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Challenge 69 the urban crisis. The students response. I observe that there are two problems that seem to be emerging. One is a generation gap that is quite this horrible between the speakers and the young men and women who have come here to hear them and also something of a communications gap. Comments were made by the men and women who came to hear a number of the speakers that we live in a competitive society which is all very true but they fail to understand that one must compete on something close to equal competitive grounds. It isn't fair for a 6 foot 200 pounder to take my young 10 year old son into a ring and proposed to box or to wrestle with him. And I submit to you that the one fifth of all Americans who have to compete with the 80 percent of us that seem to have the full measure of the blessings of this society
are competing not on a very very fair basis of coal and I think that that's what challenge 69 is all about. The Wake Forest University a symposium on contemporary American affairs presents challenge 8:54 the urban crisis. The student's response. This is the sixth in a series of nine programs that seek to focus attention on the problems of American cities. The topic of this program is the role of the church in meeting the urban crisis. The speaker on today's program Dr. Harvey Cox is professor of divinity at the Harvard University Divinity School. Dr. Cox is a Baptist clergyman and is author of the Secular City and the analysis of contemporary urban society and its relation to Christianity. Here now is Dr. Harvey Cox speaking on the role of the church in meeting the urban crisis.
Mr. Chairman ladies and gentlemen it's very good to be at Wake Forest this morning. I must say that as I stand here amidst the tobacco fields I feel almost guilty that I stopped smoking last Christmas. I want to apologize to anyone here who feels that I'm depriving your institutions of their means of support. I tried tapering off at one point and then decided just to quit outright. Which I think is probably the best way to do it as the lady discovered who had been having difficulty with her philandering husband and had made him give her a solemn promise that he would cut that stuff out. She came back one day and found him passionately in the arms of a midget. And she said a midget lady she said to him. I thought you promised me there wouldn't be any more of this. He said dear can't you see I'm tapering off.
I didn't bring along any strobe lights or films today. But I do want to talk about precisely. The area of. Concern articulated by the chairman. I want to talk about the city from a theological perspective and especially about the student in our contemporary urban secular world and what is sometimes called the crisis of the city. I don't think there is a thing called the crisis of the city and I think there is a real crisis of the city. I think there is a civilization or societal crisis which focuses itself in the city. I don't believe for a moment that what we call the problems of New York or Los Angeles or Philadelphia or Winston-Salem can be solved in those cities themselves. The
cities have been asked to bear an unfair and equitable burden for the injustices and inequities of the entire society. So like we used to talk about the Negro problem and now we recognize that the problem is white racism. I think it's time we stop talking about the problem of the cities and talk about what's wrong with the society which systematically betrays abandons and destroys its cities. I'm sure future historians will wonder how our society as affluent as ours as as dependent on its great urban centers as we are could engage in what really amounts to a kind of massive act of self suicide. Systematically destroying its vital organs. Watching itself decay from the vital organs out. But what I want to talk about today is the curious fact.
That. Although the biblical images of human fulfillment are urban almost entirely. Somehow or another in our contemporary society American society our symbols of fulfillment have become personal and indeed individualistic. Let me talk for a moment about that point which I think is a serious one and one that troubles me as a theologian. Have you ever noticed that biblical face sees the Pope no man of man and almost holy in urban or corporate metaphors. Whatever you may think about the gates of Jasper in the streets of gold and all of those images in the Book of Revelation the fact is that the Bible begins with man in the garden and ends with the vision of man in the city. We have banquets weddings choirs of angels
all of the symbols of man's ultimate fulfillment as they are given to us in biblical place are irreducibly Corporate not individual. It's interesting to compare the metaphors of human fulfillment in Biblical faith with for example the Buddhist notion of the return of the drop of water to the great ocean or the images of a cool oasis for example in Islam. Here are in Biblical faith urban corporate images. Man is meant to be an urban creature and he finds his fulfillment in what is symbolized as a city a new Jerusalem a New Zion. I knew. I knew city. However. Think of the opposite meaning that cities have for us today in American culture. Let me just try a test on you if I may. I'm going to.
Repeat the names of about five or six cities the next minute or two and leave a few seconds after I repeat each name and I want you to try to make your minds. Simply a blank. And let the first impression that the cities conjure up in your imagination. Strikers don't just let it happen. What is the association you have when I mention these words. Chicago. Memphis Los Angeles. Prague Saigon. Now if you're like me the first thing Rush is in are not. Symbols of human fulfillment abundance harmony. What rushes into your consciousness are images of destruction violence.
