Calvin Philosopher Wins Book of the Year Award

Calvin College philosophy professor James K.A. Smith’s book on the work of Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has won Christianity Today’s Book of the Year award in the magazine's Christianity and Culture category.

Published by Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Company and titled Charles Taylor, "How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor," Smith’s 152-page book has been praised for its accessibility.

Christianity Today announced its 2015 Book Awards on Dec. 15, saying these books are the books “most likely to shape evangelical life, thought and culture.”

In honoring Smith's book, reviewer Gene Edward Veith, provost of Patrick Henry College, said: "Taylor is the author of a monumental study of contemporary life called A Secular Age, which explores the widespread loss of religious sensibility in modern life.

“His work exposing the ideology of secularism has important implications for contemporary apologetics, evangelism, and ministry. But it’s so technical and sophisticated that it is mainly accessible to academics.

“Smith has offered not a CliffsNotes style simplification, but a paradigm-shifting book that creatively applies Taylor’s findings to the church and the larger society."

Said Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City: "As a gateway into Taylor’s thought, this volume (if read widely) could have a major impact on the level of theological leadership that our contemporary church is getting. It could also have a great effect on the quality of our communication and preaching."

Such words are music to Smith's ears.

In a May 2014 interview for The Gospel Coalition (TGC) website, Smith talked about his hope that people through his book might better come to understand not just Taylor, who teaches at Montreal's McGill University, but also the many ways in which Taylor's subject matter impacts life today for 21st century Christians.

Taylor, Smith told TGC, "puts his philosophical expertise to work on cultural analysis, ranging into history, theology, psychology, economics and more. Taylor is a serious Christian public intellectual.

“He is a Catholic philosopher who is willing to take a stand for his faith, and also willing to argue that his faith perspective makes a difference for theorizing.

“Indeed, Taylor is an 'apologist' of sorts, one who is nuanced, complex, humble, with right-sized expectations of what one can hope to accomplish. Lots of evangelicals are quite fascinated with 'apologetics'; I wish more of them were interested in apologists like Taylor."

Smith's book had its genesis in a Calvin College class: a senior seminar on "A Secular Age" for Calvin philosophy majors. In leading the class, Smith recounted to TGC, he realized that Taylor's tone resonated with his students and could help them make sense of the world they inhabited.

He also realized that his book could be of use to pastors and church planters who needed to inhabit and understand their own "secular" environments. Thus began his plan to summarize and synthesize Taylor's book, a plan that he admits also had an evangelistic motivation.

As he told TGC: "If Taylor is right, this shouldn’t be seen as a battle. Instead, we should recognize all the persistent longings for transcendence that characterize our secular age. To proclaim the gospel in such a context is not a matter of guarding some fortress; it’s an opportunity to invite our neighbors to meet the One they didn’t even realize they’d been longing for."