Yorkshire, Place, and Faith

The Guardian has posted a wonderfully poignant little film that features Madeleine Bunting, (author of The Plot: A Biography of an English Acre), along with her son, as they visit her father's plot of land in Yorkshire--on which he built a marvelous chapel filled with his sculptures. (Unfortunately it can't be embedded here, but do follow the link.)

The mini-documentary does a tremendous job of capturing that tremulous English sense of "place" that suffuses Tolkien--a sense which is itself drenched with the mist and damp of grey northern skies. (The soundtrack is no small part of this.) It seems to me that Yorkshire is especially enchanted in this respect (but that's an effect of bias and my own sense of nostalgia for that place). It's also a reminder that the faith of England is much older than Anglicanism--and perhaps why the paganism of its tribal heritage was so well primed for the sacramentalism of Catholic faith.

The Tyranny of Email

While the writing is far from lyrical, and while the book feels a bit "padded," John Freeman's The Tyranny of Email deserves attention and discussion. In a way, it's going to tell you something you already know; on the other hand, it synthesizes this common knowledge into a compelling and convicting account of how bad our habits have become. Like Aquinas' treatises on the virtues and vices, it provides a taxonomy to name our sins, and that diagnosis could be a first step to becoming someone else. Indeed, I read it as an invitation to consider spiritual disciplines as the only suitable countermeasure.

I'm only part way through, but consider a couple of snippets. Who, for instance, can identify with this?

E-mail is addictive, it has been shown, in the same way that slot machines are addictive. You press the send/receive button just as a gambler pulls down a slot machine lever, because you know that yo will receive a reward (mail/a payout) some of the time. The best way to increase the chance of a reward is to press "Send" a lot. In one study, participants manually checked their e-mail thirty to forty times an hour.

It's true, isn't it? You just never know when you could receive that email that might change your life! And while you're waiting, clicking and clicking and watching and waiting, you're not doing anything that could change your life. (So yes, I need something like EA: "My name is Jamie Smith, and I am an email addict...")

Most compelling, though, is Freeman's diagnosis of what this does to the way we inhabit the world:

Working at the speed of e-mail is like trying to gain a topographic understanding of our daily landscape from a speeding train--and the consequences for us as workers are profound. Interrupted every thirty seconds or so, our attention spans are fractured into a thousand tiny fragments. The mind is denied the experience of deep flow, when creative ideas flourish and complicated thinking occurs. We become task-oriented, tetchy, terrible at listening as we try to keep up with the computer. The e-mail inbox turns our mental to-do list into a palimpsest--there's always something new and even more urgent reasing what we originally thought was the day's priority.

Freeman eventually counsels some practices changes of habit (e.g., don't check your email either first thing in the morning or late at night; check it twice a day; etc.). Well and good, and I'm hoping--praying like mad--that I could incorporate some of these into my own rhythms. But of course what we also need is a community that structures itself in this way, which changes its expectations about instanteous communication. We can't fight this tyranny on our own; it will require institutional change, and big ships are hard to turn.

I've Loved You So Long

Visiting prisoners has historically been central to the church's works of mercy (Matt. 25:36). Philippe Claudel's film, Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (I've Loved You So Long), pictures the challenge of a more rigorous call to compassion: welcoming the prisoner back home. The story centers around Juliette, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, who embodies the most haggard beauty, the most tired elegance, with downcast eyes that are nevertheless enchanted. The film is worth watching just for the first five minutes of her performance. But it is matched, I think, by Elsa Zylberstein playing her younger sister Lea who is the "host," the one who has loved her so long.

It would be difficult to give the sort of rich reading I'd like without doling out spoilers. Suffice it to say that this is a must-see--a powerful meditation on love as forgiveness, an almost Derridean enactment of love as hospitality even to "the monster." But it is also a profound study in the ultimate nihilism of autonomy, including the autonomy of the closed family unit unhooked from a wider community of support. This is not a beautiful tragedy; it is about the beauty of love in the face of tragedy, even evil--a filmic testimony to the fact that love is stronger than death, even stronger than murder.

The Problem with "Free Speech"

Michel Foucault's Fearless Speech is concerned with how parrhesia (free speech) became "problematized" in Greek democracy. But it doesn't take much imagination to start drawing analogies. Consider just this snippet:

"The problem, very roughly put, was the following. Democracy is founded by a politeia, a constitution, where the demos, the people, exercise power, and where everyone is equal in front of the law. Such a constitution, however, is condemned to give equal place to all forms of parrhesia, even the worst. Because parrhesia is given even to the worst citizens, the overwhelming influence of bad, immoral, or ignorant speakers may lead the citizenry into tyranny, or may otherwise endanger the city. Hence parrhesia may be dangerous for democracy itself (p. 77).

