Isuzu Rodeos, the Lord's supper, deconstructionism, the worship of Artemis, mass culture, and even a couple of puns all made an appearance in Harvey Cox's rousing convocation address on September 8. His subject was how religious traditions can best manage to convey their message about real freedom in today's media-dominated world.

Cox said “We live in the midst of a whirling, fast-paced battle between contending myths, parables, and narratives. And most of them are about freedom, or pretend to be. Cynthia Ozick once said that the future belongs to those who have the best stories. I would add, to those who tell them best. And who get them heard.”

Dr. Cox is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Religion at Harvard Divinity School, and one of the most widely read theologians of our time. He is the author of more than 10 books, including the best-selling classic The Secular City. His most recent book, Fire from Heaven, recounts his pilgrimage through the world of Pentecostalism, the fastest-growing form of worship in the world today.

GTU Dean Margaret Miles, who was Dr. Cox's colleague at Harvard Divinity School for 18 years, introduced him. "One of Harvey's skills that I admire greatly is his ability to remain intellectually alive and responsive to new developments in theology. . . He has been, over the years an advocate for understanding not only the American religious landscape but also religions in the global setting."

Following GTU tradition, planning for the fall convocation rotates among the schools. The 1999 ceremony was overseen by the American Baptist Seminary of the West, to Dr. Cox’s pleasure; he was ordained as an American Baptist minister in 1957. The Chapel of the Cross at the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary hosted the event, which was followed by an outdoor reception.

The New Urban Mythology
In his convocation address, Dr. Cox contrasted the “tales of the city” purveyed in TV, movies, and advertising with the stories offered by faith traditions. How, he asked, can faith traditions compete with media culture? How can we get the tales of true liberation heard amid the din?

Dr. Cox set the stage with examples from the opposing domains: on the one hand a TV ad for the Isuzu Rodeo, an overland vehicle, and on the other a passage from the Acts of the Apostles. The passage from Acts describes the disturbance caused by the arrival of the apostles in Ephesus. Their preaching threatened to undermine the veneration of Artemis, and therefore the business of the silversmiths who produced her image for worship.

As Cox pointed out, California could be called the Ephesus of the modern world, where the “silver-screen-smiths” produce the myths, stories, and images venerated all around the world.

The Isuzu Rodeo commercial portrays the vehicle as the ticket to freedom, the key to escaping from constraints and expectations. The ad shows the chic driver speeding away from the traffic jam and honking horns, her hair streaming in the wind. “This is freedom according to the modern Tale of the City, the new urban narrative.”

Dr. Cox proposed that religious traditions cannot recapture the entirety of our secular, technological, market driven mass culture. He issued a challenge for believers to understand this culture more thoroughly, ”to infiltrate it more cunningly, and to become more captivating, more inspiring, and ultimately more subversive.”

A Hunger to Belong
Cox pointed out that the market has become today's most dominant institution, far outpacing religion, education, government, or politics. Yet there are strong resources for a campaign to get the messages of religious traditions out to more people.

This campaign starts with paying close attention to the global media culture, especially the way it links itself to our deepest hopes and fears. Those who design tales of the city for TV and elsewhere have studied their audience carefully, Cox said. They know how we feel, what we long for, what terrifies us.

In fact, promising signs exist in the very images so carefully chosen by the media culture. “One of the recent themes in advertising is not only that their products will bring you personal freedom and fulfillment, but that they will provide the entrance card to a group you would like to belong to. Regardless of your age cohort you can join the Pepsi generation. No matter how far out you feel you can be part of the in crowd. And you can be one of the 50 million who think different."

“People are looking for something to belong to. Here is where communities of faith have to be part of the message. Can we offer people something really to belong to, where real people really care?” Today's population, Cox said, is receptive to the messages about real community and freedom offered by religious traditions, "such as Passover, Easter, the reformers, or liberation theology."

Justice, Community, and the Earth
The Christian tradition offers the Lord’s Supper as one powerful story to counterpose to the spurious tales of the city. As Cox described it:

• It tells a story. A story which starts in the past, includes the present, and looks forward to the future.
• The elements are given away, in a visible enactment of distributive justice.
• The Lord’s Supper takes place around a table, growing out of and supporting community.
• The bread and wine remind us that we depend on the earth and the rain and the sun for our sustenance. “It reminds us, each time, just how fragile all this is.”

Cox quoted Hannah Arendt as saying that the answer to consumerism is not asceticism: it is cultivating the joy in making things and in maintaining them. "And I would add to her astute observation, distributing them justly and caring for the world that produces them."

We do have a message, Cox told the audience. And I hope we can get this message out, with the modern Ephesus all around us. He closed with a rousing exhortation:

"So who will wander through the carnivals of Ephesus today, who will wander among the monuments to the dead, the streetcries of the vendors? Who will tell the stories of freedom? Who will spin the new tales of the city? Students of the GTU, you will. You can. And you must.

For if you do not, who will?"