(Illustration by Daniel Hertzberg)
Remembering Martin E. Marty, PhD’56 (1928–2025).
Did ever a scholar wear such a weight of knowledge and influence with the lightness—and light—of Martin E. Marty?
Marty, PhD’56, the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity, died on February 25. It seemed like the whole world noticed and mourned—and celebrated how this disarming man had illuminated so much.
In 2017 I had my brief turn in his brightening presence. The 500th anniversary of the Reformation was approaching, and I asked Marty if he would grace the Magazine with 1,500 words of reflection. “I’ll come up with 1,499 words, on schedule,” he answered right away, “and will enjoy writing it. I’ll keep the U of C readership (and thus ‘the universe’) in mind as I write.” The universe delighted in the resulting piece.
Famously prolific, he left us with more than 50 books, scores of articles, and a legion of former students out in the world embodying their teacher’s commitment to a spirit of pluralism—in the academy, in religion, and in the public sphere. And thanks to him, the University has a place where those commitments are lived out every day: the Divinity School’s Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion, renamed for him upon his retirement in 1998. There, his “model of rigorous public scholarship and humane, ethical exchange on issues of urgent national and global concern”—in the words of the center’s executive director, Emily D. Crews, AM’10, PhD’21—continues in perpetuity.
For our obituary, see Deaths. For a fuller sense of the man and the scholar, read the remembrances of his colleagues, students, and family members excerpted here.
Peter W. Marty, Editor and Publisher of The Christian Century, in The Christian Century
[Dad] encouraged those he met to love God from the top of their head and the bottom of their heart. Grace gave him the conviction that nobody was beneath him, just as the music of Bach reminded him that angels hovered just above him. In between was his own confident place in the lap of God. Forever grounded in the life of the church and anchored in hope, he took the happy simplicity of his childhood on the Nebraska prairie as his road map for life.
James T. Robinson, Dean of the Divinity School and Nathan Cummings Professor of Jewish Studies
For 35 years, Martin Marty was a cornerstone of the Divinity School, shaping the study of religion and public life with his visionary scholarship and steadfast commitment to teaching. His voice, always measured and profound, guided critical conversations on religion, and his work explored the intersections of faith, culture, and society. He left an indelible mark on the field of religious studies.
I was privileged to know Marty—first as a student, then as a colleague, and ultimately as a dear friend. Throughout, Marty treated me as his equal, which was at once characteristically generous and utterly incongruous. To me he was, always, a teacher: remarkable for the breadth and depth of his knowledge, unfailingly interesting, generous, and generative in his attention. I’ve learned a modest fraction of what he made available, yet it is an enormous gift.
Someone once wrote to Ann Landers because her granddaughter was upset when the granddaughter’s minister told her that dogs and cats do not go to heaven. Ann contacted Marty about this, and he said no one knows what heaven is like. So the minister could not give such a definitive answer, and if the girl imagined her beloved pet in heaven, that made perfect sense.
Joseph M. McShane, PhD’81, President Emeritus of Fordham University, in America Magazine
Among the many demands that his scholarly work placed on him, the work that gave him the greatest joy was the work he did with and for his students. Not to put too fine a point on it, Marty was that rarest of academics: He was a pastoral mentor who took a lively and highly personal interest in the lives and dreams of his students. Don’t get me wrong: He never coddled his students. God forbid. He coaxed us. He never insulted us with low expectations. Rather, he called us to be our own best selves both in the academy and in life.
His wit was legendary. Once, he asked a graduate student to name three good things the Lord had done for him that day. The student responded, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” Marty shot back, “That’s one.” It was the kind of wit that revealed, as historian Mark Noll put it in another context, a “really big motor up there.”
“Books,” Martin Marty declared, “should not be considered finished products.” The year was 1998, and at that point in his career as a minister, public speaker, columnist, and historian of modern Christianity at the University of Chicago, Marty had already “finished” more than 50 books. A life, especially perhaps the manifestly multifaceted life of Martin Marty, resists reduction to any single explanation. But Marty’s strong preference for unfinished books illuminates the central energies that propelled his writing, teaching, ministry, and friendships.
His energetic affirmation of the unfinished, whether books or lives, invariably made encounters with Marty memorable events. Jaunty bow ties were a perennial feature of his wardrobe, signaling that he took the occasion seriously, but not himself. He entered a room with a quick step and, just as quickly, entered the flow of your life, your questions, and your ideas. He honored the time and space of the conversation.
Brett Colasacco, AB’07, MDiv’10, PhD’18, Martin Marty Biographer, in Sightings
He attained a proficiency at speaking across difference that feels practically unrepeatable in our current, polarized age. Marty was a prominent advocate for Christian ecumenism, and later for religious pluralism, while simultaneously stressing the need for strongly held convictions and firmly rooting oneself in a particular tradition. He valued distinctiveness as well as diversity, and he commanded the attention, along with the respect, of audiences spanning the nation’s then-already-deepening political divides. Why? In part, because he could talk about the religions convincingly, almost paradoxically, as different cultural expressions rather than as rival absolutes, without diminishing the significance of their truth claims for the individual believer.
He was the last great master of the art of modern American religion.
Marty, Willadsen, and Gilpin excerpts: Copyright © 2025 by The Christian Century. Reprinted by permission from the May 2025 issue of The Christian Century. www.christiancentury.org