Could one imagine a better description of contemporary talk radio and its effects?

Peguy: The Mystery of Hope

Yesterday I was working through Graham Ward's (unfortunately neglected) book, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice and there discovered a snippet from Charles Peguy's poem, "The Portal of the Mystery of Hope" (1912). It was like I'd been waiting my whole life to read these lines:

From The Portal of the Mystery of Hope

By Charles Péguy

The faith that I love best, says God, is hope.

Faith doesn’t surprise me.

It’s not surprising.

I am so resplendent in my creation. . . .

That in order really not to see me these poor people would have to be blind.

Charity says God, that doesn’t surprise me.

It’s not surprising.

These poor creatures are so miserable that unless they had a heart of stone, how could they not have love for one another.

How could they not love their brothers.

How could they not take the bread from their own mouth, their daily bread, in order to give it to the unhappy children who pass by.

And my son had such love for them. . . .

But hope, says God, that is something that surprises me.

Even me.

That is surprising.

That these poor children see how things are going and believe that tomorrow things will go better.

That they see how things are going today and believe that they will go better tomorrow morning.

That is surprising and it’s by far the greatest marvel of our grace.

And I’m surprised by it myself.

And my grace must indeed be an incredible force.

~trans. David L. Schindler, Jr.

New Small Joy

I just recently discovered that Canada's CBC Classical is available as a radio "station" on iTunes (no doubt it's been there for years), and haven't turned it off since. Commerical-free classical music from across the centuries, by top-notch orchestras, with no annoying commentary. And the running line at the top of iTunes helps you keep tabs on what's playing, helping to discover new works and composers that catch your attention. It's a fabulous way to enliven one's own tired playlist and doesn't cost a dime. O joy!

Faith, Film, and Justice in Seattle

Those in the Pacific Northwest might be interested in this year's Faith, Film, and Justice conference organized by the good folks at The Other Journal. This is an annual event that hosts the Human Rights Watch Traveling Film Festival. The conference includes keynotes by theologians, ethicists and activists (including, this year, Kelly Johnson, Emmanuel Katongole, Rob Morris, and myself).

I'll be giving a keynote entitled "Fearless Speech, Courageous Eyes: A Theological Engagement with Freedom of Expression" as a prelude to watching the film, Burma VJ, which documents the work of news VJs in the closed country of Burma, tackling issues of interpretation and freedom of speech/sight.

See a list of the other films being screened and discussed.

Holmes and Naugle on "Desiring the Kingdom"

Two noted "worldviewists" (?) have recently responded to Eric Miller's review of Desiring the Kingdom. In letters to Christianity Today, Arthur Holmes and David Naugle both reply.

Holmes' response misses the mark, largely because he assumes that reading Miller's brief review is somehow sufficient to know what I actually say. One might have hoped that, were he so worried, he might have actually read the book. In particular, he misses the mark on two counts. First, he questions the charges I make against him. The problem is, his name nowhere appears in the book. Second, he assumes that he would not fall prey to my critique of the "lingering rationalism" in worldview approaches because he emphasizes a "perspectivalism" that recognizes the role of pre-theoretical beliefs. On this point, I should clarify that my critique does not reject "worldview" tout court. Indeed, I think some of the more historic articulations of worldview approaches are holistic in the way I'm pressing. However, as I argue in the book, emphasizing "beliefs" is not sufficient to avoid what Charles Taylor calls "intellectualism."

I appreciate David Naugle's defense--and he rightly points out that there are versions of a worldview approach that honor the sorts of concerns I articulate in Desiring the Kingdom. However, I don't share his concern about the title of Miller's review ("Putting Worldview in its Place"). I thought the pun was suggestive and appreciated that I wasn't rejecting worldview, but was trying to relativize the role of "control beliefs."

What Freedom? Whose Rights?

