James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University, Michigan, where he holds the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology and Worldview.
He trained as a philosopher with a focus on contemporary French thought, Smith has expanded on that scholarly platform to become an engaged public intellectual and cultural critic. An award-winning author and a widely-travelled speaker, he has emerged as a thought leader with a unique gift of translation, building bridges between the academy, society, and the church. His most recent book, How To Inhabit Time was reviewed in en last month.
en: Tell me a little bit about how you came to faith?
JS: I grew up in Southern Ontario in Canada, and I did not grow up in a Christian home or in the church. I started dating Deanna, who is now my wife of 32 years, and it was actually through meeting her family that I first heard the gospel, though I think I had been primed to hear it. I’m reading Bono’s memoir, Surrender, and I think that U2’s 1987 album The Joshua Tree was almost like pre-evangelism for me – the sense of yearning and longing, looking for something more and ultimate. That sort of tilled the soil, so when I heard the gospel presented to me, it answered a longing and a yearning. Deanna’s family and the church community that she was a part of also embodied an embrace that I had been looking for, especially as somebody who came from a broken home with an absent father. There was an intellectual answer to questions I had, but also an effective embodiment of God’s love that I was drawn to.
