Running Head: KINGDOM PRACTICALS 1
KINGDOM PRACTICALS
Tricia Williams
CLED 700
Dr. William England
KINGDOM PRACTICALS 2
Introduction
The language of spirituality has become common in the 21stcentry. A spirituality has
developed in reaction to formal and institutional religion, multiple spiritualities have become
viable options as modes of belief by which to navigate the world. Perhaps the most pervasive
form of spirituality, among the many on offer, is consumerism. Consumerism is a form of
spirituality in which we make meaning, create identities, and participate in communities through
acts of consumption. As a form of spirituality, consumerism has corresponding liturgical forms
which shape our beliefs, actions, and loves. “Having a form of godliness but denying its power.
Have nothing to do with such people” (2 Timothy 3:5). Richmond states, “One of the particular
ways in which the liturgical form of consumer spirituality competes with Christian faith is by
appropriating our attention” (2018). At the heart of Christian spirituality is God’s call to attend to
him as he speaks to us in his Word and in prayer. By appropriating our attention consumer
spirituality makes it more difficult for us to attend to God. One of the primary liturgical forms by
which consumer spirituality distracts our attention from God in his Word is advertising, shaping
our beliefs, actions, and loves according to the gospel of identity-forming consumption. By
contrast, Christian liturgical traditions represent a spirituality that seeks to shape our beliefs,
actions, and loves according to the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ by focusing our attention on
God in prayer and in hearing his Word. How, then, might the spiritual disciplines of prayer and
hearing God’s Word as shaped by Christian liturgies be a spiritual alternative to consumerism?
Summary
Smith takes to task the notion that education is primarily about “ideas and information,”
and that therefore Christian education is supposed to be about “Christian ideas,” about
developing “a Christian worldview, which is taken to be a system of Christian beliefs, ideas, and
KINGDOM PRACTICALS 3
doctrines” (Barry, 2017). Rather, he suggests that Christian education is, or should be, more
about formation than information: shaping our hearts and desires, our hopes and passions. He
vouches for imagination over intellect, for what we love over what we know. Foundational to
this conclusion is Smith’s insistence throughout the book that we humans are creatures of desire,
love, and affections before we are defined by intellect, beliefs, and doctrines. “This book argues
that we human creatures are lovers before and above all else, and that the people of God are a
community marked by a love and desire for the kingdom of God. I think we are primarily
desiring animals rather than merely thinking things” (Smith, 2009). Therefore, what constitutes
our ultimate identities what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are is what we love. The
True Self is who you are because of the divine indwelling, the Holy Spirit within you (Romans
8:9). This is the solid basis for human sacredness, and it cannot be violated without "grieving the
Holy Spirit who has marked you with his seal" (Ephesians 4:30). We are all tabernacles of God,
says Paul (1 Corinthians 3:16-17), which for a temple loving Jew was quite an affirmation. What
happened in the Christ, the Anointed One, is an announcement of what is happening in all of us
too. We are sons and daughters of heaven and earth, both at the same time. Much of the work of
enlightenment is to put those two identities together, just as Jesus did. More specifically, our
identity is shaped by what we ultimately love, or what our love as ultimate what, at the end of the
day, gives us a sense of meaning, purpose, understanding and orientation. The core claim of this
book is that liturgies, which is what he calls worship practices of all styles whether sacred or
secular shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most
basic attunement to the world. In short, liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what
defines us is what we love. Our ultimate love is what we worship. Smith describes what he and
others have termed “cultural liturgies”: habitual practices and institutions in our society that have
KINGDOM PRACTICALS 4
a powerful, though often invisible, formative influence on us “by being pictured in concrete,
alluring ways that attract us at a non-cognitive level” through media, for example (Smith ,2009).
These train the heart, as it were, to desire certain ends. We are thus lured unconsciously into
counter-Christian conceptions of what constitutes “the good life.” (The “Practices Audit” on page
84 is especially recommended for unearthing some of the formative influences going on in our
individual lives.) As an example of a “cultural liturgy” we are offered a fascinating view of a
modern mall and it allurements, through the eyes of “Martian anthropologists” observing such a
phenomenon for the first time. Smith interprets the mall as a temple, a place of worship for a
particular brand of consumerist religion. He wants the reader to see how pervasively and
persuasively the allurement and promises of the good life are accomplished through display,
lighting and, finally, purchase. What Smith calls the “education of desire” is extraordinarily
powerful in the mall. He mentions stadiums and media (television and films) as other such sites
where powerful cultural liturgies are enacted; and he points out that we are all being influenced
and formed daily by the cultural liturgies surrounding us. That means that Christian education
and discipleship are indeed counter-formation, combatting these contrary attractions that seek to
divert our desires and love. In other words, Christian instruction never occurs on a blank slate;
rather, in a fallen world, there is always a polemic and corrective aspect to it. Smith’s focus is
exclusively on North American culture and Christianity, and one might wish for a wider swath of
application. However, his principles would certainly apply cross-culturally: every community is
inculcated by a (probably unique) contextual set of cultural liturgies; and it is up to the Church in
each culture to be conscious of these, acting as a true counterculture when these influences draw
people away from biblical perspectives and priorities.
