Harvey Cox (born 1929) was professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School. In the mid-1960s he achieved international prominence because of his book The Secular City. After that he was a leading interpreter for the American church of the theological significance of cultural dynamics.

Harvey Cox was born in 1929 and grew up in Malvern, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His religious background was Baptist, and he described his faith journey not as a steady climb up the ladder of spiritual development, but rather as "desultory and meandering" with sometimes "sickening reversals and absurd contradictions." He titled an autobiography Just As I Am (1983) after the familiar gospel song, one verse of which he found especially meaningful:

Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt,
Fightings and fears within, without,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
(Charlotte Elliott)

The metaphor of a...