Oliver Sacks NYRB piece, "The Lost Virtues of the Asylum" (which will appear as the Introduction to Christopher Payne's photographic essay, Asylum: The Closed World of State Mental Hospitals) concretizes contemporary issues in political theology, particularly concerning the shape and effects of rights-talk. Without romanticizing madness or the asylum, Sacks nonetheless reminds us of the "sanctuary" that was provided by them. Originating in, and extensions of, cloistered life, work was a central aspect of the asylum--until the so-called defense of their "rights" and "autonomy" ended this so-called exploitation, turning these sanctuaries into palaces of passivity and atrophy. As he summarizes, recounting his own work in these institutions during this transitional phase of alleged "improvement":

Sadly and ironically, soon after I arrived in the 1960s, work opportunities for patients virtually disappeared, under the guise of protecting their rights. It was considered that having patients work in the kitchen or laundry or garden, or in the sheltered workshops, constituted "exploitation." This outlawing of work--based on legalistic notions of patients' rights and not their real needs--deprived many pateints of an important form of therapy, something that could give them incentives and identities of an economic and social sort. Work could "normalize" and create community, could take patients out of their solipsistic inner worlds, and the effects of stopping it were demoralizing in the extreme. For many patients who had previously enjoyed work and activity, there was now little left but sitting, zombielike, in front of the now-never-turned-off TV.

Radio Interview on "Desiring the Kingdom"

KTIS radio, out of Northwestern College in St. Paul, MN, recently interviewed me about my new book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. I hope it's an accessible conversation that helps folks get a sense of the argument and analysis in the book. You can listen to the interview online here.

"Thinking in Tongues" is Finished!

Well, after some (admittedly long) delays, I've just sent off the completed manuscript for my next book, Thinking in Tongues: Outline of a Pentecostal Philosophy. This will be one of the first volumes in a new series, "Pentecostal Manifestos," published by Eerdmans. (Concurrently appearing will be a monograph by Frank Macchia on justification. I think both are slated for summer 2010.)

As I note in the Acknowledgements,

When I once tried to explain this book to a friend who was not a Christian, I realized it sounded like the plot of a David Lodge farce. Indeed the very idea of “a pentecostal philosopher” has the quirky, whimsical makings of a Wes Anderson film or a Dave Eggers story (you know the sort of plot: “When a one-armed Jewish fashion designer is put in charge of a hog production plant in Pender, Nebraska…”). It’s easy enough to imagine a wizened Bill Murray or naïve Jason Schwartzmann in the lead role.

But I hope the book makes the notion of a pentecostal philosophy--or at least pentecostal contributions to Christian philosophy--a plausible, viable, constructive project. In many ways, this book is working in the wake of Plantinga and Wolterstorff, who carved out the space for distinctly Christian philosophy. I'm pressing that argument one step further, also trying to further the rapprochement between the Reformed anc charismatic traditions.

Here's a snippet from the Table of Contents that provides a bit of a glimpse into the book:

Introduction
What Hath Athens to do with Azusa Street?

Chapter 1
Thinking in Tongues: Advice to Pentecostal Philosophers

Chapter 2
God’s Surprise: Elements of a Pentecostal Worldview

Chapter 3
Storied Experience: A Pentecostal Epistemology

Chapter 4
Shattering Paradigms, Opening the World: Science, Spirit, and a Pentecostal Ontology

Chapter 5
From Beliefs to Altar Calls: A Pentecostal Critique of Philosophy of Religion

Chapter 6
At the Limits of Speech: A Pentecostal Contribution to Philosophy of Language

Epilogue
Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy

I'm lobbying the publisher to include the image at right as the cover image. This is a Rubens, "Teresa of Avila's Vision of the Dove," that hangs in the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. When we lived in Cambridge I used to take my kids there with sketchbooks for a quiet afternoon, so the image has some nostalgic significance for me. But in addition to the dove, the image also represents a persistent theme in the book--a resonance between a pentecostal philosophy and developments in feminist philosophy.

For now, I'm glad to have dispatched this and sending off into the machinations of editorial and production. I'll look forward to not seeing it for a while.

Next up: Letters to a Young Calvinist.

Gopnik on Ignatieff

"The Return of the Native," Adam Gopnik's report on Michael Ignatieff is, for me, a kind of literary perfect storm in which a swirl of my own interests coalesce: a cultural critic like Gopnik (an old favorite), talking about a Canadian political philosopher (who has risen to leadership of the Liberal Party in Canada) who spent years abroad, all ending in a closing scene at the Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ontario, our hometown of sorts. Of course, such a conflation also gives rise to all sorts of narcissistic longing ("Why couldn't I be writing this article?") and guilt-ridden introspection ("Should I be returning to my home and native land?").

