I am still a few pages short of finishing Imagining the Kingdom. I will post my review next week. I am convinced that it is an important book for those that think about and plan both worship and spiritual development programs in the church. But it is not an easy book to read.
I think this review accurately captures the book and probably does a better job reviewing it than I will when I finally get around to reading it.
I don’t know if I’ve ever left a book more dog-eared and battered in less time than James K. A. Smith’s Imagining the Kingdom. Like his previous work, Desiring the Kingdom, Smith covers an immense amount of territory in an economy of well-written pages. Phenomenology, anthropology, theology, culture, art, poetry, liturgy, literature, Downton Abbey, and David Foster Wallace are all discussed with coherence.
As part of Smith’s “œCultural Liturgies” series, the book continues to develop an understanding of the person that accounts for the way imagination, desire, and story shape one’s way of being-in-the-world. For Smith, this results in a “œliturgical anthropology,” a vision of humanity that finds its fullest expression and most powerful formation in worship.
continue reading the rest of the review at The Gospel Coalition Book Reviews Blog