Harvey Gallagher Cox

Background

Cox, Harvey Gallagher was born on the 19th of May, 1929 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, United States. Son of Harvey Gallagher and Dorothea (Dunwoody) Cox. He was raised in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

Education

After a stint in the US Merchant Marine, Cox attended the University of Pennsylvania and graduated in 1951 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in history. He went on to earn a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School in 1955, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the history and philosophy of religion from Harvard University in 1963.

Career

Cox was ordained as an American Baptist minister in 1957, and started teaching as an assistant professor at the Andover Newton Theological School in Massachusetts. He then began teaching at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) in 1965 and in 1969 became a full professor. He was to become "the single most heeded professor in religion at Harvard."Cox retired in September 2009 in a well publicized ceremony and celebration.

Achievements

• 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.
  
  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.

Works

More photos

• book

  • How to Read the Bible

    (Renowned religion expert and Harvard Divinity School prof...)

    2016
  • The Feast of Fools: A Theological Essay on Festivity and Fantasy

    (In this fascinating interpretation of contemporary cultur...)

  • Fire From Heaven: The Rise Of Pentecostal Spirituality And The Reshaping Of Religion In The 21st Century

    ( It was born a scant ninety-five years ago in a rundown ...)

  • The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective

    (book is about secularization and urbanization from a theo...)

  • The Market as God

    (The Market has deified itself, according to Harvey Cox’s ...)

    2016
  • Turning East, The Promise and Peril of the New Orientalism
  • THE SILENCING OF LEONARDO BOFF the Vatican and the future of world Christianity

Religion

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".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".Cox was notably concerned with the encounter of Christianity with religious pluralism.

Views

Quotations: "All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by. . . ."

"What we are seeking so frantically elsewhere may turn out to be the horse we have been riding all along".

"Somewhere deep down we know that in the final analysis, we do decide things and that even our decisions to let someone else decide are really our decisions, however pusillanimous".

"We now live in a 'post-Christian' America . The Judeo-Christian ethic no longer guides our social institutions. Christian ideals and values no longer dominate social thought and action. The Bible has ceased to be a common base of moral authority for judging whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable".

"Man must now assume the responsibility for his world. He can no longer shove it off on religious power".

Connections

Married Nancy Nieburger, May 10, 1957. Children— Rachel Lianelly, Martin Stephen, Sarah Irene.

Father:

Harvey Gallagher Cox

Mother:

Dorothea (Dunwoody) Cox

Spouse:

Nancy Nieburger

child:

Rachel Lianelly Cox

child:

Martin Stephen Cox

child:

Sarah Irene Cox