The Reverend Martin E. Marty
Marty speaking in 2013
Born	Martin Emil Marty (1928-02-05)February 5, 1928 West Point, Nebraska, U.S.
Died	February 25, 2025(2025-02-25) (aged 97) Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.
Spouses	Elsa Marty ​ ​ (m. 1952; died 1981)​ [1][2][3] Harriet Marty ​ (m. 1982)​ [1][4]
Awards	National Humanities Medal (1997) Order of Lincoln (1998)
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Protestant (Lutheran)
Church	Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Ordained	1952[5]
Academic background
Alma mater	Concordia Seminary Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary[6] University of Chicago
Thesis	The Uses of Infidelity[7] (1956)
Academic work
Discipline	History religious studies theology
Sub-discipline	History of religion
Institutions	University of Chicago
Doctoral students	R. Scott Appleby M. Craig Barnes Jonathan Butler Jay P. Dolan Vincent Harding Marvin S. Hill Jeffrey Kaplan James R. Lewis Joseph M. McShane Paul C. Pribbenow John G. Stackhouse Jr. Winnifred Fallers Sullivan
Notable works	Righteous Empire (1970)
Notable ideas	Public theology

Martin Emil Marty (February 5, 1928 – February 25, 2025) was an AmericanLutheran religious scholar who wrote extensively onreligion in the United States.

Marty was born on February 5, 1928, inWest Point, Nebraska, to Emil, a parochial school teacher,^[8] and organist, and Anne Louise (Wuerdemann) Marty.^[9] Raised in Iowa and Nebraska, he was a member of theLutheran Church–Missouri Synod and was educated a Lutheran preparatory school, then atConcordia College inMilwaukee, Wisconsin andConcordia Seminary of St. Louis, Missouri. Marty completed masters level work at theLutheran School of Theology at Chicago through 1954, and received aDoctor of Philosophy degree from theUniversity of Chicago in 1956. He served as a Lutheran pastor from 1952 to 1967 in the suburbs ofChicago.^[6]

In 1962,Life magazine included Marty among "One Hundred of the Most Important Young Men and Women in the United States” in a special issue focused on what they termed "The Take-Over Generation." Marty was cited as “a penetrating, outspoken critic of suburban church life in America,” who served as associate editor ofThe Christian Century and led "the fastest growing Lutheran parish in the country.”^[10][11]

From 1963 to 1998, Marty taught at theUniversity of Chicago Divinity School, eventually holding an endowed chair, theFairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professorship. His more than 130 doctoral advisees at the University of Chicago includedM. Craig Barnes,Jonathan M. Butler,Vincent Harding,Jeffrey Kaplan,James R. Lewis, andJohn G. Stackhouse Jr.^[12]

Marty served as president of theAmerican Academy of Religion, theAmerican Society of Church History, and theAmerican 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 served on two US presidential commissions and was director of both theFundamentalism Project of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago sponsored by thePew Charitable Trusts. He served atSt. Olaf College inNorthfield,Minnesota, from 1988 as Regent, Board Chair, Interim President in late 2000, and since 2002 as Senior Regent.^[13][14][15]

Marty retired on his seventieth birthday. He held emeritus status at the University of Chicago; he served asRobert W. Woodruff Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies atEmory University 2003–2004. His first wife, Elsa L. Schumacher died in 1981, and in 1982, he married Harriet J. Meyer.^[8] He had seven children (including two foster children), among whom areJohn Marty, a Minnesota State Senator,^[16] and Peter Marty, who hosted the ELCA radio ministryGrace Matters from 2005 to 2009 and is now publisher ofThe Christian Century magazine and senior pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church inDavenport,Iowa.^[17]

Marty died on February 25, 2025, at the age of 97.^[18]

Marty received numerous honors, including theNational Humanities Medal, the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the University of Chicago Alumni Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal of theAssociation of Theological Schools, and 80honorary doctorates. In 1991, Marty was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (LHD) degree fromWhittier College.^[19] The Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion is named for Marty and has been awarded annually since 1996.^[20]

Named in his honor on his 70th birthday in 1979, 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.^[8] He was an elected member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society and of theAmerican Philosophical Society^[21] and was theMohandas M. K. Gandhi Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

Marty was inducted as a Laureate ofThe 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.^[22]

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 includeRighteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (1970), for which he won theNational Book Award incategory Philosophy and Religion;^[23] the encyclopedic five-volumeFundamentalism Project,^[24] co-edited with historianR. Scott Appleby, formerly his dissertation advisee; and the biographyMartin Luther (2004). He was a columnist forThe Christian Century magazine, contributing a column in every issue for 36 years (1972-2008), and served as its associate editor for fifty years, beginning in 1956.^[15][25] He also edited the biweeklyContext newsletter from 1969 until 2010, and wrote 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.

