The long gestation of this book makes it impossible for me to properly acknowledge the myriad of debts I’ve accrued. The last few years have been an exhilarating whirlwind of conversations sparked by response to Desiring the Kingdom. I have found myself in places and conversations I would never have imagined and am profoundly grateful to a host of interlocutors who have helped me in further reflection on these matters.
I owe a significant debt to the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, and especially to director John Witvliet, for constant encouragement, tangible support, and providing a community of practice that has both sustained and challenged me as I continue to think about these matters. My colleagues in the philosophy department at Calvin College are gracious in granting me a long leash to explore different areas and basically reinvent myself every few years. They have also affirmed my work as a philosopher speaking to wider audiences rather than just to the philosophical guild, and I’m grateful for their recognition of a diversity of gifts. I have also enjoyed teaching in Calvin College’s new Department of Congregational and Ministry Studies, a fitting home for this line of research. All of this reflects the wider support of such work at Calvin College—a place in which I’ve nested, even as it has worked its way deep into my bones. I count my decade at Calvin College as one of the most tangible expressions of the fact that God loves me: I am profoundly grateful that a bumpkin like me has had the opportunity to inhabit a place so intellectually vibrant and deeply rooted. I’ll never quite get over my wonder at the fact that I get to teach here. I’m especially grateful to a cadre of students over the years whose curiosity, passion, and earnest seeking have sustained my own. It is a pleasure to now count some of them as friends and a joy to see them pursue their callings.
In the years between the appearance of Desiring the Kingdom and this sequel, I had the joy of collaborating with my friend and colleague David Smith on a multiyear research project on Christian practices and pedagogy that enabled me to extend reflection on these matters into a collegial community of friends. The volume that resulted from that collaboration—Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning—is a kind of intervening sequel, a pedagogical volume 1.5 in the Cultural Liturgies project. More recently, I had opportunity in the summer of 2011 to field test much that follows in two seminars: a graduate seminar at Trinity College of the University of Toronto and a research seminar hosted by the Seminars in Christian Scholarship at Calvin College. Both were wonderful laboratories of thoughtful, interdisciplinary conversation from which I benefited immensely.
I’m grateful for a small circle of friends who read the manuscript in its penultimate form and offered helpful feedback, even if I didn’t always listen. These included John Witvliet, David Smith, Michael Gulker, Kyle Bennett, Bob Covolo, and Clay Cooke.
I appreciate Tom Wright’s willingness to let me share the title “Imagining the Kingdom” with him. We both hit upon this title, concurrently and independently (Tom used it as the title for his inaugural lecture at St. Andrew’s), likely because, unbeknownst to each other, we’d both been reading Iain McGilchrist’s generative book, The Master and His Emissary.
As always, I continue to be grateful for my long partnership with the folks at Baker Academic who have become friends and tireless champions for my work. Special thanks to Bob Hosack, Brian Bolger, Steve Ayers, Bobbi Jo Heyboer, Jeremy Wells, Bryan Dyer, and Trinity Graeser for all their support and encouragement—and patience and flexibility!
The soundtrack for this book is a mixed tape featuring the Avett Brothers, Mumford & Sons, Johnny Flynn’s A Larum, and (fittingly) The Head and the Heart’s self-titled album, with a regular loop of The National’s High Violet in the background.
It is amazing to think how much our family has changed since I first began writing Desiring the Kingdom. I could never have imagined what it would be like to have four teenagers in the family, and I am constantly grateful for the mystery that parents can give birth to friends. This volume is dedicated to our youngest son, Jackson, who has become a young man with whom I can be myself. What more could a father hope for?
This book was completed at the end of a long, difficult year. In the midst of that time, when psalms of lament came easily to my tongue, I would berate God with the question: “Where are you?” In a quiet, patient, persistent whisper, he would invariably answer with a gracious reminder: the faithful presence of Deanna. Despite my Protestantism, marriage will always be a sacrament for me, because Deanna has been a means of grace beyond all I could have imagined.