Front, from left: Mildred, Myron, Martin Marty; (back) Martin's parents, Louise and Emil Marty.
College/University
Career
Gallery of Martin Marty
1970
Illinois, United States
Seated at the piano (from left), foster son Jeff, Micah, and Martin E. Marty; standing (from left), John, Joel, foster daughter Frances, late first wife Elsa; in front of Elsa is Peter. Photo around 1970.
Gallery of Martin Marty
1986
Illinois, United States
Theologian Martin E. Marty standing over a computer keyboard in his study at home. Photo by Kevin Horan.
Gallery of Martin Marty
2006
311 11th St, Ambridge, PA 15003, United States
Martin E. Marty speaking at the Ancient Evangelical Future Conference.
Gallery of Martin Marty
2011
College Park, MD 20742, United States
Martin E. Marty at the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland.
Achievements
Membership
American Society of Church History
Martin is a member and past president of the American Society of Church History.
American Catholic Historical Association
Martin is a member and past president of the Catholic Historical Association.
American Academy of Religion
Martin is a member and past president of the American Academy of Religion.
Awards
National Humanities Medal
1997
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States
Professor Martin E. Marty is presented the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on September 29, 1997, in Washington, DC.
Newberry Library Award
2017
60 W Walton St, Chicago, IL 60610, United States
Martin Marty receives the 2017 Newberry Library Award.
Seated at the piano (from left), foster son Jeff, Micah, and Martin E. Marty; standing (from left), John, Joel, foster daughter Frances, late first wife Elsa; in front of Elsa is Peter. Photo around 1970.
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States
Professor Martin E. Marty is presented the National Humanities Medal by President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton during a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on September 29, 1997, in Washington, DC.
(For the non-specialist, Martin Marty traces the church's ...)
For the non-specialist, Martin Marty traces the church's quest through twenty centuries for unity, sanctity, universality, and authentic witness. He delves into the disparity between the ideals of the church and historical reality in order to provide a brilliant, instructive, and eminently fair statement of the history of Christianity from its founding to the present day. In this second edition, revised and expanded, Marty has added an entirely new section entitled "Postscript and Prescript" in which he discusses the recent past and prospects. Fresh insights and revisions based on the most recent contemporary developments keep this volume abreast of the times, making it an up-to-date survey of the history of Christianity.
(By expressing the thoughts of Christians as they prepare ...)
By expressing the thoughts of Christians as they prepare for church, listen to the pastor's sermon, and as they receive the sacrament, the author captures the powerful meaning of the Lord's Supper. Through his personal and inviting voice, church historian and Christian writer Martin E. Marty describes the origins of Holy Communion and the important role the sacrament has played throughout the history of the Christian church.
The Fire We Can Light: The Role of Religion in a Suddenly Different World
(Where did everyone go? For two or three years, whoever wa...)
Where did everyone go? For two or three years, whoever was not calling for top-to-bottom revolution in the name of Jesus was irrelevant to the media, on the lecture circuit, in the planning centers of the seminaries. One could rise to the occasions with reference to non-violent change, innovation, new politics - and talk into an echo chamber. A call for political involvement was square. Once again, where did the revolutionaries go? After the flirtations of the 1960s, they would put out post-Marxian apologies on “The God That Failed.”
A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart
(A respected theologian and teacher offers a meditation on...)
A respected theologian and teacher offers a meditation on the dark seasons of life, the "winter of the heart," when doubt, grief, and confusion intrude, and illuminates the possibilities of insight, strength, endurance, and hope.
Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America
(Pilgrims in Their Own Land is Martin E. Marty's vivid chr...)
Pilgrims in Their Own Land is Martin E. Marty's vivid chronological account of the people and events that carved the spiritual landscape of America. It is in one sense a study of migration, with each wave of immigrants bringing a set of religious beliefs to a new world. The narrative unfolds through sharply detailed biographical vignettes-stories of religious "pathfinders," including William Penn, Mary Baker Eddy, Henry David Thoreau, and many other leaders of movements, both marginal and mainstream. In addition, Marty considers the impact of religion on social issues such as racism, feminism, and utopianism. And engrossing, highly readable, and comprehensive history, Pilgrims in Their Own Land is written with respect, appreciation, and insight into the multitude of religious groups that represent expressions of spirituality in America.
Modern American Religion, Volume 1: The Irony of It All, 1893-1919
(Martin E. Marty argues that religion in twentieth-century...)
Martin E. Marty argues that religion in twentieth-century America was essentially shaped by its encounter with modernity. In this first volume, he records and explores the diverse ways in which American religion embraced, rejected, or cautiously accepted the modern world.
Modern American Religion, Volume 2: The Noise of Conflict, 1919-1941
(Not since the Civil War had America been so divided by co...)
