Harvey Gallagher Cox Jr., Ph.D. (History and Philosophy of Religion, Harvard University, 1963; B.D., Yale Divinity School, 1955) was Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard, where he had been teaching since 1965, both at HDS and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, until his retirement in 2009.
An American Baptist minister, he was the Protestant chaplain at Temple University and the director of religious activities at Oberlin College; an ecumenical fraternal worker in Berlin; and a professor at Andover Newton Theological School. His research and teaching interests focus on the interaction of religion, culture, and politics. Among the issues he explores are: urbanization, theological developments in world Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations, and current spiritual movements in the global setting. His most recent book is When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Decisions Today. His Secular City, published in 1965, became an international bestseller with more than 1 million copies sold. It was selected by the University of Marburg as one of the most influential books of Protestant theology in the twentieth century.
A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS WRITTEN SHORTLY AFTER "THE SECULAR CITY”
Harvey Cox (born 1929) is an ordained American Baptist minister who also taught theology at Harvard Divinity School. He has also written books such as 'The Secular City,' 'The Feast of Fools,' 'Seduction of the Spirit: The Use and Misuse of People's Religion,' 'Turning East,' etc.
He wrote in the introduction to this 1967 book, "The essays collected in this book all express in one way or another my conviction that this popular notion of the place of faith in human decision-making is distorted and misleading... I do NOT believe biblical faith relates to decision by providing a sure-fire method of discriminating right from wrong... I think our overemphasis on the guilt-and-forgiveness aspect of Christianity has nearly obscured the fact that the gospel is first of all a call to leave the past behind and open ourselves to the promise of the future."
He wrote, "The Israelite prophets called the past to memory not to divinize it but to remind people that the God of the covenant still expected things from them in the future." (Pg. 41) He adds, "The prophetic perspective frees us from having to build for eternity or solve things once and for all. There is no 'final solution' for anything." (Pg. 43)
He admits that "It is sometimes hard to affirm that God is present in this urban transformation, but He is. He is calling man to responsible care for his world. He is chastening those who have failed to exercise their stewardship of political power faithfully." (Pg. 103)
Anyone who enjoyed Cox's "Secular City" will no doubt appreciate this collection as well.