The tale is a boilerplate classic: the return of the philosopher-king, from the abstractions of reflection and purity of philosophy, to the darkness of the political cave and the dirtiness of pragmatic compromise. But, despite my distaste for Ignatieff's stance on war, I found myself intrigued by his work and want to read his biography of Isaiah Berlin.

It also got me thinking about the possibility that we might be able to distill a uniquely Canadian contribution to political philosophy, or at least a uniquely Canadian sensibility, which Gopnik also finds in Charles Taylor. Gopnik (himself a Canadian ex-pat) sees this as a certain communitarianism:

[T]he belief that the right of the community can trump the rights of the individual--and that this is not incompatible with liberalism but exactly what humanizes it--really is a distinctly Canadian intuition. It is arged in different ways, and with different emphasis, by the influential McGill philosopher Charles Taylor--who, as an N.D.P. candidate in the 1965 elections, was defeated by the newcomer Trudeau in his first run for Parliament [never knew that!]--and by the essayist John Ralston Saul and the Queens University philosopher Will Kymlicka.

Food for thought. It's got me dreaming up an "interim" course on Canadian political philosophy, perhaps in Ottawa or Montreal (in January?!), focused on Trudeau, Taylor, and Ignatieff. But that's just in the dream stage right now.

But the article also showcases Gopnik's prose, and seemed to bring out a hint of nostalgia as he recounted their travel to Stratford, a nostalgia that is, I confess, contagious:

We drove through the beautiful and prosperous South Ontario farm country, with Suzssanna [Ignatieff's wife] riding shotgun, and the Canadian lawyer and literary agent Michael Levine behind the wheel. Though it was a lovely summer evening, some small residual breath of the fugue state that makes small boys lose their gloves for good--the sense of scale, of endlessness that is part of Canada--seemed to infuse the scene. Canada is a big country.

Universities and the Pursuit of Doubt

Drew Gilpin Faust's essay, "The University's Crisis of Purpose" is worth a read. While, in typical R-1 fashion, she seems to forget that universities are also about educating people, and not just the advancement of research, she rightly "deplores the growing dominance of economic justifications for universities." There are, she emphasizes, a whole host of social goods that the university serves. Most intriguing, I thought, was this suggestion:

Universities are meant to be producers not just of knowledge but also of (often inconvenient) doubt. They are creative and unruly places, homes to a polyphony of voices. But at this moment in our history, universities might well ask if they have in fact done enough to raise the deep and unsettling questions necessary to any society.

As the world indulged in a bubble of false prosperity and excessive materialism, should universities — in their research, teaching and writing — have made greater efforts to expose the patterns of risk and denial? Should universities have presented a firmer counterweight to economic irresponsibility? Have universities become too captive to the immediate and worldly purposes they serve? Has the market model become the fundamental and defining identity of higher education?

The university as producer of doubt (note the "also" in that first sentence), doubt for the common good.

I wonder if we could imagine Christian universities having the same role for the church's good--the Christian college as a space where, in psalm-like lament and questioning, we articulate those nagging late-night and early-dawn questions, those Abrahamic protests, those faith-full questions that can only arise for disciples ("How long, O Lord?"). Have Christian universities produced enough doubt? Have we sufficiently called into question our unquestioned assumptions--such as our automatic confidence that what's "conservative" must be right and good? Have Christian universities sufficiently resisted and questioned North American Christianity's complicity with economic greed, nationalist fervor, and possessive individualism? And in failing to do so, have we failed to serve the body, failed to love the church?

Might the production of doubt be the path to a more radical faith?

Summer Reading at Immanent Frame

The folks at the Immanent Frame have been hosting a series of posts on "Summer Reading," asking a range of scholars from the social sciences and humanities to look back on the their reading from the season that's passing, and to look ahead to what's in store for the fall. It's a wonderfully diverse array of interests and books. My contribution is included in Part III, but also check out Parts I and II.

