Neither Nor

Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey Through the Jewish Year, by Harvey Cox (Houghton Mifflin, 305 pp., $24)

HARVEY Cox is not afraid to reinvent himself. In 1965, the Harvard Divinity School professor published The Secular City, in which he predicted, if not the death of God, then at least the death of traditional religion. In 1984, religion was making something of a comeback, and so—like any fortune-teller worth his tea leaves—Cox tried a little reinterpretation. In his second major work, Religion in the Secular City, he examined two of the movements he judged responsible for this revival—fundamentalism and liberation theology. Not surprisingly, given his own leftist political orientation, he predicted the failure of the former and the success of the latter. He had once again bet on the wrong horse: Fundamentalism today is vigorous, and liberation theology is on the wane.

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Naomi Schaefer

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Common Prayers: Faith, Family, and a Christian’s Journey Through the Jewish Year, by Harvey Cox (Houghton Mifflin, 305 pp., $24)

HARVEY Cox is not afraid to reinvent himself. In 1965, the Harvard Divinity School professor published The Secular City, in which he predicted, if not the death of God, then at least the death of traditional religion. In 1984, religion was making something of a comeback, and so—like any fortune-teller worth his tea leaves—Cox tried a little reinterpretation. In his second major work, Religion in the Secular City, he examined two of the movements he judged responsible for this revival—fundamentalism and liberation theology. Not surprisingly, given his own leftist political orientation, he predicted the failure of the former and the success of the latter. He had once again bet on the wrong horse: Fundamentalism today is vigorous, and liberation theology is on the wane.