Not since the Civil War had America been so divided by conflict. Religion was the prime agent in this unusual war: Left versus Right, Fundamentalists versus Modernists; Christians versus Jews; Protestant versus Catholic; white versus black. In this volume, Martin E. Marty tells the riveting story of how America has survived religious disturbances and culturally prospered from them.
Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements
(Accounting for Fundamentalisms features treatments of fun...)
Accounting for Fundamentalisms features treatments of fundamentalist movements, groups that often make headlines but are rarely understood, as part of the multivolume Fundamentalism Project. This book remains a standard reference source for comprehending the dynamics of fundamentalist movements around the world. Surveying fundamentalist movements in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, the contributors to Accounting for Fundamentalisms describe the organization of these movements, their leadership and recruiting techniques, and the ways in which their ideological programs and organizational structures shift over time in response to changing political and social environments.
(Catholicism has been a presence in the New World for half...)
Catholicism has been a presence in the New World for half a millennium. This book provides busy readers with a profile of American Catholicism from 1492 to the present.
Our Hope for Years to Come: The Search for Spiritual Sanctuary
(Christian historian Martin Marty and photographer Micah M...)
Christian historian Martin Marty and photographer Micah Marty combine their gifts in this blend of 47 hymns, meditations, prayers, and photographs. The devotional messages focus on hymns that impart hope grounded in biblical promise. The photographs feature the simple white wooden Gothic churches that the faithful have made with their own hands in town and country America, mingled with spectacular glimpses of grand American Gothic cathedrals. These 47 medications can be used as a guide for prayer and reflection throughout the year.
Modern American Religion, Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941-1960
(In this third volume of his acclaimed chronicle of faith ...)
In this third volume of his acclaimed chronicle of faith in twentieth-century America, Martin E. Marty presents the first authoritative account of American religious culture from the entry of the United States into World War II through the Eisenhower years.
The One and the Many: America's Struggle for the Common Good
(E pluribus unum no longer holds. Out of the many have com...)
E pluribus unum no longer holds. Out of the many have come as many claims and grievances, all at war with the idea of one nation undivided. The damage thus done to our national life, as too few Americans seek a common good, is Martin Marty's concern. His book is an urgent call for repair and a personal testament toward resolution. A world-renowned authority on religion and ethics in America, Marty gives a judicious account (itself a rarity and a relief in our day of uncivil discourse) of how the body politic has been torn between the imperative of one people, one voice, and the separate urgings of distinct identities - racial, ethnic, religious, gendered, ideological, economic.
When True Simplicity Is Gained: Finding Spiritual Clarity in a Complex World
(For those who feel overwhelmed and sense that their lives...)
For those who feel overwhelmed and sense that their lives are too complex and the demands on them too great, this book provides a daily moment of grace and escape. For those who have made their lives superficially simple but still lack the anticipated spiritual dimension, this book offers hope. Promoting no complex instructions on how to accomplish the simple life, but offering only insights into how to receive its gifts, the Martys combine photographs that capture the essence of the Shakers, an American religious community founded on simplicity, with thoughtful meditations that reflect on great prayers of the ages. Together they demonstrate that "when true simplicity is gained," the busy and otherwise distracted person will be gifted with new measures of clarity of purpose, directness of vision, serenity of soul, order in agenda - and an experience of God.
(From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's...)
From the sex-free paradise of the Shakers to the worker's paradise of Marx, utopian ideas seem to have two things in common - they all are wonderfully plausible at the start, and they all end up as disasters. In Visions of Utopia, three leading cultural critics - Edward Rothstein, Martin Marty, and Herbert Muschamp - look at the history of utopian thinking, exploring why they fail and why they are still worth pursuing. Edward Rothstein, New York Times cultural critic, contends that every utopia is really a dystopia - a disaster in the making - one that overlooks the nature of humanity and the impossibilities of paradise. He traces the ideal in politics and technology and suggests that only in art - and especially in music - does the desire for utopia find satisfaction.
(The most influential interpreter of American religion, by...)
The most influential interpreter of American religion, by Bill Moyers, renowned historian and Lutheran pastor Martin Marty portrays the religious reformer Martin Luther as a man of conscience and courage who risked death to ignite the historic reformation of the Church.
(For 350 years, Protestantism was the dominant religion in...)
For 350 years, Protestantism was the dominant religion in America - and its influence spilled over in many directions into the wider culture. Religious historian Martin E. Marty looks at the factors behind both the long period of Protestant ascendancy in America and the comparatively recent diffusion and diminution of its authority. Marty ranges across time, covering such things as the establishment of the Jamestown settlement in 1607, the 1955 publication of Will Herberg's landmark book Protestant-Catholic-Jew, and the current period of American ethnic and religious pluralism.
(To see baptism as merely a ceremony greatly limits the me...)
