The Immanent Frame interview with Harvey Cox

The Immanent Frame, the great blog on religion, secularism, and the public sphere, has an interesting interview with the now retired Harvard Divinity professor, Harvey Cox.

NS: When you talk about these trends—as a theologian on the one hand and a scholar of world religions on the other—how much are you being descriptive and how much prescriptive?

HC: This is a question often raised about my books over the years. Is this theology or is it phenomenology of religion? I’ve tried in my career to bring those two closer together, as I really think they ought to be. What is happening in religious communities ought to play an important role in constructive theological work. If congregations flounder along without much theological input or critique, that won’t be good; and if theology doesn’t have a connection back to congregations, it is going to get pretty airy. It can’t rely only on what past theologians have written. It has to be attentive, as I would say theologically, to what the Spirit is doing in the Church—or, more broadly, among other religions. I don’t see this as a contradiction at all. All of my books are like that, and this one is too.  Read the rest of the interview here.

Also worth noting is the interview done by Krista Tippett at Speaking of Faith.  Listen to the audio of that here.