Martin Marty (Ph.D. ’56), the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity, passed away on February 25. He was 97 years old.
Marty taught in the UChicago Divinity School for 35 years before his retirement at the age of 70. In 1962, Life included him on a list of their “Red-Hot Hundred,” calling him a “penetrating, outspoken critic of suburban church life in America.” Time described him in a 1986 profile as “generally acknowledged to be the most influential living interpreter of religion in the U.S.”
Prior to joining the University as a Divinity School faculty member in 1963, Marty served as the founding pastor for the Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, which Life characterized as the fastest-growing Lutheran parish in the United States at the time. In 1956, he became a columnist and contributing editor for the Christian Century, where he wrote about religion and public life for nearly 60 years.
Over the course of his career, Marty earned the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and 75 honorary degrees. In his honor, the University of Chicago renamed the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion, which he cofounded, as the Martin Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion in 1998.
Marty authored or co-authored 66 books and edited more than 21. His 1970 book, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America, won the 1972 National Book Award in the “Philosophy and Religion” category. He wrote hundreds of scholarly papers; penned over 5,000 columns, editorials, and magazine articles; and supervised 115 Ph.D. dissertations over his career.
As an academic, Marty was recognized for his prodigious work output. Between the publication of his first and last book, he averaged more than 1.5 books per year, all while maintaining a full teaching load.
According to the 1986 Time profile, Marty’s book output was the subject of a joke at the Divinity School.
“An outsider phones, asking to speak with Church Historian Martin E. Marty,” the joke went. “A secretary says, ‘I’m sorry, but professor Marty is writing a book.’ The caller responds, ‘That’s all right. I’ll hold.’”
Marty regularly left Hyde Park for speaking engagements every week, and consistently provided quotes to reporters on a variety of topics.
But none of that stopped him from engaging deeply with his colleagues’ work. David Tracy, the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies, who co-taught a class with Marty, once told a reporter: “Every time I mention a book, Marty’s already reviewed it.”
Marty’s research interests ranged from the life of reformation figure Martin Luther to the changing church landscape of the 1960s and ’70s. Although Marty was a devout Lutheran, he was always motivated by a strong belief in religious pluralism.
In a January 19 Chicago Sun-Times article on the religious landscape of America during a second Trump presidency, columnist Neil Steinberg quoted Marty, “Nothing is more important than to keep the richness of our pluralism alive. To be aware of many different people and different ways, and deal with it.”
In 1964, Marty attended the Second Vatican Council as a Protestant observer. Brett Colasacco, a professor at the Divinity School and the author of a forthcoming biography of Marty, wrote that 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.”
His commitment to pluralism and understanding other religions led Marty to codirect the Fundamentalism Project during the 1980s and ’90s, studying conservative religious movements around the world. According to codirector R. Scott Appleby (Ph.D. ’85), “In taking on such a massive comparative project with ideological pitfalls to the left and the right, Marty stayed true to his instincts to come ‘not to condemn, not to praise, but to understand.’”
Outside of the University, Marty was involved in a number of social causes. In 1965, he criticized televangelist Billy Graham as a “man in transit between epochs and value systems [who] has chosen to disengage himself and distract us by shouting about the end of history.” Marty not only publicly opposed the Vietnam War but also helped found Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, a religious pacifist group with members including Martin Luther King Jr.
Later in life, Marty spoke out against the Iraq War, criticizing the media in 2002 for ignoring religious voices opposed to the war. “No one is reported as expecting the Bush administration to pay attention to the voices of religious questioning,” he wrote. “When war impinges, as in this case, only supportive religious leaders are heeded, cited, and responded to.”
Marty was also known for the cocreation of the fictitious theologian Franz Bibfeldt. After a friend invented Bibfeldt as a source for his term paper when he and Marty were students at Concordia Seminary, Marty began inserting references to the theologian in the school magazine.
When Concordia’s administration found out about the hoax, they revoked Marty’s offer of a parish appointment in London and instead sent him to Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, Illinois. The church required him to enroll in a UChicago Ph.D. program, which ultimately began his academic career.
Marty promoted the study of Franz Bibfeldt throughout his time at the Divinity School, running an annual Bibfeldt Symposium, establishing the “Donnelley Stool of Bibfeldt Studies,” and co-editing the book The Unrelieved Paradox: Studies in the Theology of Franz Bibfeldt.
According to UChicago News, Marty is survived by his wife Harriet; his sons Peter, Joel, Micah, and John; his foster son Jeff and foster daughter Fran; his stepdaughter Ursula; nine grandchildren; and 18 great-grandchildren.
We ask anyone who has memories they want to share about professor Marty to please contact us at editor@chicagomaroon.com.
