The Future of Faith

✍ Scribed by Cox, Harvey

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: en-GB
• Weight: 166 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780061755538

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. What shape will the Christian faith take in the 21st century? In the midst of fast-paced global changes and in the face of an apparent resurgence of fundamentalism, can Christianity survive as a living and vital faith? With his typical brilliance and lively insight, Cox explores these and other questions in a dazzling blend of memoir, church history and theological commentary. He divides Christian history into three periods: the Age of Faith, during the first Christian centuries, when the earliest followers of Jesus lived in his Spirit, embraced his hope and followed him in the work he had begun; the Age of Belief, from the Council of Nicaea to the late 20th century, during which the church replaced faith in Jesus with dogma about him; and the Age of the Spirit, in which we're now living, in which Christians are rediscovering the awe and wonder of faith in the tremendous mystery of God. According to Cox, the return to the Spirit that so enlivened the Age of Faith is now enlivening a global Christianity, through movements like Pentecostalism and liberation theology, yearning for the dawning of God's reign of shalom. Cox remains our most thoughtful commentator on the religious scene, and his spirited portrait of our religious landscape challenges us to think in new ways about faith. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“With typical brilliance and lively insight, Cox explores questions in a dazzling blend of memoir, church history and theological commentary . . . Cox remains our most thoughtful commentator on the religious scene, and his spirited portrait of our religious landscape challenges us to think in new ways about faith.” (Publishers Weekly )

“A lucid and congenial book . . . [Cox] is not alone, but he is most cogent, in thinking that the content of Christian faith is becoming more like that of the early church . . . A book full of good news.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review) )

“With its overarching themes, Cox’s new book can be viewed as the culmination of his life’s scholarship.” (Boston Globe )

“At this crucial turning point in history, Harvey Cox reminds us of essential religious values and imperatives . . . A timely and prophetic book” (Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God )

“Celebrated religious scholar Cox argues that we are witnessing the dawn of a third epoch in Christian history . . . Cox’s work is intriguing, and there is certainly truth in his observations about global Christianity and the rise of Pentecostalism and liberation theology.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“Harvey Cox has been a voice of both reason and faith in our cynical times. Now, he offers a fresh vision for the resurrection of a new global Christianity that will restore our faith both in ourselves and the divine.” (Deepak Chopra, author of Jesus: A Story of Enlightenment )

“This important book has not only helped me understand the past, present, and future of this amazing phenomenon called Christianity ... it has also motivated me to keep working to help make actual the possible future Cox envisions.” (Brian McLaren, author of A New Kind of Christian )

“For the last four decades, Harvey Cox has been the leading trend spotter in American religion.” (Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy )

“The Future of Faith is a tour de force. As passionate and challenging as his classic, The Secular City, Cox’s new book invites the faithful, the skeptical, and the fearful into a spirit-filled vision of Christianity that can renew a hurting world.” (Diana Butler Bass, author of A People's History of Christianity )

“The Future of Faith is insightful, provocative, and inspiring—I even found myself uttering a hearty evangelical “Amen” at many points!” (Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport )