[Charles Alston Collins, Convent Thoughts, 1851]

Welcome to the homepage of James K.A. Smith, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Calvin College and currently a Fellow of the Center for Social Research at Calvin.

My work is undertaken in the borderlands between philosophy, theology, ethics, aesthetics, science, and politics. Informed by a long Augustinian tradition of theological cultural critique--from Augustine and Calvin to Edwards and Kuyper--I'm most interested in bringing critical thought to bear on the practices of the church and the church's witness to culture.

This intersection is embodied in one of my passions: the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelites (and other "aesthetes" from the period, including William Morris, John Ruskin, and Oscar Wilde.) Their work will be featured in the little "gallery" at left.

From the links above, you can link to information on my research, teaching, writing, and ministry. [For those interested in our trip to Cambridge, visit our Cambridge page, or see pictures of an excursion to Granada, Spain.]

Blogs: Fors Clavigera and What I'm Reading

• New article: "The Secret Lives of Saints," The Banner (March 2008).
• New article: "What Jesus Did: On the Incarnation as a More Radical Hermeneutics [on John D. Caputo's What Would Jesus Deconstruct?," Global Spiral 8.11, February 2008.
• "The Gospel of Freedom, or Another Gospel?: Augustinian Reflections on American Foreign Policy," Web Forum, Martin Marty Center [2007.12.04]
• "Lost in Translation," Books & Culture, November/December 2007
• New audio: "On Being Pentecostal and Reformed,"Chapel Talk, Calvin College [2007.10.01]
• "Loving Our Neighbor(hood)s: The Architecture of Altruism," in Comment Magazine, August 3, 2007
• Interview with me about Christianity and postmodernism in the Mars Hill Audio Journal, vol. 82 (Sept/Oct 2006) [a free bonus track is also available]
• "The Devil Reads Derrida: Fashion, French Philosophy, and Postmodernism," at Relevant magazine [2006.10.23]
• "Replacing Rallies with Revivals [on Greg Boyd's Myth of a Christian Nation," Christianity Today Online [2006.10.05]
• See my reflections on the film History of Violence in "Our History of Violence" at the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago
• Listen to my interview with Krista Tippett on the NPR program Speaking of Faith. The episode is called "Evangelicals Out of the Box"

• Le Monde, BBC, or The Globe & Mail for international perspectives on news, especially American foreign policy; Harper's, The Atlantic and Wilson Quarterly for longer views
• Visit the Christopher Hitchens website