Recently in Emerging Movement Category

Tuesday I began a series of posts looking at Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith. Today I would like to look at Chapter 3 - Ships Already Launched. Cox begins this chapter by dismissing the idea that all religions are the same. We all live with mystery, but how we cope varies.

I frequently meet people who, when they discover that I teach religion, assure me that "underneath, all religions are really the same." I used to respond that, during a lifetime of teaching religion it appeared to me that they are not. But since that usually ended the conversation on a disagreeable note, I have recently just let their opinions pass. It is true that we are all responding to the same mystery, the one that confronts us all not just as mortal beings, but as beings aware of our mortality. Still we sense it and cope with the mystery in quite disparate ways. (p. 38)

Cox then begins to describe, as he says, "the ship I found myself on" - the narrative of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And this leads me to the questions for today. 

Are all religions the same?

But a simple answer of no isn't enough.  Most of us consider ourselves Christian (certainly I do) - some will claim that this is this simply the luck of the draw and a matter of birth.  But the Christian is not willing to rest here - the whole NT especially the book of Acts is about God's mission and the proclamation and spread of the good news, inviting others to join The Way. 

Why is the gospel of Jesus Christ good news? What is there that is real, intrinsically worth proclaiming, to which we desire to invite others?

Why is Christianity not simply another way (one among many) of dealing with the mysteries of life, purpose, and mortality?

Today I begin a series of posts looking at Harvey Cox's new book The Future of Faith. We'll see how long it goes - at least a couple of weeks. Cox is the Hollis Professor of Divinity emeritus at Harvard and is best known for his 1965 book The Secular City.  I first became familiar with Cox and his work through his book When Jesus Came to Harvard: Making Moral Choices Today, a very thoughtful and thought provoking book.  The new book explores the trends that Cox sees in the history of the church and his thoughts on the future of faith, including Christian faith.

In the first chapter of his book Cox describes a history of the church divided into three ages, the age of faith, the age of belief, and the age of the spirit (we will look at these in greater detail below). He then talks about his personal faith journey from a rather fundamentalist Baptist to the current day. He talks about his experiences at Penn as an undergraduate where his belief - but not his faith - was shaken.  To understand this statement it is important to understand what Cox means by faith as he now uses the term. 

As Cox describes it faith is the experience of the divine - not a set of theories about the divine, and Christianity is best understood as a way of life, not as a creed or set of proper beliefs. He notes that the confusion began to clear in his mind when an acquaintance described himself as "a practicing Christian, but not always a believing one"; when a bishop of the Catholic church welcomed an audience saying "The line between belief and unbelief ... runs through the middle of each one of us, including myself, a bishop of the church"; and as he pondered the doubts experienced by Mother Teresa. (p. 16-17) 

Does Cox's idea that faith is experience and way of life hit a resonance? Is it possible to be a practicing Christian, but not always a believing one?