Harvey CoxThinkers

Anti-urbanism is deeply ironic when it purports to be rooted in religion. Christianity was born in a troubled provincial capital, flourished in the slums and ghettos of the ancient mediterranean basin (rome, corinth, ephesus) among an urban proletariat, spread through the settlements of europe, spawned new cities in north and south America, and hymned its vision of destiny with the image of a new jerusalem.

The City became possible only after technical advances had solved some of the problems which had heretofore placed iron limits on the size of cities. It simply actualized the steel and glass, in pace and personality, what had already been present embryonically in athens and alexandria.

The City is that crucial level of life, somewhere between the circle of family and friends on the one hand and the imperium of mankind on the other, the level where life must be made civil as well as livable.

The Fall of man is not due to the pilfering of God's fire but abdicating his very first decision to a fork-tongued consultant. His sin was not so much pride as sloth.

The Fall of man is a situation in which man's sin was not pilfering God's fire but abdicating his choice to a fork-tongued consultant, not so much pride as sloth.

The Polis is a new type of community that appeared when bellicose clans and rival houses met here and there in which loyalty to whose laws and Gods replaced the more elemental kinship ties which had previously held force.

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

The Tool is a thing which, when man changes, he also changes his gods.