldview” is an insufficient way to understand the world. Worldview implies the cerebral paradigm. Smith is interested in drilling down through worldview to examine the liturgies—both Christian and ‘secular’—that direct our passions.

Smith’s use of the term ‘liturgy’ is broader than you might expect. Liturgies are “the sorts of practices that form us—that form our core or ultimate identities” (26). Before Smith explores the liturgies of the church, he unpacks the liturgies of the mall, the sporting event, and the university. Although he calls these ‘secular’ liturgies, he uses the term ironically, since “[i]f humans are essentially liturgical animals, and cultural institutions are liturgical institutions, then there are no ‘secular’ (a-religious or nonreligious) institutions” (88).

Smith’s uses a technique he calls Martian Anthropology. Imagine you were able to observe a common institution like the mall or a church for the first time from the outside (thus the Martian). What do the practices of these institutions suggest about those who participate in them? Smith makes the familiar strange and, in doing so, reveals some deep insights into the formative power of our cultural institutions.

Desiring the Kingdom is classic Smith—insightful and well-argued. He draws from popular culture as well as academia to build and illustrate his points. This book deserves a wide audience but is especially important for educators and pastors—those who seek to train people’s desires to point towards the Kingdom of God.

Smith, James K. A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Cultural Liturgies 1. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009.