Cox became widely known with the publication of The Secular City in 1965. It became immensely popular and influential for a book on theology,selling over one million copies.[citation needed] Cox developed the thesis that the church is primarily a people of faith and action,rather than an institution. He argued that "God is just as present in the secular as the religious realms of life". Thus,the original title was God and the Secular City,which "he still believes…would have more accurately described the book's theme."[7]
Far from being a protective religious community,the church should be in the forefront of change in society,celebrating the new ways religiosity is finding expression in the world. Phrases such as "intrinsic conservatism prevents the denominational churches from leaving their palaces behind and stepping into God's permanent revolution in history"[8] were viewed as threatening to the status quo by some,or seen as an embrace of the social revolution of the 1960s. Cox revisited his topic in Religion in the Secular City:Toward a Post-Modern Theology in 1984. In 1990,a twenty-fifth anniversary edition of The Secular City was published.
After his international best seller,Cox thought he might have "peaked" too soon at age 34,as he experienced a "second book crisis," but he then wrote The Feast of Fools (1969),which he has said "still remains my own favorite... the 'one book' I recommend to people who ask me at parties which one of my books they should crack."[9] Originally Cox presented it as the William Belden Noble Lecture at Harvard in 1968,which included music,dance,film,and balloons;and Cox himself was known to play the tenor saxophone in a jazz ensemble called The Embraceables.[10] Celebrating his new book as Dionysian in playful dynamic with The Secular City as Apollonian,he said "there is an unnecessary gap in today's world between the world changers and the life-celebrators," thus promoting a "proleptic liberation as a festive radical."[11]
In 1973,Cox wrote The Seduction of the Spirit,[12] which he said "has the best first chapter of anything I have ever written (about my boyhood in Malvern,Pennsylvania,the churches there and my baptism)," but he added it went "downhill" from there.[13]
In Turning East (1977),Cox describes his teaching at the Naropa Institute in Boulder,Colorado,where his mind and soul were challenged by the Buddhist "dharma",and he enjoyed doing research in Asian religious movements.[14]
At times Cox has been criticized as "faddish",responding to the current "hot topics",against which he has asserted he is responding to the pastoral issues of the church confronting the world;and he sees himself as a "church theologian",influenced by Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics;for in fact Cox entered HDS as a faculty member in the Department of the Church and later served as the Chair of the Department of Applied Theology.[15] Throughout his years as a church theologian,Cox was "visible,indeed as no other on the Divinity faculty."[16]
Cox became the first to introduce liberation theology at HDS,with its understanding of Jesus the Liberator and God's preference for the poor,drawing on his first-hand experience in a training center in Venezuela.[17] Later he defended Leonardo Boff,a Latin American theologian,in his book The Silencing of Leonardo Boff:The Vatican and Future Christianity (1988).
Cox was concerned with the encounter of Christianity with religious pluralism,especially as the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS offered opportunities for engagement with scholars of different faiths,which he wrote about in Many Mansions:A Christian's Encounter with Other Faiths (1988),his book that advocated speaking in interfaith dialogue from your own Christian identity as part of the discussion.[18]
In keeping with his alertness to global Christianity,Cox was drawn to the ecumenical nature of Pentecostalism in Protestantism,Catholicism,and Orthodoxy,that he wrote about in his book Fire From Heaven:The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (1995),which might be useful for academic Christianity as well as the church and its leaders as they encounter the challenge of Pentecostalism.[19] Thus,Cox has maintained that HDS is an ecumenical seminary,not a nondenominational seminary,at which students from different faiths engage in dialogue and do not seek a generic form of religion or Christianity.[19]
An outgrowth of Cox's second marriage to Nina Tumarkin,a devout Jew and a professor of Russian history at Wellesley College,[citation needed] was his book Common Prayers:Faith,Family,and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year (2002),which is a look at the Jewish year through its major holidays,as seen by him an outsider who is an equally devout Christian.
Cox retired in 2009.[citation needed] His new book,The Future of Faith was released to coincide with his retirement. The Future of Faith explores three important trends in Christianity's 2,000 years. He views the religion's first three centuries as the Age of Faith,when followers simply embraced the teachings of Jesus. Then came the Age of Belief,in which church leaders increasingly took control and set acceptable limits on doctrine and orthodoxy. The last 50 years,Cox contends,welcome in the Age of the Spirit,in which Christians have begun to ignore dogma and embrace spirituality,while finding common threads with other religions.
In How to Read the Bible (2015),Cox shows how three different ways of approaching the Bible,the narrative (the stories),the historical (the academic),and the spiritual (personal and social) can be reconciled as a contemporary source of enrichment for all.