Canadian Letters: Jameson on Margaret Atwood

I was only three lines into Frederic Jameson's review of Margaret Atwood's new novel, The Year of the Flood, when I clicked over and ordered the book. Sounds fantastic: Orwellian, McCarthy-ish dystopia suffused with "religion"--conceived in a way that stretches our categories (as I've been trying to do in recent work on methodological assumptions in sociology of religion). And the religion in question, Jameson notes, is "Americanism" (a religion on which I've commented elsewhere). Atwood is poised to see this, Jameson claims, because she writes from that forgotten outpost of English letters, Canada:

Yet there is a category into which she squarely fits and without which she cannot fully be understood, a category of which at least 300 million English-speakers generally need to be reminded: she is a Canadian, and no little of her imaginative power comes from her privileged position above the border of the lower 48. The Fall is not properly grasped unless it is understood to be a fall into Americanism, as the magnificent rant from Surfacing reminds us:

"It doesn’t matter what country they’re from, my head said, they’re still Americans, they’re what’s in store for us, what we are turning into. They spread themselves like a virus, they get into the brain and take over the cells and the cells change from inside and the ones that have the disease can’t tell the difference. Like the Late Show sci-fi movies, creatures from outer space, body snatchers injecting themselves into you, dispossessing your brain, their eyes blank eggshells behind the dark glasses. If you look like them and talk like them and think like them then you are them."

When the narrator was little, the idea of evil was Hitler; but in the world of grown-up violence and Nature, a more sickening metaphysics begins to develop: ‘The trouble some people have being German, I thought, I have being human . . . then I realised it wasn’t the men I hated, it was the Americans, the human beings, men and women both.’ It is a disease you can observe: ‘Second hand American was spreading over him in patches, like mange or lichen. He was infested, garbled, and I couldn’t help him: it would take such time to heal, unearth him, scrape down to where he was true.’ But ‘American’ is also technology, mechanisation, mass production: ‘The machine is gradual, it takes a little of you at a time, it leaves the shell. It was all right as long as they stuck to dead things, the dead can defend themselves, to be half dead is worse. They did it to each other also, without knowing.’

This then is the world of Atwood’s dystopia, for which, in this global near future, the term American is no longer necessary. Its colours have a loathsome pastel quality, like drugstores; its bunny suits and fluffy fabrics reflect the bad taste of infantile mass production; the bloody physical violence is that of cartoons rather than Hitler. If there is aesthetic pleasure here, it is that of a syrupy nausea that repeats on you; so that the end of the world has some of the cleansing, bracing effect of sand and waste landscape, of the seashore.

Philosophy: Harrowing Tales from "the Discipline"

Lou Marinoff provides a compelling peek inside the process a philosophy department goes through when doing a hire. (For example, while a position at City College CUNY might be a particularly coveted position, it's still jarring to read that they received 637 applications for 1 job.) This should be sobering reading for any young scholar contemplating graduate study in philosophy. It's also quite "convicting" reading for current philosophy professors since it seems that the search committee (and the institution) worked with exemplary virtue. But despite this, Marinoff laments that "[a]lthough we were privileged to obtain two hires, I feel a deep and abiding sorrow that so many dozens – indeed, hundreds – of talented and promising young philosophers will not be hired by anyone."

But I especially appreciated some of his reflections in the conclusion of the article. There he writes:

While philosophy is an excellent component of preparation for a variety of non-philosophical careers – from law to medicine, from journalism to international affairs – philosophy also has intrinsic as well as instrumental values that are, at present, grossly underutilized by our society and unrecognized by far too many philosophy departments themselves.

Many of our finest young minds are being educated by departments and institutions whose myopic “vision” of philosophy limits young philosophers to becoming permanently institutionalized in the academy . They are insufficiently versed in the myriad ways in which philosophy can be usefully applied outside the groves of academe.

I can only add my "Amen!" What is a particular travesty, I think, is when undergraduate philosophy programs get sucked into the same narrow professionalization of philosophy and fail to help students imagine a way of life other than that as a tenured professor. We do so not only in our professional advising but also when we teach undergraduate philosophy as prepatory seminars for studying epistemology and metaphysics at Rutgers. Such a limited imagination is nothing short of unjust given what Marinoff recounts at the beginning of the article--that only the tiniest minority of philosophers will ever land that sort of gig. But on top of that, we are neglecting the revolutionary potential of philosophy to equip a generation of activists who are not just sitting around interpreting the world but trying to change it.

For quite a different vision of philosophy as activist engagement rather than cerebral speculation and puzzle-solving, listen to Eugene Rivers' lecture presented to the January Series in 2004: "On Christian Philosophy and Politics in an Age of Terror."

