Favorite Contemporary Lutheran Writer

I had the opportunity to write a history paper on Martin E. Marty, a Lutheran pastor and acknowleged American Protestant religious historian. Paper as follows:

Martin E. Marty
Historical Historian


Tell me your landscape and I’ll tell you who you are.
Jose Ortega y Gassett

I. Significant Moments

February 5, 1928: Born to Emil and Anne Louise Wuerdemann Marty (Alias Marti), West Point, Nebraska.

February 26, 1928: Christened Martin Emil Marty.

September, 1942: Enters prep school Lutheran gymnasium, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

September, 1950: Enters Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.

December 19, 1951: Marty reviews Bibfeldt’s “The Relieved Paradox” for the Concordian Seminarian.

May, 1952: Ordained a Lutheran Minister, Missouri Synod.

June, 1952: Married Elsa Schumacher.

1952: Assigned to River Forest, Illinois parish, as Assistant Minister.

1953: Undertakes Master’s of Sacred Theology at Lutheran School of Theology, Illinois.

1954: Enters University of Chicago, Divinity School for Doctoral Studies.

December, 1956: Receives Ph.D., “The Infidel: Free Thought and American Religion.”

December, 1956: Founding Pastor, Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit, Elk Grove Village, Illinois.

1963: Joins faculty of University of Chicago, Divinity School as professor.

1970: Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America published. Wins National Book
Award.

1976: A Nation of Behavers published.

September, 1981: Elsa Schumacher Marty dies of brain cancer.

1982: Married Harriet Myers.

1983: A Cry of Absence: Reflections for the Winter of the Heart published.

1984: Pilgrims in Their Own Land: Five Hundred Years of Religion in America published. Most
widely acclaimed narrative.

1987: Launches and co-directs The Fundamentalism Project with R. Scott Appleby. Results in
five volumes published over five years surveying and analyzing the nature of global
religious fundamentalism.

1996: Director, Public Religion Project, University of Chicago.

February 5, 1998: Seventieth birthday and retirement from the University of Chicago Divinity
School.

2003: Co-director, “The Child in Religion, Law and Society,” Emory University, Atlanta.

2004: Martin Luther by Martin Marty published.

Present: Authored eight books in retirement and maintains an active speaking schedule.

Awards: National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, 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 the Order
of Lincoln Medallion.[1]

Positions: Elected member of the American Antiquarian Society and of the Society of American
Historians, an elected fellow of the American Philosophical Society, and is the
Mohandas M. K. Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social
Sciences.[2]

When God intendes a man to a worke he setts a Byas on his heart so
as tho’ he be tumbled this way and that yet his Bias
still drawes him to that side, and there he rests at last.
John Winthrop, Puritan (1620)

II. Narrative Background

“Tumbled this way and that” is an apt description of Martin Emil Marty’s formative years. Born to Swiss Lutheran parents February 5, 1928 in West Point, Nebraska, Marty’s childhood was informed by the objective scarcity of the depression era dustbowl Nebraska plains and the subjective experience of a loving, disciplined family. Marty relates the story of how “an ancestor died by backing into a bonfire while protecting a potato crop from wild boars on a Swiss hillside,” to conclude that he belongs to a group of “peasants from the provinces.”[3] His father and mother have significant claim to the shape of Marty’s life; his father a Lutheran pastor and subsequently the principal of the local Lutheran school, and Marty himself attributing his seemingly limitless energy to his mother.

Educated in a two-room elementary school as a child, Marty early developed advanced powers of concentration to the task at hand. His ability to focus over and against all distraction would serve him well throughout his career. As Bill Moyers jokingly commented at Marty’s seventieth birthday in 1998, “So Marty wrote his first memoir when he was five. And he wrote his first book—A Short History of Christianity—on his first day of seminary while brushing his teeth.”[4] Humor aside, the elders of West Point, Nebraska saw a potential in the young Marty that their plains town was not challenging – leading them to conclude that he was bored with his studies as they then stood. “Some town seniors, including the Lutheran pastor, evidently tagged me as someone ready for less limited education. They arranged to put together some sort of package that enabled me to go to prep school.”[5] He notes that his high school English teacher, Miss Rogers, was most influential in his life at this time.

In 1942 Marty entered a Lutheran gymnasium prep school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he, ostensibly and by the very nature of the school as a minor seminary, was being groomed for entry into the seminary. He notes that the students were hurried through this minor seminary to graduation largely due to World War II, “[i]n order to help assure a supply of chaplains – I came of draft age the year World War II ended – most of us did go on to a seminary.”[6] Leaving Milwaukee in 1947, Marty had experienced life among the working peoples of urban Wisconsin, leading him to an empathy with “people who put in long, hard days and get no strokes, and inspire a heart that aspired to turn pastoral.” He laments, though, that while his prep school days were pre-theological, religion taught there was a “scholastic, no-questions-asked, orthodox rerun through Luther’s Catechisms – Chapel was deadly and uninspiring. How faith and intellectual curiosity about faith survived those years I cannot explain. Somehow it did.”[7] Marty notes no particular individual as influential upon him during this period, other than for an “odd” (his word) coincidence. Marty’s roommate at gymnasium was Don Meyer. Don Meyer subsequently married Harriet. Following the untimely demise of Don, decades later Marty joined with Harriet as husband and wife, following the unfortunate death of Marty’s wife, Elsa, in 1981.

