Martin Emil Marty (born on February 5, 1928) is an American

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Catholic Church launched ...

religious scholar who has written extensively on

religion in the United States Christianity is the most widely professed religion in the United States, with Protestantism being its largest branch, although the country is believed to be "rapidly secularizing".

Early life and education

Marty was born on February 5, 1928, in

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), also known Metonymy, metonymically as West Point or simply as Army, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York. It was originally established as a f ...

, Nebraska, and raised in Iowa and Nebraska. He was a member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod and was educated at Concordia University Wisconsin, Concordia College, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri. Marty continued with graduate work, receiving a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Chicago in 1956. He served as a Lutheran pastor from 1952 to 1967 in the suburbs of Chicago.

Career

From 1963 to 1998 Marty taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School, eventually holding an endowed chair, the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professorship. His more than 130 doctoral advisees at the University of Chicago include M. Craig Barnes, James R. Lewis (scholar), James R. Lewis, Jeffrey Kaplan (academic), Jeffrey Kaplan, Jonathan M. Butler, John G. Stackhouse Jr., and Vincent Harding, as well as Susan Henking, Shimer College president. Marty served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association. He was the founding president and later the George B. Caldwell Scholar-in-Residence at the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics. He has served on two US presidential commissions and was director of both the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts. He has served at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, Northfield, Minnesota, since 1988 as Regent, Board Chair, Interim President in late 2000, and since 2002 as Senior Regent. Marty retired on his seventieth birthday. He holds emeritus status at the University of Chicago; he served as Robert W. Woodruff Professor, Robert W. Woodruff Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University 2003–2004. His first wife, Elsa, died and he married again, to Harriet. He has seven children (including two foster children), among whom are John Marty, a Minnesota State Senator, and Peter Marty, who hosted the ELCA radio ministry ''Grace Matters'' from 2005 to 2009; and is now publisher of ''The Christian Century'' magazine and senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa, Davenport, Iowa. The Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion is named for Marty and has been awarded annually since 1996.

Awards and accolades

Marty has received numerous honors, including the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the University of Chicago Alumni Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal of the Association of Theological Schools, and 80 honorary doctorates. In 1991, Marty was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (LHD) degree from Whittier College. Named in his honor, the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion is the University of Chicago Divinity School's institute for interdisciplinary research in all fields of the academic study of religion. He is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society and of the American Philosophical Society and is the Mohandas Gandhi, Mohandas M. K. Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Marty was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy of Illinois and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State's highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 1998 in the field of Religion.

Works

Overview

Marty published an authored book and an edited book for every year he was a full-time professor. He maintained that authorial pace for the first decade of his retirement, slowing only in the second. His dozens of published books include ''Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America'' (1970), for which he won the National Book Award in List of winners of the National Book Award#Science, Philosophy and Religion, category Philosophy and Religion;"National Book Awards – 1972"
National Book Foundation. Retrieved March 8, 2012. the encyclopedic five-volume ''The Fundamentalism Project, Fundamentalism Project'', co-edited with historian R. Scott Appleby, formerly his dissertation advisee; and the biography ''Martin Luther'' (2004). He has been a columnist and senior editor for ''The Christian Century'' magazine since 1956, edited the biweekly ''Context'' newsletter from 1969 until 2010, and writes a weekly column distributed electronically as
Sightings
by the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. In addition, he has authored over 5,000 articles and many more incidental pieces, encyclopedia entries, forewords, and the like.

Bibliography

Author

*''The New Shape of American Religion'' (1958) New York: Harper and Brothers *''A Short History of Christianity'', The World Publishing Company, Cleveland, Ohio (1959) *''Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America'' (1970) Harper Torchbook 1977 paperback: *''Protestantism'' (1972) Garden City, New York: Image Books. *''The Public Church: Mainline-Evangelical-Catholic'' (1981) New York: Crossroads. *''A Cry of Absence, Reflections for the Winter of the Heart,'' (1983) Harper & Row, *''Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America'' (1984) New York: Penguin. *''Modern American Religion''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. **Volume 1: The Irony of It All, 1893–1919 (1986) **Volume 2: The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941 (1990) **Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (1996) *''Religion and Republic: The American Circumstance'' (1987) Boston: Beacon Press. *''The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World''. (1992) Beacon. Boston, Massachusetts. *''The One and the Many: America's Struggle for the Common Good'' (1997) Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts. *''Martin Luther'' (The Penguin Lives Series). New York: Viking (2004) *''Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers From Prison: A Biography'' (2011) Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey. *''October 31, 1517: Martin Luther and the Day that Changed the World'' (2016) Paraclete Press. Brewster, Massachusetts.

Book chapters

*Martin E. Marty. "Half a Life in Religious Studies: Confessions of an 'Historical Historian'." pp. 151–174 in ''The Craft of Religious Studies'', edited by Jon R. Stone. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

Articles and monographs

*Marty, Martin E. "Fundamentalism Reborn: Faith and Fanaticism." ''Saturday Review (U.S. magazine), Saturday Review''. May 1980, 37–42. *Marty, Martin E.
"Fundamentalism as a Social Phenomenon."
''Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences'' 42 (November 1988): 15–29. *Marty, Martin E
"Too Bad We're So Relevant: The Fundamentalism Project Projected"
''The Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences'' 49 (March 1996): 22–38.

Editor

*''The Place of Bonhoeffer: Problems and possibilities in his thought'' , Association Press, 1962. *''The Fundamentalism Project'', Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, Editors **Volume 1: Fundamentalisms Observed, Marty/Appleby, (1991) **Volume 2: Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education, Marty/Appleby/Hardacre/Mendelsohn, (1993) **Volume 3: Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance, Marty/Appleby/Garvey/Kuran, (1993) **Volume 4: Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements, Marty/Appleby/Ammerman/Frykenberg/Heilman/Piscatori, (1994) **Volume 5: Fundamentalisms Comprehended, Marty/Appleby, (1995) *''Hizmet Means Service: Perspectives on an Alternative Path Within Islam'', University of California Press (2015).

References

External links

Martin E. Marty homepageSightings, a publication of the University of Chicago Divinity School's Martin Marty CenterVideo interview on his book, The Mystery of the ChildDownload or listen to Martin Marty interview by The Progressive magazine
September 27, 2006
"Prison Writings in a World Come of Age: The Special Vision of Dietrich Bonhoeffer"
Martin E. Marty,
Berfrois
', May 12, 2011 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Marty, Martin E. 1928 births American historians of religion 20th-century American Lutheran clergy American Lutheran theologians Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Christians Living people National Book Award winners National Humanities Medal recipients People from West Point, Nebraska Presidents of the American Academy of Religion Presidents of the American Society of Church History Public theologians St. Olaf College people University of Chicago faculty Concordia Seminary alumni Members of the American Philosophical Society