Liberal Harvard theologian shocked the world in his 1965 bestseller The Secular City (New York: MacMillan:1965). Of course, Cox wasn't speaking of a particular geographical setting as the image behind his thesis. He was rather describing a future world where secular ideas were the "outcome of Biblical religion." Cox predicted a collision of secular urban reality and the breakdown of traditional religion.
The picture I selected to display today depicts, at least in my mind, the two marks of the secular city as envisioned by Cox. He envisioned a future world of mobility and anonymity. Perhaps a bleak photograph of cars jammed bumper to bumper in a traffic circle accurately pictures the frustrations of a world that is moving and dis-connected. They're the sad faces of indistinct people caught in the suspended motion of the population explosion. It's a world of people living unnoticed lives, hiding out in high rise office buildings, apartment complexes, cubicles, and even cars. Even more, it is a world with little hope, the secular city with inanimate hand-made gods apart from any systematic system of belief. It's the world where the unholy trinity of me-myself-and-I rules.
And, over there in their little corner of it is the church, disconnected from it but finding some measure of peace and meaning in their protective huddles. It is the godless world in one corner, and the fortress church in the other, ready for the crash should one make a move toward the other. They will not be unequally yoked, these two worlds, because they fear each other so. The fortress church cannot be made uncomfortable by any concessions to secularism, and the world doesn't have any idea of God in the first place. It's a stand off, and the only apparent solution is the dismantling of tradition and orthodoxy and standards, a thumbing of biblical values and morals.
It is totally sad, this disconnection. With the wagons circled in defense from the savage secular monster, we've become the enclave church, the cloister of safety from the demons of secularism. The other option, to accommodate the world and let water seep into the vessel, the slowing sinking ship, is just as offensive. Standing our ground is a natural reaction, knowing that the gates of gehenna cannot prevail against His church. Of course, how much this current version depicts His church may be an arguable point and may be just the reason we're closing so many church doors these days. It is possible that the church of the twentieth century has morphed into something quite different than the church Jesus is building?
Reading Harvey Cox is a depressing survey of what he anticipated in the future. As a biblicist Cox leaves much to be desired. As a prophet he may be judged more lightly because his predictions are pretty much accurate. And, like most prophets he went unheeded, discounted because of his liberal leanings and Harvard pedigree. But, his ideas about a secular world and the breakdown of traditional religion were basically on point. So, witness the rise of the non-traditional phenomenon sweeping across our nation and the world, spirituality apart from the traditional church.
So, we're suddenly about connections. Contemporary spirituality is more about the horizontal than the vertical. So, theology and practice and even morality are down the list, people and relationships up. Of course, Harvey Cox, like many modern voices, was light in the biblical authority stuff too. So, he was good at saying what is wrong with the world and the church, but doesn't offer many workable solutions except to discount the church as a viable means of addressing societal problems.
Somewhere Cox's cohorts forgot about the promises of God, the joys of faith, the stronger one that is in us than the one in the world, and the times in human history when the church did actually influence the times. If Scripture means anything to evangelicals today, we must rally around Bible teaching and be the church Jesus is building, the one we read about in the New Testament.
Our dilemma isn't so much the need to get in touch with them as it is to stay in touch with Him. And, that means that I, and every church person these days, must place ourselves under His authority as Lord, and be the church of Scripture, not the church of the world, or the church of our dreams.
So, I read Harvey Cox every year, as a reminder about the state of the world, and the vital importance of Christ's church impacting that world. And, if I understand the church as defined by Scripture, that means me.
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