How (Not) to Be Secular
How (Not) to Be Secular

Author: James K. A. Smith

Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

Published: 2014-04-23

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0802867618

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How (Not) to Be Secular is what Jamie Smith calls "your hitchhiker's guide to the present" -- it is both a reading guide to Charles Taylor's monumental work A Secular Age and philosophical guidance on how we might learn to live in our times. Taylor's landmark book A Secular Age (2007) provides a monumental, incisive analysis of what it means to live in the post-Christian present -- a pluralist world of competing beliefs and growing unbelief. Jamie Smith's book is a compact field guide to Taylor's insightful study of the secular, making that very significant but daunting work accessible to a wide array of readers. Even more, though, Smith's How (Not) to Be Secular is a practical philosophical guidebook, a kind of how-to manual on how to live in our secular age. It ultimately offers us an adventure in self-understanding and maps out a way to get our bearings in today's secular culture, no matter who "we" are -- whether believers or skeptics, devout or doubting, self-assured or puzzled and confused. This is a book for any thinking person to chew on.

The Church in a Secular Age
The Church in a Secular Age

Author: Silje Kvamme Bjorndal

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2018-09-20

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 1532632797

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How can the church navigate the challenges of our secular age? In The Church in a Secular Age, Norwegian and Pentecostal scholar Silje Kvamme Bjørndal takes on three dynamic thinkers, each in their own way, in search for insights to this question. Philosopher Charles Taylor offers the backdrop for the conversation, as Bjørndal carefully sifts out some of his most central tenets for understanding our secular age. Bjørndal then turns to the theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas and critically engages his notion of the church as a community set apart from our secular age. By bringing several of Hauerwas’s interlocutors into the conversation, Bjørndal manages to bring out both the acute relevance and the shortcomings of his ecclesiology. Thus, she finds that another turn is needed in order to offer a concrete, as well as creative, contribution to this ecclesiological conversation. Considering the undeveloped pneumatological undercurrent in Hauerwas’s work, it proves fruitful to engage the leading Pentecostal scholar Amos Yong and his foundational pneumatology. This engagement results in a shift of agency, from the community to the Spirit. And keeping up the dialogue with Taylor’s secular age, Bjørndal demonstrates how the Spirit’s agency is crucial for the church as it attempts to navigate the particular challenges (and opportunities) of a secular age.

Desiring the Kingdom (Cultural Liturgies)
Desiring the Kingdom (Cultural Liturgies)

Author: James K. A. Smith

Publisher: Baker Academic

Published: 2009-08-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1441211268

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Malls, stadiums, and universities are actually liturgical structures that influence and shape our thoughts and affections. Humans--as Augustine noted--are "desiring agents," full of longings and passions; in brief, we are what we love. James K. A. Smith focuses on the themes of liturgy and desire in Desiring the Kingdom, the first book in what will be a three-volume set on the theology of culture. He redirects our yearnings to focus on the greatest good: God. Ultimately, Smith seeks to re-vision education through the process and practice of worship. Students of philosophy, theology, worldview, and culture will welcome Desiring the Kingdom, as will those involved in ministry and other interested readers.

Ignatian Spirituality in a Secular Age
Ignatian Spirituality in a Secular Age

Author: George Schner

Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

Published: 2006-01-01

Total Pages: 137

ISBN-13: 0889206201

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While the textual focus of this collection of essays is the Spiritual Exercise of Ignatius of Loyola, the essays are much more than textual analyses; they deal with the tradition and institutions associated with Ignatian spirituality, with historical and philosophical perspectives on Ignatian spirituality, with the contemporary search for spiritual life. In addition, the question of the relationship of the contemporary believer to past events is addressed, as well as the question of the relationship between spirituality and ministry. The strong and effective combination of historical and contemporary concerns, as well as of textual and spiritual concerns, results in a volume of importance to students of religious history and of spirituality. The analysis of the Exercises and the discussion of spiritual direction will also be of great value to ministers and pastors—and to all those pursuing "spiritual life in a secular age."

Disruptive Witness
Disruptive Witness

Author: Alan Noble

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2018-07-17

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0830881093

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What should Christian witness look like in our contemporary society? In this timely book, Alan Noble looks at our cultural moment, characterized by technological distraction and the growth of secularism, laying out individual, ecclesial, and cultural practices that disrupt our society's deep-rooted assumptions and point beyond them to the transcendent grace and beauty of Jesus.

Imagining the Kingdom
Imagining the Kingdom

Author: James K. A. Smith

Publisher: Baker Academic

Published: 2013-02-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780801035784

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2013 Word Guild Award (Academic) How does worship work? How exactly does liturgical formation shape us? What are the dynamics of such transformation? In the second of James K. A. Smith's three-volume theology of culture, the author expands and deepens the analysis of cultural liturgies and Christian worship he developed in his well-received Desiring the Kingdom. He helps us understand and appreciate the bodily basis of habit formation and how liturgical formation--both "secular" and Christian--affects our fundamental orientation to the world. Worship "works" by leveraging our bodies to transform our imagination, and it does this through stories we understand on a register that is closer to body than mind. This has critical implications for how we think about Christian formation. Professors and students will welcome this work as will pastors, worship leaders, and Christian educators. The book includes analyses of popular films, novels, and other cultural phenomena, such as The King's Speech, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, and Facebook.

You Are What You Love
You Are What You Love

Author: James K. A. Smith

Publisher: Brazos Press

Published: 2016-03-29

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1493403664

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You are what you love. But you might not love what you think. In this book, award-winning author James K. A. Smith shows that who and what we worship fundamentally shape our hearts. And while we desire to shape culture, we are not often aware of how culture shapes us. We might not realize the ways our hearts are being taught to love rival gods instead of the One for whom we were made. Smith helps readers recognize the formative power of culture and the transformative possibilities of Christian practices. He explains that worship is the "imagination station" that incubates our loves and longings so that our cultural endeavors are indexed toward God and his kingdom. This is why the church and worshiping in a local community of believers should be the hub and heart of Christian formation and discipleship. Following the publication of his influential work Desiring the Kingdom, Smith received numerous requests from pastors and leaders for a more accessible version of that book's content. No mere abridgment, this new book draws on years of Smith's popular presentations on the ideas in Desiring the Kingdom to offer a fresh, bottom-up rearticulation. The author creatively uses film, literature, and music illustrations to engage readers and includes new material on marriage, family, youth ministry, and faith and work. He also suggests individual and communal practices for shaping the Christian life.

Wisdom from Babylon
Wisdom from Babylon

Author: Gordon T. Smith

Publisher: InterVarsity Press

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 083085326X

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What does it mean to provide leadership for the church in an increasingly secular context? Analyzing the phenomenon of secularization in the West and charting common Christian responses, this indispensable resource from Gordon Smith discusses the competencies and capacities essential for cultivating distinctively Christian leadership today.

Lost in Transition
Lost in Transition

Author: Christian Smith

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2011-09

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0199828024

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In Lost in Transition, Christian Smith and his collaborators draw on 230 in-depth interviews with a broad cross-section of emerging adults (ages 18-23) to investigate the difficulties young people face today, the underlying causes of those difficulties, and the consequences both for individuals and for American society as a whole. --From publisher description.