Harvard's Cox on faith and the future

Harvard Divinity Professor Harvey Cox, fresh off his cow-grazing expedition in Harvard Yard, flew out to Minnesota to speak yesterday at a breakfast for religion writers gathered here for the 60th annual convention of the Religion Newswriters Association. Cox has been a professor at Harvard since 1965, and is now retired, but he's still teaching and still writing, and now promoting a new book called, ambitiously, "The Future of Faith.'' Cox has been at this a long time, and has a lot of interesting observations after a career thinking about the state of religion in the world, but among his central arguments is this: "I do not think fundamentalisms are going to last much longer.'' Cox argues that fundamentalist movements -- and he cautions against describing any serious expression of religion as fundamentalist -- are doomed both by the flow of history, and by what he describes as an inevitable internal fractiousness that erodes any fundamentalist movement's vitality. He cited as evidence what he called "the decreasing effectiveness of the religious right in America'' as well as what he sees as "growing opposition" in the Muslim world to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. "They've been blowing up buildings and tearing down statues, but where is the food? Where are the jobs?'' he said.

Cox also points out a dramatic shift underway in Christianity, because a majority of the world's Christians now live outside of Christianity's historic territory of the Middle East, Europe and North America. "We can no longer think of Christianity as a Western religion,'' he said. "That has not just a demographic, but a theological dimension, mainly because they are living among the poor, and constantly dealing with the fact that their faith is only one option among many.''

Cox advised reporters to keep an eye on two trends in the future: the changing nature of evangelicalism in the U.S., and the growth of Christianity in China. He also noted that there are tensions in the way religion is seen by theologians and bishops -- who tend to view faith as a set of beliefs -- and the way religion is often seen by laypeople -- who often view faith as a series of experiences. He connected this to the spectacular growth of Pentecostalism, which, he said, emphasizes the experiential.

Finally, on the home front, Cox rejected the notion of a godless Harvard. He noted that there are adherents of 51 different religious traditions at Harvard Divinity School, said the university "can't add enough courses" about religion to keep up with demand, and said, "on any given weekend, more Harvard students are worshiping today than at any time since 1636." But he also noted that, although he had balked at grazing a cow named "Pride" in Harvard Yard because pride is one of the seven deadly sins, a friend had joked, "I thought, at Harvard, pride was not a sin.''

(Photo, by Erik Jacobs for the Boston Globe, shows Harvard professor Harvey Cox in Harvard Yard on August 27, 2009.)