Pollution crime. Racial animosity. And the rest. Our cities curiously enough have become symbols of despair rather than symbols of quote they've become of their caste hectic meaning for us is one of hopelessness. And despair. But as I as I want to emphasize very strongly and as I said at the beginning I think we are wrong to talk about a crisis of the city. Mr. Edward Logan last week in. Look magazine I wrote something about the city of New York. Mr Lowe used to be the Urban Development director of Boston and has happily left our community for wider fields. And described New York as being the victim of a degenerative disease. I think this is precisely the wrong metaphor. When you find someone who has
been beaten Rob and who is being systematically drained of his energy his blood is his breath to feed other people to feed those around him. You could hardly say that this is a disease generated disease. So I want to put this the emphasis today on not on what's wrong with the cities but what's wrong with all of us which causes us to enter into this kind of suicidal SELP legislation of destroying our cities. And I think probably one of the there are many reasons for this political reasons philosophical ethical religious reasons. And today I want to pick namely what I think are the cultural and religious background for our abandonment of our cities and the need for our movement away from urban metaphors too individualistic metaphors of human fulfillment. Where
do we look today in American culture for models of human fulfillment. Could one suggest that possibly John Lennon or Bob Dylan or Steve McQueen or maybe even alas Hugh Hefner represent for at least the men among us a kind of image of human fulfillment. These are people who have developed a style of life which allows them to be who they want to be to go where they want to go to think and do and be what they want to be despite what the rest of us can do. They have hacked out for themselves a kind of a world within the world and a way of living which can say to the rest of us I don't care what happens to you. Here is the way I'm going to lead my life as an arts ADOX as different as peculiar as eccentric
as I want to live it. I suppose Mr. Hefner symbolizes this more clearly than anyone else when that happen has actually created physically his own little world in the midst of the crumbling violence ridden world of Chicago little world which cost perhaps 40 million dollars to maintain a mere bagatelle for Mr. Hefner. A world which allows him to bring all of what he wants into his world and not to have to deal with a larger one. Last week I saw the film. The Thomas Crown Affair with Steve McQueen which became very evident to me that we are we now have a new hero to replace James Bond. Steve McQueen who was a superb early individual unfettered unsocial man. Who's gotten rid of wife and children who lives in a marvelous. Bachelor Pad on Beacon Hill and drives his car his
racing car around the beaches of Cape Cod and fills in his spare hours making love that they've done away the freed man who doesn't give a damn about the rest of the world. And we invest the Steve McQueen's of the silver screen with our secret hopes. That this is the way out. But it's not. This is the way to a kind of individual a stick. Social solipsism perhaps an internal secular salvation at the price of. The destruction of the world. And yet I'm afraid that very much a lot of our student protests today often takes a strangely nonpolitical form demands for my own individual fulfillment. Being able to do my own thing without much reference to the world around us. Either when I'm around us is a city. It is an intricate mechanism
in which we must learn to live together to make corporate decisions about our destiny to bring into the decision making process those who have been excluded from it for one reason or another to make to find ways to make decisions together so that we are not defeated by the very technologies that we that are scientific know how has created. And yet somehow or another faced with this challenge to find new corporate ways of seeking our human fulfillment we still focus on individual heroes like the ones I've mentioned. Or take another example. Perhaps the contrast between someone like Sammy Davis Jr. and let's say Stokely Carmichael. The title of Sammy Davis Jr. His book is yes I can.
Yes I can. Not yes we can. The defiance of one very talented and energetic black man who decides that he can beat the system regardless of what happens to his brothers. And I suppose he had in a way. But. A new mood is now abroad in the black community which I suppose could be summed up with the phrase yes we can. And only if we can. Can any one of us individually find the kind of fulfillment which God intends. There is a recognition in the black power movement. Whatever your criticisms of it may be that man's salvation is not an individual individualistic affair. It is something which we have together or don't have a lot. There's another another curious kind of hero that we admired today. Perhaps this is a.
Better sign. I'm thinking of Robert F. Kennedy who instead of fighting his way up from poverty into Apple I once. Fought his way down. You might say from affluence to some kind of recognition and empathy for the excluded and betrayed. We do have an admiration for this kind of person. In our society they seem to be short lived. Such persons. Nonetheless I think it is a recognition of. The limitations on individual on the possibilities of individual fulfillment and the recognition that urban man comes to his fulfillment only only with his followers. Now I'd like to take some responsibility today if I might as a theologian for part of the blame for where we are. Our solution to our urban crisis by and large has been simply to find our way out of the city.
Get enough money to get out. Simply abandon the problem and create our own little half Omarion world somewhere in the suburbs. It may not be completely equipped with warm swimming pools and cold hot and cold running bunnies but nonetheless. It is just as much our artificial creation as any. Mention a few half or. Just as much insulated from the pain and possibilities of the real urban world even though it may be furnished somewhat differently. Our solution to complex corporate problems is a simplistic individualistic one. Me and my wife and our kids. Our house and our lawn. Escaping from the filth and dirt and crime and welfare and screaming sirens which we associate with cities. Are. Partly to blame for this is our American religious tradition
which has put such. An enormous emphasis on the salvation of my individual soul. That as a individual I make a decision for Christ or against Christ and this and I am lapped it up or whacked it down by myself. When the role is one that when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and time shall be no more. In the morning breaks eternal right and fair. When the Saints went when they save the earth shall gather over on the other shore and the roll is called up yonder I'll be there. Yes I can. Now. There is another tradition in American religion the tradition of corporate American corporate effort to build the kingdom of God on these shores. Perhaps those who first settled North Carolina or New England had this vision in mind.
