Washington National Cathedral

The Sunday Forum: Critical Issues in the Light of Faith

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, host

Cathedral Dean Samuel T. Lloyd III and renowned theologian Harvey Cox explore the future of Christianity in a rapidly changing world.

Forty years ago, it was often predicted that religion would soon die out because of technology and urbanization, Cox notes. The predictions were made—and later proven incorrect—because those who made the predictions “did not foresee how religions can change and adapt,” Cox says.

“Religion and modernization can go together, and have gone together rather amicably in many places in the world,” Cox summarizes, citing South Korea as a technologically modern country where religion thrives.

People are, at the core, religious beings, according to Cox; but the meaning of religion to people changes over time. Cox views the recent resurgence of religion as a mixed blessing. People can be willing to die for their beliefs or kill for their beliefs, sometimes out of extreme views.

Cox believes that fundamentalism cannot long survive the sheer number of ideas now out in the world for people to consider. “It’s just too hard to maintain ‘My way is the only way’ when you’re surrounded by so many other people who seem to be fine people and doing it their way,” Cox says. He also says that fundamentalists are weakened by fighting on two fronts: against what they see as a world in decay, and against those in their own tradition who they believe have “sold the farm.”

Christian history can be divided into three eras, according to Cox. All three feature considerable variety in beliefs and practices. The first era, the “age of faith,” extended from the time of Jesus until Constantine made Christianity the ideology of the Roman Empire.

The second era, beginning with Constantine, was the “age of belief,” when creeds were developed to define and formalize Christianity, authoritarianism flourished—and cathedrals, those places of mystical grandeur, were erected stone by stone.

Cox calls the third, emerging era, which began less than a century ago, the “age of the spirit.” He views this as a fresh, new start for a faith that has lost its Western stamp as it has spread around the whole world. The age of the spirit is experiential, rooted in discipleship and striving to realize the kingdom of God on earth.

The era is new and (given the movements of the Holy Spirit) hard to define, but Cox gives some illustrations. Roman Catholic Archbishop Romero of El Salvador, in Cox’s opinion, was a transitional figure between the age of belief and the age of the spirit. The age extends beyond liberation theology and takes many forms. It comes from ordinary Christians reading the Bible. It is found in the spread of Pentecostalism and the emergent church movement, and in changes to established denominations. People say, “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual”; many are suspicious of creeds and established church structure. Cox quotes Scripture: “The spirit blows where it lists,” or chooses.

About Harvey Cox

Harvey Cox is the Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard, where he has taught since 1965, both at Harvard Divinity School and in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. His book The Secular City (1965), became an international bestseller and has sold more than one million copies. It is widely regarded as one of the most influential books of Protestant theology in the twentieth century. In his latest book, The Future of Faith, he offers a new interpretation of the history and the future of Christianity.