15 Facts About Harvey Cox

Harvey Cox went on to earn a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School in 1955, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the history and philosophy of religion from Harvard University in 1963.

Harvey Cox was ordained as an American Baptist minister in 1957, and started teaching as an assistant professor at the Andover Newton Theological School in Massachusetts.

Harvey Cox then began teaching at Harvard Divinity School in 1965 and in 1969 became a full professor.

Harvey Cox became widely known with the publication of The Secular City in 1965.

Harvey Cox developed the thesis that the church is primarily a people of faith and action, rather than an institution.

Harvey Cox argued that "God is just as present in the secular as the religious realms of life".

Harvey Cox revisited his topic in Religion in the Secular City: Toward a Post-Modern Theology in 1984.

In 1973, Harvey Cox wrote The Seduction of the Spirit, which he said "has the best first chapter of anything I have ever written," but he added it went "downhill" from there.

In Turning East, Harvey Cox describes his teaching at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where his mind and soul were challenged by the Buddhist "dharma", and he enjoyed doing research in Asian religious movements.

Harvey Cox became the first to introduce liberation theology at HDS, with its understanding of Jesus the Liberator and God's preference for the poor, drawing on his first-hand experience in a training center in Venezuela.

Harvey Cox was notably concerned with the encounter of Christianity with religious pluralism, especially as the Center for the Study of World Religions at HDS offered opportunities for engagement with scholars of different faiths, which he wrote about in Many Mansions: A Christian's Encounter with Other Faiths, his book that advocated speaking in interfaith dialogue from your own Christian identity as part of the discussion.

In keeping with his alertness to global Christianity, Harvey Cox was drawn to the ecumenical nature of Pentecostalism in Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy, that he wrote about in his book Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century, which might be useful for academic Christianity as well as the church and its leaders as they encounter the challenge of Pentecostalism.

An outgrowth of Harvey Cox's second marriage to Nina Tumarkin, a devout Jew and a professor of Russian history at Wellesley College, was his book Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian's Journey Through the Jewish Year, which is a look at the Jewish year through its major holidays, as seen by him an outsider who is an equally devout Christian.

In Taylor Branch's history, Parting the Waters, Branch notes that Harvey Cox hosted a dinner at which Martin Luther King Jr.

Harvey Cox retired in September 2009 in a well publicized ceremony and celebration.