Decadence, Aestheticism, and Grace: A Theology & Literature Course at Regent College

While summer 2010 seems a long ways off, I've already been thinking ahead as I've been working on the syllabus for a course I'll be teaching at Regent College in Vancouver. I jumped at the opportunity because this will provide a chance to indulge my interests at the intersection of theology and literature. The course will be entitled Decadence, Aestheticism and Grace: Christian Theology and fin de siècle Literature.

Here's a brief description from the draft of the syllabus:

While Oscar Wilde was on his honeymoon in Paris, he discovered A Rebours (Against Nature), a scandalous novel by the French “decadent” writer Joris-Karl Huysmans. This novel—detrimental to the imagination of Wilde—became the “poisonous” book of Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. And yet, the book had a strange ambiguity. As Wilde narrates, “One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some medieval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner.” The goal of this course is to explore that ambiguity. The decadence and aestheticism of literature at the end of the 19^th century seem to be scandalous antitheses of the Christian Gospel. But we will explore how these movements actually share much in common with orthodox Christianity. Thus these works are a kind of “back-handed” witness to the richness of God's creation, the need for redemption, and the enchantment of the world.

We'll be reading Huysmans' Against Nature and Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray alongside selections from Augustine's De doctrina christiana, Jean-Luc Marion's God Without Being, and Conor Cunningham's Genealogy of Nihilism. (I'm already hatching a sequel course that would tackle Cormac McCarthy, David Foster Wallace, and either Julian Barnes or Nicholson Baker.)

This will be part of Regent College's rich summer programming, which functions as an intellectual retreat in one of Canada's most beautiful locales. If you're interested, watch Regent's Summer Term page for updates.

Whose "God in the Quad?"

In the latest New Yorker, James Wood reviews Terry Eagleton's response to the new atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et. al.), Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. The essay, "God in the Quad," exhibits Wood's familiarity with (and even a kind of backhanded sympathy for) Christian theology (with a bonus, on-the-money side reference to Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre thrown in). While not as tight as his literary criticism, here's an essay on theology, by a critic, that could never have been written by, say, Edmund Wilson (who, despite his Calvinist heritage, seemed to have a tin ear for theology).

Wood is undoubtedly right: even Eagleton's response to the screeds of Hitchens & Co. ends up playing by their rules. And it was refreshing--but somehow expected--to hear Wood call out Eagleton on his lack of interest in the Incarnation. But as a devil's advocate for orthodoxy, Wood gets greedy on two counts.

First, the mission of the incarnate God was not "to secure us eternal tenure in heaven." This betrays an understanding of the story bequeathed to us by Hal Lindsey (or Karl Marx). As even the staunchly orthodox Bishop of Durham has argued, the telos of the Incarnation is a new earth. If the resurrection means anything (as Wood seems to appreciate), it means Christianity is a kind of materialism.

Second, Wood somehow convinces himself that the Incarnation--God's becoming flesh--amounts to idolatry. This is because he buys the slippery logic of Mark Johnston who mistakes idolatry and particularity. True, when God is "laden with" human attributes, created in our image, then idols are the result. But what if God takes on such finitude and particularity? If the eternal God gives himself in the Jewish Jesus of Nazareth (and admittedly, that's a big if), then the Incarnation is an act of condescension rather than the effect of human construction.

Things might be still more complicated.

Reading Habits

Someone writing an article on reading asked me a series of questions, a kind of e-interview, and because they were good questions, I thought I'd post the exchange here. Others might take up these same questions on their own sites. I'd be intrigued to hear about others' practices in this regard.

What is your approach to your reading? (For instance: How do you choose the books you will read? Do you make book lists? Are there any resources or people on whom you depend when you are deciding what to read? Do you have specific categories that you try to read from, or are you a more scatter-shot reader? What periodicals do you read?)

Good question. I don't feel like I have much of a system. I think one issue is the fact that I'm constantly trying to make up for the lack of a proper liberal arts education. That, and the fact that I really didn't start reading books until I was 18. My most passionate reading is not professional--the reading I want to do is in the areas of literature and poetry. And I guess I have a kind of implicit "canon" in my head that I've been trying to work through--a tacit canon that I've somehow absorbed through, well, reading! Over the years I've been trying to build a decent library from used bookstores, church rummage sales, etc., and so now I generally try to read in different "locales." For instance, I have a very loose policy of shuttling back and forth between American, British, (though the latter would also include colonial and post-colonial literature, like Salman Rushdie) and French literature (Balzac, Baudelaire, Flaubert)--with some "new" stuff mixed in (i.e., books that have just appeared, that are currently being reviewed). My professional reading is compelled by different sorts of obligations--my research requires that I keep up with certain developments, certain "hot" discussions, etc. Though I confess I find it harder and harder to get excited about this "obligatory" reading. I don't keep up the way I used to. (That might partly stem from the fact that I'm quite an unabashed generalist now, so I don't think of myself first and foremost as a specialist in French phenomenology anymore.)