That is the actual construction of a Christian Commonwealth one in which the the ideals of Christianity would be built into the very warp in the book of the city. Look at the names of some of the cities which were planted on the shores a few hundred years ago. Philadelphia Providence. New Harmony. City after city conquered the cities which which which symbolize a kind of corporate hope for a new urban reality. Now many of the many of these hopes have been dashed. Nonetheless there is that side of the American religious tradition also on. That side which sees our hope in terms of corporate renewal and fulfillment. Nonetheless we still are fighting today this individual is to kerosene. And I'm afraid that recent years of Protestant theology have not done very much to help us out of our individualistic heritage.
I would like to contend this morning. That by and large the impact of existentialism on Protestant theology has been a detrimental one. Existentialism. As it sped itself into the theology of a book and some. In the Orthodox theology is circulating on the American scene has simply deepened and exacerbated our American tendency to put the emphasis on the individual person rather than the person in relation to his neighbor. Existentialism talks about the inner self its anguish its doubts. Its unbelief its need to decide. It places the OP and places the individual against the mystery of the future or the openness of history and ask for some kind of personal individual decision. I think one of the reasons why American Protestant theology has been so fascinated. One
might even say obsessed. With existentialism. Is simply because it coheres with much of our piety and indeed revivalist of history. Much of what I would see as the the anti urban side of our religious history. I'm rather glad frankly that our 30 or 40 year old love affair with existentialism and Protestant theology seems to be over. I'm happy that the next stage may very well be a conversation between Protestant theology and certain forms of revisionist Marxism. Wouldn't it have been interesting if. We had if the if we hadn't had a cold war we haven't had a red scare. And yet during the years since the Second World War the conversation partner for theologians had not been an existentialist but the neo Marxists and
Marxists who at least for whatever their atheism at least seem as an irreducibly social creature are often interested in the fact that we are we're off were widely criticized sometimes for having any truck whatever with Marxists as theologians because they're atheists. And yet we don't mind using huge gobs of Heidegger for example Sartre in our theologies. People who are certainly just as atheistic as Karl Marx ever was. So I look forward to a new period in American and American theology in which we can leave behind our fascination with existentialism and move into a more productive days which see the political and corporate character of man's life. I think on the Roman Catholic side also there has been an unfortunate tendency in recent theological history to move toward an over emphasis on the individual person. This happened for
a different reason and Roman Catholic theology. Whereas we found ourselves in Protestantism a few decades ago stuck in a kind of a morass of sentimentalism and we needed the corrective of Biblical faith kind of strength of the tradition itself to save us from this subjective sentimentalism. On the Roman Catholic side. Theologians found themselves trapped in the in the constructive categories of scholastic philosophy and theology and personal ism. Roman Catholic theological and philosophical personal ism really saved Catholicism from the kind of slow strangulation which collapsed to which the scholasticism was subjecting it so personal ISM came as a kind of a deliverance. But personal ism has the same dangers in Catholic theology that existentialism has in Protestant theology.
One can put an enormous emphasis on the sacredness of the person their inviolability. And. Somehow overlook the fact that persons live in communities. And that persons cannot be fulfilled without. Without the neighbor. We've contributed this I think this over personalize ation and kind of. Individualistic Pyatt ism also by the language that has been dug out of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his work in recent years has been a lot of discussion about going out and meeting Jesus Christ in the world. And if you heard that phrase over and over again we meet Jesus Christ or we meet not just in church but out in the world but we mean generally by that is that we encounter a kind of individual personal Christ in the face of the hungry child or of the misused black man or of the humiliated
migrant worker. There's a kind of a Christ mysticism which whatever its strength or awakening us to the presence of the holy outside of the sanctuary misleads us into thinking that anyone ever meets Jesus Christ anywhere without also meeting the new kingdom. Christ comes according to biblical biblical vision only as the one who introduces a new kingdom a new city a new structural and corporate reality. And we've been taught somehow mistakenly I think to look for a deep political lived Christ out of the individual mystic personage whom we can meet without reference to the destructive. Structures. Which keep us apart and which destroy us. We need Jesus Christ as the one who introduces the new kingdom and a
kingdom is a very political term. Very social Here we do simply corporate. Now I think there are some signs of hope amidst all of this. And I've mentioned already the recognition on the part of the black community in America that the individual the stick solution is to to the to the damage inflicted by racism will no longer work in American but in the relative relationship between races. The notion that one by one black people can climb out of some kind of. Racial Ghetto into an American society has now been left behind. And I think it's one of the most decisive turns in the whole history of American race relations of this is happening. Recognizing recognition of the corporate character of the destiny of black people. That's happening also I think in the insistence
on the part of many of university students that. That the students should have some role in determining the curricular and structural aspects of their life in the university.
Series
Challenge 69: The urban crisis
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#6 (Reel 1)
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University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
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Identifier: 69-30-6 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
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Chicago: “Challenge 69: The urban crisis; #6 (Reel 1),” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tx355r59.
MLA: “Challenge 69: The urban crisis; #6 (Reel 1).” University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tx355r59>.
APA: Challenge 69: The urban crisis; #6 (Reel 1). Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-tx355r59