In 2016,Cox's book The Market as God conceives of the free market in a theological framework. The book proposes that the market economy can be understood as a religion.[20]
In A New Heaven (2022),Cox explores the question of heaven and the afterlife by reflecting on his personal stories and drawing on perspectives on death across cultures and religions.
In 1957,Cox married Nancy Neiburger. Their marriage ended in divorce. In 1987,Cox married Nina Tumarkin. Cox has four children. Cox lives in Cambridge,Mass.
Books
The Secular City:Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective (1965),Collier Books,25th anniversary edition 1990: ISBN0-02-031155-9
God's Revolution and Man's Responsibilities (1966) no ISBN issued
On Not Leaving It to the Snake (1967), Macmillan, S.C.M. Press 3rd edition 1968: ISBN978-0-33401169-9
The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy (1969), Harvard University Press, ISBN0-674-29525-0, Harper & Row 1970 paperback: ISBN0-06-080272-3, HarperCollins 2000 paperback: ISBN0-06-090212-4
The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People's Religion (1973), Touchstone edition 1985: ISBN0-671-21728-3
Turning East: Why Americans Look to the Orient for Spirituality-And What That Search Can Mean to the West (1978), Simon & Schuster, ISBN0-671-24405-1
Just as I am (autobiography), Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1983.
Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Postmodern Theology (1985), Simon & Schuster, ISBN0-671-52805-X
Many Mansions: A Christian's Encounter with Other Faiths (1988), Beacon Press reprint 1992: ISBN0-8070-1213-0
The Silencing of Leonardo Boff: The Vatican and the Future of World Christianity (1988) ISBN0-940989-35-2
Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Re-shaping of Religion in the 21st Century (1994), Decapo Press reprint 2001: ISBN0-306-81049-2
Religion in a Secular City: Essays in Honor of Harvey Cox, Harvey Cox, Arvind Sharma eds. (2001), Trinity Press, ISBN1-56338-337-3
Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year (2002), Mariner Books, ISBN0-618-25733-0 (paperback)
When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today, (2004), Houghton Mifflin, ISBN0-618-06744-2 (hardcover)
The Future of Faith (2009), HarperOne, ISBN0-06-175552-4 (hardcover)
Supersessionism, also called replacement theology, is the Christian doctrine that the Christian Church has superseded the Jewish people, assuming their role as God's covenanted people, thus asserting that the New Covenant through Jesus Christ has superseded or replaced the Mosaic covenant. Supersessionists hold that the universal Church has become God's true Israel and so Christians, whether Jew or gentile, are the people of God.
Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective. More narrowly it is the study of the nature of the divine. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the supernatural, but also deals with religious epistemology, asks and seeks to answer the question of revelation. Revelation pertains to the acceptance of God, gods, or deities, as not only transcendent or above the natural world, but also willing and able to interact with the natural world and to reveal themselves to humankind.
John Shelby "Jack" Spong was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church, born in Charlotte, North Carolina. He served as the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey from 1979 to 2000. Spong was a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator, and author who called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines. He was known for his progressive and controversial views on Christianity, including his rejection of traditional Christian doctrines, his advocacy for LGBTQ rights, and his support for interfaith dialogue. Spong was a contributor to the Living the Questions DVD program and was a guest on numerous national television broadcasts. Spong died on September 12, 2021, at his home in Richmond, Virginia, at the age of 90.
Nontheism or non-theism is a range of both religious and non-religious attitudes characterized by the absence of espoused belief in the existence of God or gods. Nontheism has generally been used to describe apathy or silence towards the subject of gods and differs from atheism, or active disbelief in any gods. It has been used as an umbrella term for summarizing various distinct and even mutually exclusive positions, such as agnosticism, ignosticism, ietsism, skepticism, pantheism, pandeism, transtheism, atheism, and apatheism. It is in use in the fields of Christian apologetics and general liberal theology.
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, government, and service. It also caters to students from other Harvard schools that are interested in the former field. HDS is among a small group of university-based, non-denominational divinity schools in the United States.
Progressive Christianity represents a postmodern theological approach, which developed out of the liberal Christianity of the modern era, itself rooted in the Enlightenment's thinking. Progressive Christianity is a postliberal theological movement within Christianity that, in the words of Reverend Roger Wolsey, "seeks to reform the faith via the insights of post-modernism and a reclaiming of the truth beyond the verifiable historicity and factuality of the passages in the Bible by affirming the truths within the stories that may not have actually happened."
Liberal Christianity, also known as liberal theology and historically as Christian Modernism, is a movement that interprets Christian teaching by taking into consideration modern knowledge, science and ethics. It emphasizes the importance of reason and experience over doctrinal authority. Liberal Christians view their theology as an alternative to both atheistic rationalism and theologies based on traditional interpretations of external authority, such as the Bible or sacred tradition.
