Dark Horses

Do you remember Harvey Cox? (No—that was Eddie Cox who married Tricia Nixon.) Harvey Cox was (is?) a Harvard theologian who wrote a book, back in the Secular Sixties, called The Secular City, in which he argued that modern technocratic society makes religion problematical: that the answers to contemporary human problems lie in study, not prayer; that the world is knowable inside and out; and that there are more important things to do than to sit in a seminary things like remaking the world. This “new secularty” was followed shortly by New Left radicalism and the counterculture, which, either singly or together, were widely expected to give the coup de grace to superstition (i.e., organized religion) in the enlightened world for ever and ever. And then, as James Hitchcock writes, something happened: “By the mid-Seventies the secularized society which has apparently been the America of the previous decade had turned into a kind of religious tropical jungle.”

The new religiosity has of course received a great deal of play in the media which, however, have chosen to concentrate on the Born-Again Protestant movements and that elaborate pan-Protestant business known as the Moral Majority. By contrast, Mr. Hitchcock, in his book The New Enthusiasts and What They Are Doing to the Catholic Church (Thomas More Press, 180 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago, 111. 60601; $9.95), considers the recent Catholic charismatic movement: its origins, development. and effect upon the traditional (institutional) Church.

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Do you remember Harvey Cox? (No—that was Eddie Cox who married Tricia Nixon.) Harvey Cox was (is?) a Harvard theologian who wrote a book, back in the Secular Sixties, called The Secular City, in which he argued that modern technocratic society makes religion problematical: that the answers to contemporary human problems lie in study, not prayer; that the world is knowable inside and out; and that there are more important things to do than to sit in a seminary things like remaking the world. This “new secularty” was followed shortly by New Left radicalism and the counterculture, which, either singly or together, were widely expected to give the coup de grace to superstition (i.e., organized religion) in the enlightened world for ever and ever. And then, as James Hitchcock writes, something happened: “By the mid-Seventies the secularized society which has apparently been the America of the previous decade had turned into a kind of religious tropical jungle.”

The new religiosity has of course received a great deal of play in the media which, however, have chosen to concentrate on the Born-Again Protestant movements and that elaborate pan-Protestant business known as the Moral Majority. By contrast, Mr. Hitchcock, in his book The New Enthusiasts and What They Are Doing to the Catholic Church (Thomas More Press, 180 North Wabash Avenue, Chicago, 111. 60601; $9.95), considers the recent Catholic charismatic movement: its origins, development. and effect upon the traditional (institutional) Church.