KINGDOM PRACTICALS 5
Critical Interaction
Spirituality can be defined as the cluster of attitudes and beliefs with corresponding conduct
that is appropriate to a given religion. According to Richmond, “The appropriate beliefs,
attitudes, and conduct of Christian spirituality can be referred to respectively as orthodoxy,
orthopraxis, and orthokardia” (2018). These three parts to spirituality, Richmond argues, “This
understanding of spirituality may also be described as liturgical. Liturgies are practices that
shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic
attunement to the world” (2018). Through the dynamic interplay of beliefs, attitudes, and
conduct, liturgies both reflect what is important to us while also shaping what matters to us. The
story that holds together the orthodoxy, orthopraxis, and orthokardia of Christian spirituality is
the appreciation of Christ, as expressed in Colossians 3:16: “Let the message about the Messiah
dwell richly among you, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, and singing
psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, with gratitude in your hearts to God”. Smith maintains that
this sort of needed counter-formation or reprogramming occurs most fundamentally and
powerfully through the rituals and liturgies of Christian worship practices. It is there, he insists,
that a person’s sensibilities are trained to recognize and discern “whatever is true, whatever is
honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if
there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise” (Philippians 4:8). Being a disciple
of Jesus is not primarily a matter of getting the right ideas and doctrines and beliefs into your
head in order to guarantee proper behavior; rather, it’s a matter of being the kind of person who
loves rightly who loves God and neighbor and is oriented to the world by the primacy of that
love. “We are made to be such people by our immersion in the material practices of Christian
KINGDOM PRACTICALS 6
worship through affective impact, over time, of sights and smells in water and wine” (Addison,
2018).
Smith subordinate’s intellect, belief systems, doctrinal convictions, and worldview to the
priority of worship. Not a top-down, ideas-first picture that prioritizes beliefs and doctrines
worldview, but rather a bottom-up, practices-first model that prioritizes worship as a practice of
desire. This is of course how Christian worship developed historically during its first
paracanonical, pre-creedal centuries, as Smith points out: “The people of God called out (ek-
klesia) to be the church were worshiping long before they got all their doctrines in order or
articulated the elements of a Christian worldview; and they were engaged in and developing
worship practices long before what we now call our Bible emerged and was solidified” (2009).
Smith sees this historical observation as intersecting naturally with his anthropological view of
desire over doctrine in human nature. Smith asserts that “We become disciples by engaging in
communal practices of communion, prayer, singing, and dancing” (64). The liturgy is a hearts
and minds strategy, a pedagogy that trains us as disciples precisely by putting our bodies through
a regimen of repeated practices that get hold of our heart and “aim” our love toward the kingdom
of God. Before we articulate a worldview, we worship. Before we put into words the lineaments
of an ontology or an epistemology, we pray for God’s healing and illumination. Before we
theorize the nature of God, we sing His praises. In this symbolic world, advertising functions as
evangelism for the consumer gospel. This evangelism is both seductive and misdirecting, as we
have seen; but it also drags us into a consumer mindset by overwhelming our ability to pay
attention in any sustained way to anything other than the consumer gospel it presents. We
experience this as a loss of silence, the condition that ‘makes it possible to think. Barry has noted
that new information technologies have had the effect that ‘advertising becomes harder to ignore
KINGDOM PRACTICALS 7
(2017). The result is that we have largely lost the ‘right to preserve our own attention and to
make our own decisions about how we spend it. With our senses so overwhelmed, it is hard to
avoid our beliefs, attitudes, and practices being shaped according to consumer spirituality.
Conclusion
This is an important book and rereading much of it in preparation for this review gave me
a deeper appreciation of Smith’s accomplishment. He demonstrates compellingly what is at stake
in Christian education in its broadest understanding. Christian education of course extends far
beyond the walls of the Christian college (his original audience), into the lives of individual
believers and of course into the local church; hence equally far-ranging are the implications of
this work for any of us involved with the work of discipling others, with the goal that we all be
molded “to be a certain kind of people whose hearts and passions and desires are aimed at the
kingdom of God” (Richmond, 2018). "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are
doing" (Luke 23:34). The false self is not really the bad self; it just does not know that there is
anything like a True Self. Your false self is basically the state of unconsciousness. Your True Self
is full consciousness, but it does take a while to get there. The classroom which kindles this kind
of growth, Smith argues convincingly, will be within the context of the practices of Christian
worship. As Addison has said, we are catechized by consumerism, we are drinking deeply at the
well of cultural liturgies, which are incredibly formative in our lives, whether we are aware of
that or not. That enculturation is of course taking place, in different ways, in every culture in our
fallen world. The implications, and the solution, are true in every culture and people group on
earth. The need for and significance of worship as a formative influence in our hearts, desires
and minds is incalculable.
KINGDOM PRACTICALS 8
References
Addison, R. (2018). Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 12(2), 81-92.
Barry, J. (2017). At the Heart of Christian Spirituality’. The Reformed Theological Review. 52
(1), 70-89
Richmond, A (2018). A Thirst for God or Consumer Spirituality? Cultivating Disciplined
Practices of Being Engaged by God. Spirituality and Social Embodiment. Oxford: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Smith, A. (2009). Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Grand
Rapids: Baker Academic.
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)
