1994 Tanner-McMurrin Lecture

Harvey G. Cox, Jr.
Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity
Harvard University

“Christianity: The Third Millennium”
Lecture Resources

Lecture was given: Thursday, April 7, 1994 7:00p.m. Jewett Center
Seminar was held: Friday, April 8. 1994 11:00a.m. Gore Auditorium

Dr. Harvey Cox was born in Malvern, Pennsylvania, received his A.B. with honors in History from the University of Pennsylvania, his B.D. from Yale University Divinity school and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in History and Philosophy of Religion. He served as campus minister at Temple University and Oberlin College, and taught at Andover Newton Theological School and presently is the victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity. He teaches at Harvard Divinity School, in the Religious Studies Program of the Faculty of arts and Sciences and in the moral reasoning Division of the Core Curriculum. Dr. Cox has been on the Harvard faculty since 1965.

His interests focus on the interaction of religion, politics and culture; Christianity in the Third World (especially Latin American); and new religious movements. He published The Secular City in 1965 and has sold over 900,000 copies in eleven languages. A Russian translation is now in preparation. The book was on the New York Times best-selling original paperback for the decade of the 1960’s. His most recent books are Many Mansions: a Christian’s Encounter with Other Faiths (1988) and the section on Christianity in Our Religions (1993), a collection of articles by scholar-practitioners of the seven major world faiths. He is currently working on a book about the significance of worldwide growth of Pentecostalism.

In the 1960’s Dr. Cox was a co-founder of the Boston chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership conference, the organization headed nationally by dr. Martin Luther king, Jr. He has also served as a member of the Working Committee of the department of Church and society of the World Council of Churches and as a consultant to the Roman Catholic Bishop of Latin America. Harvey Cox is the founder and currently the convener of the Boston Religious Activists’ Breakfast, a support network for local religious leaders who work on issues of racism, homelessness, and public school policy.

He taught as Visiting Professor at the Ecumenical Theological Faculty in Mexico City, The University of Michigan and the Naropa Institute (a Gregorian University in Rome), Doshisha University in Kyoto, Dhararam University in Bangalore, India, and the Catholic University of Lima, Peru.

An ordained Baptist minister, Dr. Cox is married to Dr. Nina Tumarkin, professor of Russian History at Wellesley College. They have a son, Nicholas, born in 1986. Cox is also a saxophonist and plays regularly with a Boston-based band called “The Embraceables.”

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Harvey G. Cox, Jr. Lecture