Contributor

James K.A. Smith

James K.A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he has taught since 2002. Prior to that he was assistant professor of philosophy at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

Smith is the award-winning author of many books, including Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?; How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor; You Are What You Love; On the Road with Saint Augustine; The Nicene Option: An Incarnational Phenomenology; and How to Inhabit Time.

Smith served as editor in chief of Image, an arts and literary journal at the intersection of art, faith, and mystery, from 2019 to 2024. Before that he served as editor in chief of Comment magazine. His criticism and cultural commentary have appeared in a wide range of outlets, such as Literary Hub, Los Angeles Review of Books, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, America, and Christian Century as well as the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and New York Times.

A widely traveled speaker, Smith has lectured across the U.S. and in Australia, Korea, Sweden, Norway, France, Tunisia, and the UK.

World View

An annotated reading of your world.

READ

More From This Contributor

James K.A. Smith Jun 12, 2018 Social Isolation

World View

Ordinary Saints In January, our family lost someone dear to us—a surrogate mother God placed in our lives as a surprise. Sue Johnson lived next door with her daughter Melissa when we bought our first house in Grand Rapids. I can’t possibly describe what she became to...

James K.A. Smith Sep 1, 2017 A Church for the World

Renewing the Church for the Sake of the World

The fabric of civilization is unravelling, the barbarians have broken through the gates, and looming threats to society have left the ruling elite anxious, unnerved, looking for someone to blame. So they turn to Christians and the church. The scene will feel contemporary, but in fact it is the opening context for Augustine’s fifth-century apologetic, […]

James K.A. Smith Oct 22, 2015

Topics:

The State of Joy

What if we tried to assess the health of society, not merely in terms of GDP or a consumer confidence index, but in terms of joy?

James K.A. Smith Sep 1, 2015 Health Beyond The Hospital

Topics:

World View

An annotated reading of your world. Topics this issue include Calvinist vacations, a visit paid to the Clapham House, too-long political campaigns, praise for newspapers, and attacks on video games.

James K.A. Smith Jun 1, 2015 Inequalities

Topics:

World View

An annotated reading of your world. Topics this issue include policing, architecture (the physical kind), and a craftsman more interest in being a first-rate artisan than a wealthy businessman.

James K.A. Smith Jun 1, 2014 The Other Side of the City

World View

An annotated reading of your world. Topics this issue include the predicament of the architect; pumping stations treated like cathedrals; and the features of what might be called “Calvinist” parenting.

James K.A. Smith Dec 20, 2013

Topics:

Reading Culture Charitably

We need to remain attentively open to the Spirit’s gifts in unexpected places. When we do so, we might be surprised to find that even the empire is less disordered than we expected.

James K.A. Smith Sep 1, 2013 We Believe in Institutions

Topics:

World View

A number of us involved with Comment are indebted to the inimitable Calvin Seerveld, longtime Senior Member in Philosophical Aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto and author of the classic Rainbows for the Fallen World. Seerveld introduced many...

James K.A. Smith Apr 5, 2013

Topics:

A Divided Church for the Common Good?

Many of those concerned about justice have little time for the institutional church, while ecclesiologists are often suspicious of “justice” talk. Ephraim Radner won’t let these two groups keep ignoring each other.

James K.A. Smith Mar 1, 2013 Persuasion

Editorial: The Lost Art of Persuasion

We believe in persuasion as a mode of convicted charity—willing to meet one’s interlocutors where they are, while unapologetically hoping to change their mind.

James K.A. Smith Mar 1, 2013 Persuasion

Earning Your Voice

“I was a participant in a shared human enterprise, rather than a combatant against the enterprise. That was crucial.”

James K.A. Smith Dec 5, 2012 The story

Topics:

Redemption

(Originally published March 2010:) The Word became flesh, not to save our souls from this fallen world, but in order to restore us as lovers of this world.

James K.A. Smith Oct 19, 2011

Topics:

Dream Small

You don’t need me to tell you to dream big. But I do hope you’ll hear me when I encourage you to also dream small. Because that might be what really matters.

James K.A. Smith Mar 1, 2011 Letters to the Young

Topics:

Editorial: Apprenticeship by Correspondence

Those of us a little further down the road know that we could do nothing better than pour ourselves into this task, for the young come to the world with wonder, feel intensely the heartbreak of its brokenness, and still manage to muster kingdom-sized hope. We need...

James K.A. Smith Jul 30, 2010

Topics:

Show Me The World

Like in the book of Esther, God might not show up in a Charles Wright poem.