Grove City College welcomes distinguished Christian thinker James K.A. Smith to campus for a lecture at 7 p.m. Oct. 24 in Crawford Hall Auditorium.
Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin College, where he holds the Gary and Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview.
Trained as a philosopher, Smith has expanded on that scholarly platform to become an engaged public intellectual and cultural critic. An award-winning author and widely-traveled speaker, he has emerged as a thought leader with a unique gift of translation, building bridges between the academy, society and the church.
He is the author of a number of influential books, including “Desiring the Kingdom,” “Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?” and the best-selling “You Are What You Love.” The final volume in his highly acclaimed Cultural Liturgies trilogy “Awaiting the King” releases this November. Smith also regularly writes for magazines and newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Slate, First Things, Christianity Today, and The Hedgehog Review. He serves as editor-in-chief of Comment magazine.
Smith’s work gets to the “vision of human flourishing around which we orient our lives,” Dr. Colin Messer, professor of English and department chair, said.
“Is that vision biblical? Or does it animate within us a desire for individualistic liberal autonomy that looks very little like the New Testament vision of the Church? More broadly understood, this vision is crucial not only in the lives of individual Christians who are trying to live faithfully in this age, but also in the shape and spirit of Christian colleges like our own,”. Messer noted. “If the kingdom of God is radically counter-cultural, do we have eyes to see the ways in which we are too often caught unawares by the formative power of secular liturgies that seek continually to redirect our heartfelt loyalties to the worldliness of the world?”
In addition to his evening lecture, Smith will speak to students attending chapel at 9:25 a.m. Oct 24th in Harbison Chapel.