Krister Olofson Stendahl was a Swedish theologian, New Testament scholar, and Church of Sweden Bishop of Stockholm. He also served as dean, professor, and professor emeritus at Harvard Divinity School.
Leonardo Boff, born as Genézio Darci Boff, is a Brazilian theologian, philosopher writer, and former Catholic priest known for his active support for Latin American liberation theology. He is Professor Emeritus of Ethics, Philosophy of Religion, and Ecology at the Rio de Janeiro State University. In 2001, he received the Right Livelihood Award for "his inspiring insights and practical work to help people realise the links between human spirituality, social justice and environmental stewardship."
Gabriel Vahanian was a French Protestant Christian theologian who was most remembered for his pioneering work in the theology of the "death of God" movement within academic circles in the 1960s, and who taught for 26 years in the U.S. before finishing a prestigious career in Strasbourg, France.
James Luther Adams (1901–1994), an American professor at Harvard Divinity School, Andover Newton Theological School, and Meadville Lombard Theological School, and a Unitarian parish minister, was the most influential theologian among American Unitarian Universalists in the 20th century.
Secular theology is a term applied to theological positions influenced by humanism and secularism, rejecting supernatural metaphysical positions related to the nature of God. Secular theology can accommodate a belief in God, like many nature religions, but as residing in this world and not separately from it.
Jon Douglas Levenson is an American Hebrew Bible scholar who is the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School.
Paul Matthews van Buren was a Christian theologian and author. An ordained Episcopal priest, he was a Professor of religion at Temple University, Philadelphia for 22 years. He was a Director [NYT obituary says "Associate"] of the Center of Ethics and Religious Pluralism at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
Francis Xavier Clooney is an American Jesuit priest and scholar in the teachings of Hinduism. He is currently a professor at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gordon Dester Kaufman was an American theologian and the Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, where he taught for over three decades beginning in 1963. He also taught at Pomona College and Vanderbilt University, and lectured in India, Japan, South Africa, England, and Hong Kong. Kaufman was an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church for 50 years.
Mormonism and Nicene Christianity have a complex theological, historical, and sociological relationship. Mormons express their doctrines using biblical terminology. They have similar views about the nature of Jesus Christ's atonement, bodily resurrection, and Second Coming as mainstream Christians. Nevertheless, most Mormons do not accept the doctrine of the Trinity as codified in the Nicene Creed of 325 and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed of 381. Although Mormons consider the Protestant Bible to be holy scripture, they do not believe in biblical inerrancy. They have also adopted additional scriptures that they believe to have been divinely revealed to Joseph Smith, including the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. Mormons practice baptism and celebrate the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, but they also participate in other religious rituals. Mormons self-identify as Christians.
The Hollis Chair of Divinity is an endowed chair at Harvard Divinity School. It was established in 1721 by Thomas Hollis, a wealthy English merchant and benefactor of the university, at a salary of £80 per year. It is the oldest endowed chair in the United States, the first professorship in theology in the country, and in the early 19th century it was considered to be "the most prestigious endowed professorship in America".
The Centre for the Study of World Christianity (CSWC) is a research centre based in New College, the School of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. It was founded in the University of Aberdeen by Andrew F. Walls as the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World in 1982, but later moved by Walls to the University of Edinburgh in 1986. Its current name was adopted in 2009. The centre is currently directed by Alexander Chow and Emma Wild-Wood.
Kevin J. Madigan is an American historian and theologian. He has taught at Harvard University since 2000. A member of the Faculty of Divinity, he has also served on Harvard's Committee on the Study of Religion, the Medieval Studies Committee, and the Center for Jewish Studies. Since 2009, Madigan has been the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard Divinity School, an appointment offered by then-Dean of HDS, William Graham, and officially approved by Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust.
↑ "The Market as God". The Harvard University Press. The Harvard University Press. Retrieved 20 April 2024.
Bibliography
Cox, Harvey (1973). The Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People's Religion. New York: Touchstone (published 1974). ISBN978-0-671-21728-0.
Varacalli, Thomas F.X. (2016). "Harvey Cox". In Smith, Frank J. (ed.). Religion and Politics in America: An Encyclopedia of Church and State in American Life. Vol.1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. pp.215–216. ISBN978-1-4408-4562-8.
Cox, Harvey (1990). "The Secular City 25 Years Later". The Christian Century. Vol.107, no.32. pp.1025–1029. Archived from the original on October 1, 2009. Retrieved May 1, 2020– via Religion Online.
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