Whose City?

Extract

Of the many efforts of the socio-religious school to describe and direct the course of American Protestantism, Professor Harvey Cox's The Secular City¹ is by far the most impressive. The title itself with the explanatory sub-title: ‘A celebration of its liberties and an invitation to its discipline’, announces the end of the self-flagellation period we have been enjoying for far too long. Had he performed no other service we should still be most grateful to Professor Cox for his affirmation of our generation, his willing walk into the twentieth century, and his insistence that the Church of Jesus Christ join the present human race. At last a theologian has defended the (telephone) ‘switchboard’ and the (motorway) ‘cloverleaf’ and has exposed the unhealthy and hypocritical business of attacking the only kind of life any of us really intends to live.