As for periodicals, I subscribe to The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and we have a family subscription to Vanity Fair (which isn't the soft schlock you might think). I read the New York Times and The Guardian online each morning.

Professionally, I am a journal junkie and absolutely love the "Table of Contents Alert" services that are offered by most scholarly journals (and in most cases, offered free, though one needs a subscription to actually read the articles). This service sends the new Tables of Contents for each issue to my inbox. I probably subscribe to 25 of these, across a range of disciplines. It's fabulous.

Do you use any tools to plan or track your reading?

I keep a list of what I've read in the back pages of my Moleskin. I started this because my reading is quite eclectic, and I'd remember something, and try to recall where I'd read it, but because I read so many things at the same time, it was hard to track down. So now I note what I read, and when--though I'm not as careful about this as I should be. I should note that in addition to reading books and periodicals, I'm an irrepressible sampler. I'm just constantly dipping into books in my library, have books stacked everywhere in the house (the pile beside my bed regularly totters on the edge of toppling), and am not at all averse to just sitting with a different book for a few minutes. So I'm reading in my library all the time.

I also have kept a "What I'm Reading" blog at http://jameskasmith.blogspot.com, but I've not been very faithful with it, largely because I've put too much pressure on myself to make every post an exquisite review, which is unfortunate.

Do you take notes or write in your books?

Yes! When I was in college, I was averse to this, but I've been converted. I underline a lot and make marginal comments. But most importantly, I make the blank back page of the book a personalized "index" of sorts (I think I learned this from my teacher, Jim Olthuis). On those back pages, I highlight themes (with page numbers) that I'll want to come back to, draw connections, make notes to myself, etc. This makes it easier for me to come back to a book later and dive back into it for writing purposes.

How many books do you typically read in a year?

Hmmm...no idea. From this list http://jameskasmith.blogspot.com/2008/12/2008-retrospective-reading-list.html I'd guess about 30, but this list doesn't include the books I read for "professional" purposes.

Do you set aside time each day or week to read?

Any 3 minutes not doing something else is time to read! (And yes, this is a point of some marital and parental tension sometimes!) I don't have a dedicated block, except perhaps the end of the day, when my wife and I are very happy to crawl into bed early (around 10:30) and read til about midnight. Fortunately my wife is an avid reader, too, so the TV is off most evenings, and by the time we've dispatched the kids to bed, we're ready to unwind just reading. But I also read whenever I can (I always take a book with me when we're running errands as a family, though I ask permission first). I stopped taking books to kids soccer games because it made me inattentive. But in general, I have a book (or at least a magazine) in my hand.

What technologies do you use to aid your reading? (Audiobooks? Websites? Project Gutenberg? Kindle?)

I guess the Table of Contents Alerts I mentioned would fall under this category. I sometimes listen to audiobooks if I have a long drive somewhere by myself, but that's quite rare. Never touched Kindle and can't imagine I ever will.

What would you tell a college student about approaching their required reading lists?

Look, you won't listen to this, but I've got to say it so you feel guilty later: Your required reading lists are a gift. What I wouldn't give to repeat high school and actually take advantage of being "required" to read Shakespeare or Hemmingway. I know it won't feel like that. So just promise me this: you'll read one book from every required reading list as if you wanted to.

What would you tell a recent graduate about establishing a reading practice?

Keep books in every room of the house. Pile them up on the end table or nightstand or back of the toilet. Have the books there, staring at you, inviting you, wooing you, calling to you, shaming you. Keep bumping into them. Pick them up and look at them. And even if you have a first job, resist signing up for cable and spend the end of each day reading. Then find a friend who loves to read (and, if possible, a spouse) and talk about books.

CT Review of "Desiring the Kingdom"

Eric Miller's review of Desiring the Kingdom from the August issue of Christianity Today is now available online. The title, like Miller's review, gets it just right: "Putting Worldview in its Place."

Despite a couple of quibbles, I appreciate how well Miller captures the essence of the book's argument--and does so for a general audience. One couldn't hope for more.