AN INTERVIEW WITH HARVEY COX
Harvey Cox, Harvard Professor of Divinity, is most noted for THE SECULAR CITY: SECULARIZATION AND URBANIZATION IN THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE, pub-
lished in 1965. The book departs from the usual commentaries in celebrating rather than lamenting life in the modern city. Professor Cox argues that urban anonymity and mobility free man, and withdrawal of God makes him take responsibility for his own well-being. In both secularization and urbanization we can see Providence leading men toward greater maturity. Christians must accept these tendencies, Professor Cox says, and work to create the more humane existence toward which God, acting in the troubled events of our times, is pointing.
DIALOGUE interviewers Chase Peterson and Richard Bushman met Professor Cox in Hayes-Bickford, a cafeteria across the street from Harvard Yard. He often meets people there, he explained, students particularly, because they speak their minds more freely in the informal atmosphere. For the sake of a clear recording, the interview eventually moved to a formal academic office where Professor Cox nevertheless managed to speak his mind freely.
Dialogue: By way of background, how would you compare your views to those in the death-of-God movement? Professor Cox: Well, I've had some very strident arguments with the deathof-God theologians. They think I'm kind of a stick-in-the-mud because I don't agree with them. I think when all the sound and fury is past, what they're saying is that some of the conventional images and pictures of God that we've inherited don't seem to be plausible in our time and that we need a new understanding of God. I wish they had said that much more plainly because they have scared people unnecessarily with their strident rhetoric