The issue of the religion has always been bothering the minds of the humanity. Such concept as “the faith” gives a food for thoughts for many theologians, researchers and even scientists. One of such researchers, in terms of the religion, is Harvey Cox – Hollis Research Professor of Divinity at Harvard, whose interests focus on the interaction of religion, culture, and politics. ("Harvey G. Cox, Jr.") Apart from that, he also works on such issues as the urbanization, theological developments in the Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations and the spiritual movements in the nowadays world in the global setting, the Pentecostalism, in specific. ("Harvey G. Cox, Jr.") In the 2009 he has published his book, named “The Future of Faith”, in which he describes his own position towards the Christianity and the role of mysticism in it.
Harvey Cox states that mysticism is an irreplaceable part of each and every religion. It is something unexplainable and undeniable. However, on the other hand, if the religion requires a mediator, such as a priest or others, in order to get to the God, the mysticism brings us directly to our aim. The mysticism, as an essential concept of any religious studies, was, is and will be present in our world, playing important roles in our lives.
As Harvey Cox stated in the lecture with Charles Barfoot, even Christianity – one of the biggest and the most influential religion on our planet, in the modern days experiences transformations towards the mysticism. He explains it with such arguments. The Christianity has experienced three stages of the transformation. The first one – was the worshiping the God and following the Jesus’s teachings. The faith of those people was all concentrated around the hope for the new world. It was more spiritual. People of the early Christianity were considering themselves, as the ones, who are creating an essentially anti-imperial movement. (Cox, 62)
The second stage is characterized by the imperialisation of the Christianity, when Christians were put into strict lines. It was the age of the “correct doctrine”. The Christianity has become imperial (Cox, 6). This age has brought the glorification and the worshipping of the bishops and priests, at some point even more than the God.
Nowadays we all live in the Age of the Sprit, which has started half a century ago, according to Harvey Cox (Cox, 9). This means that the humanity has slowly transformed the religion into more spiritual concept. In the modern world the boundaries of the religions are slowly vanishing. People start to find more and more similarities between various religions: similar concepts, similar approaches to understanding. Today, we can meet a number of people, who identify themselves as spiritual, but not religious. What does it mean? It means that the old hierarchies have been transformed; it means that the religion, the Christianity in the particular, is stepping into the brand new era. Harvey states that this new age must has something to do with the explosion of the of old assumptions in recent biblical scholarship (Cox, 1).
According to Cox, this brand new Age of the Spirit will bring the humanity a huge opportunities, but also will bring huge risks. Harvey Cox states that some researchers are claiming that the religion is about to demise. However, according to the Harvey’s position, in the future the religion, as we know it, will either disappear, or will resurrect and manage to survive in family traditions, rituals, folk festivals, folk art, literature, etc. (Cox, 1) What does it mean? Basically, Harvey brings us to the mind that indeed, the mysticism is the future of the faith. As it was mentioned above, according to Harvey Cox’s words mysticism – is something unexplainable and undeniable. It is a basis and irreplaceable part of each and every religion. Basically, nowadays, we may see those transformations of the modern religion. According to Harvey – today there is a number of people, who identify them as spiritual, but not religious. This means that the religion has stepped on the new level of transformation. People believe that there is a higher power above all of us. The humanity believes that there is something undeniable in the world. This approach leads us to the mysticism – the original and initial, so – called, pre – religion. It is interesting, but today we may notice an interesting fact, provided us by Harvey Cox. He says that nowadays people has become discovering more and more similarities between the number of the religions that exist in the world. Probably, this means that after some time, all religions will combine into the one religion, which will be concentrating more on the spiritual approach.
As a conclusion, it is important to mention that Harvey says that the future of religion is something that is a notoriously difficult to predict. (Maeshiro, Kelly) Indeed, it is not a political movement, which course of events could be predicted and analyzed in advance. The religion is concentrated on the humanity’s minds and souls. However, it gives a chance to analyze some possible consequences of the religious transformations of the Age of the Spirit.
Works cited:
Maeshiro, Kelly. "Book Review: Harvey Cox's The Future of Faith." The Harvard Ichthus. 06 Aug. 2013. Web. 08 Apr. 2016. <http://www.harvardichthus.org/2013/08/book-review-harvey-coxs-the-future-of-faith/>.
Cox, Harvey. The Future of Faith. New York, NY: HarperOne, 2009. Print.
"Harvey G. Cox, Jr." Harvard Divinity School. Web. 08 Apr. 2016. <http://hds.harvard.edu/people/harvey-g-cox>.