To see baptism as merely a ceremony greatly limits the meanings of Christian baptism, says Martin Marty, in this practical and inspirational new look at baptism. Martin Luther recommended that believers should begin and end their day reminding themselves of their baptism and then go to work joyfully or to sleep cheerfully. Baptism, says Marty, is at the heart of the everyday, life-long spiritual journey as he explores such questions as: How did early Christians understand and practice baptism? What difference does baptism make in our daily life? How does baptism manifest itself in our relationships, our choices, our faith? With great insight and wisdom Marty brings us both the history of baptism and a useful guide to its application for everyday life. The book includes questions for reflection and discussion.
(Much of today's writing on children treats the child of a...)
Much of today's writing on children treats the child of any age as a problem or a set of problems to be solved, effectively reducing the child to a complex of biological and chemical factors, explainable in scientific terms, or regarding children as objects of adult control. In contrast, Martin Marty here presents the child as a mystery who invokes wonder and elicits creative responses that affect the care provided him or her.
(In the face of the growing threat from collisions of fait...)
In the face of the growing threat from collisions of faith world-wide, this manifesto is a call to embrace religious pluralism. Martin E. Marty is a renowned commentator on religious matters, the author of over 50 books, winner of the National Book Award, and the recipient of 74 honorary doctorates Demonstrates that citizens, religions and identities can survive in radically pluralist settings Accessibly written, it tackles people’s fears of religious pluralism Argues that those involved in collisions of faith need to risk hospitality towards one another, as opposed to the conventional plea for tolerance Pays particular attention to the conflicts that affect or occur within those nations whose politics can be called republican, open, democratic, liberal, or free - particularly the UK, the US, and Western Europe.
(American society is experiencing a profound crisis of tru...)
American society is experiencing a profound crisis of trust, from government to mass media to educational and religious institutions. And - whether we realize it or not - this crisis affects us all. In Building Cultures of Trust, Martin Marty proposes ways of improving the conditions for trust at what might be called the “grass roots” level.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison: A Biography
(For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy,...)
For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison is unmatched by any other book of Christian reflection written in the twentieth century. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer spent two years in Nazi prisons before being executed at age thirty-nine, just a month before the German surrender, for his role in the plot to kill Hitler. The posthumous Letters and Papers from Prison has had a tremendous impact on both Christian and secular thought since it was first published in 1951, and has helped establish Bonhoeffer's reputation as one of the most important Protestant thinkers of the twentieth century. In this, the first history of the book's remarkable global career, National Book Award-winning author Martin Marty tells how and why Letters and Papers from Prison has been read and used in such dramatically different ways, from the cold war to today.
October 31, 1517: Martin Luther and the Day that Changed the World
(This book by Martin Marty is a wonderful companion resour...)
This book by Martin Marty is a wonderful companion resource for the year. Martin Marty answers the question: Why is the Reformation relevant today? Rather than a historical narrative of Reformation events, he explains in this accessible book the issues that led to Luther’s posting of the 95 Theses, their implications for the Church and world and most importantly, how this impacts us devotionally as Christians of any denomination.
(In this cogent volume, renowned Christian historian Marti...)
In this cogent volume, renowned Christian historian Martin Marty delivers a brief yet sweeping account of Christianity and how it spread from a few believers two thousand years ago to become the world’s largest religion.
Martin Emil Marty is an American clergyman, theologian, and historian of modern Christianity. He is also an author of many books that address the issues of religious practice and its role in both private and public life.
Background
Ethnicity:
Martin E. Marty is of Swiss origin on his father's side and of German on his mother's.
Martin Emil Marty was born on February 5, 1928, in West Point, Nebraska, United States, to the family of a teacher Emil Adolph Marty and Anne Louise Wuerdemann. Emil Marty had entered parochial school teaching after only two years of college. This was the pattern in the Lutheran colleges of 1920. He picked up the other two years of credit through summer schools during the Depression. His annual absence occasioned Marty's spending summers on the farm. Marty’s father eventually became principal of the Lutheran school, earning the moniker “Professor Marty” and making the Martys “a status family.” In 1939 the family moved to Battle Creek. Marty spent summers with grandparents near Columbus.
Education
Marty began his studies at Battle Creek High School and then continued to study at Concordia High School in Milwaukee from 1943 to 1947. At this time he became interested in poetry. In 1947, he took some piano and art lessons, went to business school and learned some accounting and typing. He studied for some time at Washington University at St. Louis. He earned a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Divinity degrees from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis in 1949 and 1952 respectively. He was awarded a Master of Sacred Theology from the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago in 1954. Marty earned his Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago, receiving the degree in 1956.
