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.