DOG IS DEAD:

Jesus at Harvard: The theologian who once said, "God is dead" chronicles years of wrestling with Jesus' teachings at the university. (Dan Wakefield, BeliefNet)

Bookstore browsers may do a double-take on seeing the title “When Jesus Came to Harvard.” If you imagined Jesus coming to an American university, wouldn’t Harvard be the last place you’d think of Him appearing? Wouldn’t He be more likely to show up at an institution like Bob Jones University, known for its all-out Christian emphasis, rather than a school regarded as a secular, intellectual stronghold?

The new book by Harvard theologian Harvey Cox is not the report of a full-fledged miracle – Jesus didn’t appear in Harvard Yard trailing clouds of glory - but rather in the form of a course called “Jesus and the Moral Life.” It almost seemed like a miracle, though, when “Jesus” became the most popular course at Harvard in the ‘80s and ‘90s, drawing an overflow crowd of eight hundred students that had to be moved from a classroom to Memorial Hall, a venue usually reserved for rock bands and symphony concerts.

The last professor who had made Jesus the subject of a course at Harvard had retired in 1912, and the professor who brought Him back to the curriculum had originally gained fame for proclaiming “God Is Dead” in the 1960s, along with a group of other young rebellious theologians. Cox wrote a bestseller back then called “The Secular City” that foresaw a “post-religious” age, but came full circle three decades later with his “Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and The Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century.” In that book he wrote that “Today it is secularity, not spirituality, that may be headed for extinction” - an analysis that seemed to be confirmed in the recent presidential election.

More like headed for mass suicide.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 1, 2005 12:45 PM