While serving as the founding pastor of a church in Elk Grove Village, Illinois in 1957-1963, Martin E. Marty began his career in publishing, writing books on American religion and the history of Christianity and working for The Christian Century magazine, where he was a weekly columnist and later senior editor. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1963 and taught there until his retirement in 1998.
In dozens of books and thousands of articles that were scholarly in content but also accessible to general readers, Marty examined contemporary religion against the institutional infighting and growing secularity of the 20th and 21st centuries. He wrote much on Protestantism but was also an authority on Roman Catholicism and other traditions. Marty wrote several primers of religious history, including A Short History of Christianity (1959), Pilgrims in Their Own Land: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America (1984), and A Short History of American Catholicism (1995). In 1972, he won a National Book Award for Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (1971), which described how Protestantism shaped early American culture and then, except for brief revivals, waned after the Civil War. His masterwork was Modern American Religion (1986-1996), a three-volume study of the development of American religious life from the late 19th century. His study of religious pluralism in American life in the first decade of the 21st century, When Faiths Collide, was published in 2005.
Marty was also a co-director of the Fundamentalism Project for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1988 to 1994, he and R. Scott Appleby explored current questions in fundamentalism with scholars from around the world. The culmination of this project was edited by Marty and Appleby in Fundamentalisms Comprehended. Other titles in this encyclopedia of fundamentalism include Accounting for Fundamentalisms, (1994), Fundamentalisms and the State, (1993), Fundamentalisms and Society, (1992), and Fundamentalisms Observed, (1991). The series was based upon the interdisciplinary program directed by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The purpose was to explore the nature and impact of fundamentalist movements in the twentieth century.
In 1997 Marty was named director of the Public Religion Project (1996-1998), a three-year study of religion’s relationship to American public life. Though rarely acting in a political role, Marty also accepted in 1997 an appointment to head the Lutheran-Episcopalian Concordat, an ecumenical program almost 30 years in the making.
In 1997 Martin E. Marty was awarded the National Humanities Medal and the inaugural Martin E. Marty Award in the Public Understanding of Religion. In 1998, in honor of his 70th birthday and 35th year of service, the University of Chicago established the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion. Marty was awarded around 80 honorary doctorates. He also received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Gold Medal in 1995, National Humanities Medal in 1997, Distinguished Service Medal of the Association of Theological Schools, and the Order of Lincoln in 1998.
In his observations concerning American religion, Marty clung to a belief in the parish, the local community of believers. He argued that the lessons of all of the society can be learned in interaction with individuals and small groups gathered for worship and religious service. While other commentators were dismissing the parish as an outmoded organizational unit (and Marty himself certainly contributed some criticism of its shortcomings), Marty kept arguing that its faults were simply the faults of human beings and that in the community of the faithful was the promising hope for the future of religion.
Marty is also a leading ecumenist, committed to the belief that a divided Christendom has been not only a disappointment to those who believe that all of Christianity should work toward common goals but a source (and a symptom) of destructive conflict over relatively trivial issues and a source of inefficient use of religious bodies' resources. His work at The Christian Century began in the headiest, most optimistic days of ecumenical thinking in the 1950s; later many of his colleagues became discouraged at the impediments to Christian unity which appeared insurmountable, but Marty persevered in seeing the real possibility of a unified Christianity at some future time.
Politics
Marty was an active spokesperson for those opposed to the American role in the war in Vietnam, helping to found the influential Christian antiwar group Clergy and Laity Concerned about Vietnam and lending his influential name to other antiwar protests.
Views
Perhaps the most pervasive theme in Marty's writing was that of his commitment to pluralism and, therefore, to civility. He argued that the only basis for a moral, just, and humane society is a respect for the beliefs and practices of others who are unlike ourselves, yet the fact of respect for the ways of others does not mean that one should not have passion about his or her own ways. Our own roots and convictions define us, and individuals with strong - although differing - commitments make for a strong society. Outwardly, Marty argued, a key to maintaining the American social fabric is civility - the respect that one must have for others, the fair treatment that one must give others, which leads to a wholesome, fulfilling society.
Marty was an active propagandist for the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and at the invitation of Martin Luther King, Jr., joined many other religious leaders in journeying to Selma, Alabama, for the movement's most historic march, from Selma to Montgomery, in 1965.
Membership
Martin is a member and past president of the American Society of Church History, the American Catholic Historical Association, and the American Academy of Religion.
American Society of Church History
,
United States
American Catholic Historical Association
,
United States
American Academy of Religion
,
United States
Interests
Writers
Willa Cather, Wright Morris, Mari Sandoz
Connections
Martin E. Marty married Elsa Louise Schumacher on June 21, 1952. She died. Together they had four sons Joel, John, Peter, and Micah. Marty married a musician Harriet Julia Meyer on August 23, 1982. He also has two foster-children Frances Garcia Carlson and Jeffrey Garcia and a step-daughter Ursula.
