A Conversation with James K. A. Smith

[@janehalsall4971]

I was raised Roman Catholic, turned Pentecostal in early adulthood and now middle aged I am Reformed. Holistic gospel describes it well. A return to the original Catholic practice of which Peter was a rock.

[@ubergenie6041]

Amazing that there are no comments yet. Smith has quite an broad intellectual background and an equally diverse religious tradition. I'm anxious to get this book after hearing the interview. Midway in the interview an account is given about the failure of the Evangelical church that flattens out the Christian's spiritual formation. In effect truncating aspects associated with the sacraments. No doubt the modernist project achieves its zenith in churches that have become lecture halls. But my challenge, and I know that Smith's accounts were meant to be descriptive not prescriptive, is that the higher church experiences equally misses the mark of spiritual formation. Evangelicalism doesn't produce disciples. Anglicans and Catholics don't produce disciples. If one is not able to engage their neighbor of coworker the way Christ, Paul, and Phillip with the Ethiopian Eunuch, then you are not a disciple. We study to renew our minds, change our beliefs and enable new actions!

[@BigB8484]

Totally taking this material to lead my understanding of how to reform our conservative Anglican liturgy to fit with the society's hunger for mystical spirituality and holistic gospel.

[@dolgovyazik]

The title of the book is somehow already a misunderstanding of the problem. The whole challenge of secularism is that one cannot simply decide "not to be" it. It is not simply an alternative to all religious worldviews but the ultimate end of a certain religious worldview, namely Protestantism. It was when the protestants de-sacramentalized their theology - most emphatically in dis-enchanting the sacrament of the Eucharist - they turned it into secular theology. The elephant in the room here is that while Taylor's critique of the secular age is written from the perspective of the sacramental theology of the Catholic church, Smith's perspective comes from the perspective of the Presbyterian theology, which is a thoroughly modern project and thus inherently secular. If there is way out of secularism for the Presbyterians, which is a big IF, they would have to somehow return to the "pre-modern" forms of being, to the enchanted world of pre-Descarte. This means the protestants must become Catholics again. In other words, what Smith - the chair in Presbyterian theology - must really be calling for is the end of Protestantism. Smith needs to be far more honest than he has courage to be at the moment.

[@carolynwarner1469]

Don't be conformed to this world, the Lord says through Paul. We are to be in the world but not of it.