Harvey Cox Quotes

• All human beings have an innate need to hear and tell stories and to have a story to live by. . . .

  Harvey Cox

  Needs, Stories, Storytelling

  53 Copy quote

• What we are seeking so frantically elsewhere may turn out to be the horse we have been riding all along.

  Harvey Cox

  Horse, Riding, May

  51 Copy quote

• We now live in a 'post-Christian' America . The Judeo-Christian ethic no longer guides our social institutions. Christian ideals and values no longer dominate social thought and action. The Bible has ceased to be a common base of moral authority for judging whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, acceptable or unacceptable.

  Harvey Cox

  Christian, Religious, America

  19 Copy quote

• "Religion" can no more be equated with what goes on in churches than "education" can be reduced to what happens in schools or "health care" restricted to what doctors do to patients in clinics. The vast majority of healing and learning goes on among parents and children and families and friends, far from the portals of any school or hospital. The same is true for religion. It is going on around us all the time. Religion is larger and more pervasive than churches.

  Harvey Cox

  Children, Healing, School

  Harvey Cox (1985). “Seduction Spirit”, p.13, Simon and Schuster

  19 Copy quote

• Man must now assume the responsibility for his world. He can no longer shove it off on religious power.

  Harvey Cox

  Religious, Responsibility, Men

  Harvey Cox (2013). “The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective”, p.258, Princeton University Press

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• Somewhere deep down we know that in the final analysis, we do decide things and that even our decisions to let someone else decide are really our decisions, however pusillanimous.

  Harvey Cox

  Decision, Finals, Analysis

  "On Not Leaving It to the Snake". Book by Harvey Cox, 1967.

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• Secularism is not only indifferent to alternative religious systems, but as a religious ideology it is opposed to any other religious systems. It is therefore a closed system.

  Harvey Cox

  Christian, Religious, Alternatives

  37 Copy quote

• Not to decide is to decide.

  Harvey Cox

  Choices

  17 Copy quote

• The political is replacing the metaphysical as the characteristic mode of grasping reality.

  Harvey Cox

  Reality, Political, Politician

  Harvey Cox (1966). “The Secular City”

  17 Copy quote

• God laughs, it seems, because God knows how it all turns out in the end.

  Harvey Cox

  Laughter, Laughing, Ends

  16 Copy quote

• The real ecumenical crisis today is not between Catholics and Protestants but between traditional and experimental forms of church life.

  Harvey Cox

  Real, Catholic, Church

  Harvey Cox (2013). “The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective”, p.190, Princeton University Press

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• Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.

  Harvey Cox

  Lasts, Form, Forbidden

  Harvey Cox (2013). “The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective”, p.261, Princeton University Press

  9 Copy quote

• The comic, more than the tragic, because it ignites hope, leads to more, not less, participation in the struggle for a just world.

  Harvey Cox

  Struggle, World, Comic

  13 Copy quote

• I am dead against trying to keep religious conservatives out of the political debate. The tactic of exclusion is self-defeating.

  Harvey Cox

  Christian, Religious, Self

  4 Copy quote

• Secular Humanism is opposed to other religions; it actively rejects, excludes, and attempts to eliminate traditional theism from meaningful participation in the American culture.

  Harvey Cox

  Meaningful, Christian, Religious

  11 Copy quote

• It is always the task of the intellectual to "think otherwise." This is not just a perverse idiosyncrasy. It is an absolutely essential feature of a society.

  Harvey Cox

  Thinking, Intellectual, Essentials

  Harvey Cox (2013). “The Secular City: Secularization and Urbanization in Theological Perspective”, p.270, Princeton University Press

  9 Copy quote

• Your reach should always exceed your grasp.

  Harvey Cox

  Should, Exceed

  4 Copy quote

• Instead of a 'Western Christianity,' we now witness a post-Christian West (in Europe) and a post-Western Christianity (in the global South). America is somewhere in between.

  Harvey Cox

  Christian, Europe, America

  7 Copy quote

• There has never been a better raconteur than Jesus of Nazareth.

  Harvey Cox

  Jesus, Nazareth, Surprising

  Harvey Cox (1985). “Seduction Spirit”, p.9, Simon and Schuster

  11 Copy quote

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