James K.A. Smith was awarded with an honorary Doctor of Letters degree during King University’s Institute for Faith and Culture speaker series The Beauty of Art and the Holiness of Saints.

James K.A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin University where he holds the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair in Applied Reformed Theology & Worldview. Smith also serves as editor in chief of Image journal, a quarterly devoted to “art, mystery, and faith.”

The award-winning author of Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism?, How (Not) To Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit, his theological trilogy Desiring the Kingdom, Imagining the Kingdom, and Awaiting the King has been widely read in Christian colleges as they find their institutional mission. His new book, On the Road with Saint Augustine, presents the ancient African thinker as a pilgrim guide for spiritual devotion in our complicated times, the “patron saint of restless hearts.”

His popular writing has appeared in magazines such as Christianity Today, First Things, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, as well as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

Jamie and his wife, Deanna, have four children, and live in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is his third visit to King.