This list isincomplete; you can help byadding missing items.(September 2015)

• 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:ISBN 0-06-131931-7, Charles Scribner's Sons & Collier Macmillan Pub.1986 rev. ed.:ISBN 0-02-376500-3
• Protestantism (1972) Garden City, New York: Image Books.ISBN 0-385-07610-X
• The Public Church: Mainline-Evangelical-Catholic (1981) New York: Crossroads.ISBN 0-8245-0019-9
• A Cry of Absence, Reflections for the Winter of the Heart, (1983) Harper & Row,ISBN 0-06-065434-1
• Pilgrims in Their Own Land: 500 Years of Religion in America (1984) New York: Penguin.ISBN 0-14-00-8268-9
• Modern American Religion. Chicago:University of Chicago Press.
  • Volume 1: The Irony of It All, 1893–1919 (1986)ISBN 0-226-50893-5
  • Volume 2: The Noise of Conflict, 1919–1941 (1990)ISBN 0-226-50895-1
  • Volume 3: Under God, Indivisible, 1941–1960 (1996)ISBN 0-226-50899-4
• Religion and Republic: The American Circumstance (1987) Boston: Beacon Press.ISBN 0-8070-1206-8
• The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World. (1992) Beacon. Boston, Massachusetts.ISBN 0-807-01216-5
• The One and the Many: America's Struggle for the Common Good (1997) Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts.ISBN 0-674-63827-1
• Martin Luther (The Penguin Lives Series). New York: Viking (2004)ISBN 0-670-03272-7
• The Protestant Voice in American Pluralism. Aphens, Ga; London: University of Georgia Press. 2004.ISBN 0-8203-2580-5.
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers From Prison: A Biography (2011) Princeton University Press. Princeton, New Jersey.ISBN 978-0-69113-921-0
• October 31, 1517: Martin Luther and the Day that Changed the World (2016) Paraclete Press. Brewster, Massachusetts.ISBN 978-1-61261-656-8

• Martin E. Marty. "Half a Life in Religious Studies: Confessions of an 'Historical Historian'." pp. 151–174 inThe Craft of Religious Studies, edited byJon R. Stone. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
• Martin E. Marty, "LocatingJay P. Dolan," inThe American Catholic Experience: Essays in Honor of Jay P. Dolan (Catholic University of America Press, 2001), pp. 99–108online

• Marty, Martin E. "Fundamentalism Reborn: Faith and Fanaticism."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.

• The Place of Bonhoeffer: Problems and possibilities in his thought , Association Press, 1962.
• The Fundamentalism Project, Martin E. Marty andR. Scott Appleby, Series Editors
  • Fundamentalisms Observed. The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 1. Chicago, Il; London: University of Chicago Press. 1991.ISBN 0-226-50878-1.
  • Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education. The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 2. Chicago, Il; London: University of Chicago Press. 1993.ISBN 0-226-50880-3.
  • Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economies, and Militance. The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 3. Chicago, Il; London: University of Chicago Press. 1993.ISBN 0-226-50883-8.
  • Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of Movements. The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 4. Chicago, Il; London: University of Chicago Press. 1994.ISBN 0-226-50885-4.
  • Fundamentalisms Comprehended. The Fundamentalism Project, vol. 5. Chicago, Il; London: University of Chicago Press. 1995.ISBN 0-226-50887-0.
• Hizmet Means Service: Perspectives on an Alternative Path Within Islam, University of California Press (2015).ISBN 9780520285187

• Franz Bibfeldt (fictitious theologian promoted by Marty)

• Martin E. Marty homepage
• Fundamentalism Project
• Sightings, a publication of the University of Chicago Divinity School's Martin Marty Center
• Video interview on his book, The Mystery of the ChildArchived December 23, 2011, at theWayback Machine
• Download 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
• Appearances onC-SPAN

• 1928 births
• 2025 deaths
• American historians of religion
• 20th-century American Lutheran clergy
• American Lutheran theologians
• University of Chicago Divinity School alumni
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Christians
• 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

• CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from February 2019
• Articles with hCards
• Incomplete lists from September 2015
• Webarchive template wayback links
• People appearing on C-SPAN