Martin E. Marty, the “dean of American church historians,” died on February 25 at age 97. Born and reared in the village of West Point, Nebraska—Willa Cather country, he said—he would go on to serve Lutheran churches in the Chicago area for ten years before studying and then teaching at the University of Chicago from 1963 until he retired in 1998.
In 1986, an essay in Time magazine called Marty—who like Elvis typically went by a single name—“the most influential living interpreter of American religion.” And with good reason. I was honored to meet him at a gathering of the American Society of Church History in 1975.
Marty’s impact fell into four related spheres. The first was the sheer magnitude of his presence. The numbers piled up like snow drifts: in my estimation, 60-plus authored or edited books; more than 6,500 published articles, reviews, columns, essays, and sermons; oversight of 115 doctoral dissertations; 50 years as an editor of The Christian Century; more than 3,500 lectures around the world; speaking engagements at nearly 700 colleges, universities, seminaries, and church groups; 80 honorary degrees; recognition as the winner of the National Book Award (1972), the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1995), and the National Medal for the Humanities (1997).
The second sphere was Marty’s scholarship. Though he paid his dues in the bowels of archives, primary excavations of that sort were not his gift. Rather, he flexed his intellectual muscles by ranging over the whole of Christian history, writing with particular depth and precision about modern Catholic history, Reformation history, biography, 19th- and 20th-century American religious history, and grief.
Within that framework, Marty focused on how Protestant dominance yielded to religious pluralism, how pluralism enriched the nation’s common life, and how to preserve it. These concerns emerged most clearly in his signature volume, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America. His message was perennial and clear: All were welcome at the table as long as they played by the rules, let others talk, and promised to listen.
For Marty, pluralism was not just an academic subject but a principle by which he lived. He answered his phone, returned unsolicited emails, and freely talked to reporters with no evident qualms about the risk of being misquoted. Journalists sought Marty’s wisdom not only because of his staggering erudition but also because he knew how to put them at ease, how to speak concisely, and how to put current events in in-depth historical perspective.
Respect for Marty came from all quarters. “He was always wonderfully encouraging to me,” David Hollinger, a distinguished secular historian at the University of California, Berkeley, told me by email. “The numbers … do not convey the man I knew and loved for nearly six decades,” remembered Kenneth Woodward, for decades religion editor at Newsweek.
Once, a naive assistant professor in North Carolina even asked Marty if he would read his dissertation. Of course, Marty agreed. (I was elated.)
Marty was a convinced churchman, too, and that was a third sphere of influence. He told the truth with his life. In many ways he seemed to be a clergyman first and an academic second. Sometimes, he affirmed, “it’s great to be in a situation where being in the presence of God stuns you a little bit.”
Marty was theologically educated in Lutheran schools—preparatory school, college, and seminary. An ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his mainline sympathies showed up clearly outside the pulpit. In 1964, he spent six weeks as an invited Protestant observer at Vatican II in Rome. The following year, he marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama. He forthrightly cast his lot with the mainline’s concern for civil rights, internationalism, ecumenism, gender equality, and openness to science.
Even so, Marty’s theological views did not easily fit onto a conventional conservative/liberal spectrum. Creeds counted, and so did sacraments, liturgy, sacred music, and the church as the visible body of Christ. “His anticipated appointment with the Lord of eternity was something he embraced all his life,” wrote Peter Marty, his son and the current editor of The Christian Century, just after his father’s death. “He approached every morning as if it were a fresh splash of grace, a clean slate.”
The fourth sphere of Marty’s influence was the personal. The incandescent power of his personality cast a glow around his publications. They stood on their own, of course, but for folks who knew him personally, the books came with a special luster.
Daily habits spelled a distinctive character: up at 4:44 each morning, busy writing before breakfast, taking a 10-minute power nap each afternoon. Then, too, Marty was invariably the most dapper man in the room, outfitted in an uptown suit, vest, and colorful bow tie. Somehow it all worked.
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.”
Marty never forgot a name—including the names of friends’ and acquaintances’ spouses, children, grandchildren, even pets. If you lost a parent, you received a handwritten sympathy note. His humanity was the real deal.
An ivory-tower intellectual Marty was not. He was the father of four sons and two permanent foster children. After his first wife, Elsa, died of cancer, he married Harriet Meyer, a musician, who survives him. A plaque at the door of Marty and Harriet’s retirement condo high up the Hancock tower in Chicago bore these words from the Puritan leader John Winthrop from about 1630:
When God intends a man to a work he sets a Bias on his heart so as tho’ he be tumbled this way and that yet his Bias still draws him to that side, and there he rests at last.
Winthrop’s vision seemed to anticipate Marty’s.
Marty’s relationship with evangelicals followed a definable trajectory. Many mainliners, including other authors at the Century, viewed the early- and mid-career Billy Graham with disdain. Marty rarely, if ever, explicitly criticized anyone, including Graham. But in those days, he did view Graham warily—as well he might, for Graham often seemed to love America a bit too much.
But Graham changed, and so did Marty. On the occasion of Graham’s 70th birthday, Marty joined Christianity Today in a celebratory issue. In an article titled, “Reflections on Graham by a Former Grump,” Marty explained that the true divide in American religion was not liberal/conservative but “mean and nonmean.” Graham fell into the latter camp for many reasons, including his willingness to work with anyone who would work with him.
Some years ago, I embarked on a biography of Graham, whom I visited several times in his 90s in his remote mountaintop home in Montreat, North Carolina. Marty asked if he could join me, for they had never met, but Graham’s family declined the offer because of the evangelist’s failing health. When I conveyed that news to Marty, his response was as simple and sweet and honest as his life had been: “Then Billy and I will just have to have that conversation together when we get to heaven.”
Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe distinguished professor of Christian history, emeritus, at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of One Soul at a Time: The Story of Billy Graham.