Marty entered the Concordia Seminary of St. Louis, Missouri in 1950, “expecting to combine the writing life with the pastorate.” It is at this point he begins to sense a draw to answering the questions of life using the methodologies of the historian. Though, he wryly notes, “history as taught at the seminary was doctrinal and drab.” Engaged by his professor of Theology, Richard R. Caemmerer, he considered the “possibility of writing in theological fields.” But, “the nearness to Don Meyer, whose philosophical mind taught me what I did not know and could never learn, to ‘do’ theology, performed the service of driving me to concrete, narrative, expression.”[8]

In perhaps the most unusual twist fate has to offer, Marty got himself into trouble six months from seminary graduation and ordination as a Lutheran minister. On December 19, 1951 the seminary newspaper, The Concordian Seminarian, published an article review written by Martin E. Marty, analyzing the well-regarded German theologian Franz Bibfeldt’s argument for a resolution to the paradox of year zero. The shadow of Bibfeldt’s intellect had cast itself over the seminary at that point for a number of months, inducing the dean himself to quote from Bibfeldt’s work. Unfortunately, the great theologian was a complete invention of a creatively criminal mind belonging to a seminary buddy of Marty’s. Apparently, the school chum, under a looming deadline to complete a paper found himself locked out of the closed library. Undaunted, he adeptly manufactured the needed citations for his paper – Franz Bibfeldt being one of those products. The paper received an A. Intrigued by his new invention, he and Marty discussed the character of this giant of theology, and Marty began to write about him in campus periodicals. Lacking anything that even remotely approached an “internet” for the speedy identification of student sins, the ruse succeeded marvelously.

Until, of course, he was caught out on it. On the verge of orders “to a London pastorate among displaced Baltic Lutherans,” the chagrined, but patient dean and a “generous seminary president, left me with a hand on my shoulder and the words ‘funniest damn thing that’s happened in this seminary on my watch,’ made their executive decision. Their judgment was valid: I was too immature and irresponsible to represent our tradition in London. In need of seasoning, I was assigned to an apprenticeship to a senior minister.” [9] While the modern professor’s hair may stand on end at the thought of this anecdote, it was through the Bibfeldt hoax that Marty eventually found his way to the University of Chicago Divinity School, displayed his fledgling talent for the historical narrative, opening the door for the unique fusion of secular academia and a Lutheran minister. If one should doubt the import of this happy ‘accident,’ consider Marty, commenting in the Haskins Lecture for 2006, “In what was perhaps the most decisive ‘chance determination’ in my professional life there occurred a decidedly inexpeditious bump along the route.”[10] Ordained in 1952, Marty left the seminary to begin his pastoral life, seemingly.

Assigned to the senior minister, O.A. Geiseman, at a parish in River Forest, Illinois, Marty was immediately informed that all assistants at that parish had to do graduate work toward doctorates.[11] He found himself back in school, this time as a graduate student at what is now the Lutheran School of Theology, Illinois, contemplating a Master’s of Sacred Theology. He met, while studying there, two historians of American Christianity, Jerald C. Brauer and Sidney E. Mead, “moonlighting from the University of Chicago.”[12] They discerned in the newly ordained minister a talent and curiosity for American Christian History. He was enticed to enroll at the University of Chicago under the guidance of these two historians.

The intricacy and meaning of Marty’s biography is difficult to leave off from, but suffice it to say that he completed doctoral studies and achieved his Ph.D. with the dissertation “The Infidel: Free Thought and American Religion,” in December, 1956. Marty recalled his graduate studies with these words,
It occurs to me that I was twenty-six years old before I had even heard of proper nouns basic to my life work: Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Walter Rauschenbusch, Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, W.E.B. DuBois and all the rest. Access to primary sources in the University libraries educed an intellectual passage that led me to read voraciously and write much, in order to catch up with my peers and gain a hold on some corner of American religious life. Why become an historian? Because I found the world in the America I encountered odd, and wanted to find out how it had become so.[13]

While Marty makes no specific note of precise professorial influence upon his doctoral work, or his formation as a historian, one has only to consider his biographical trajectory to agree that he was cast as a historian long before he left his mother’s kitchen. The exposure to ancestral anecdotes, the practice of historical religion as a matter of faith, and a questing mind skeptical of the superficial metaphysical accounting of the world in the America he found “odd;” these qualities certainly, combined with formal finishing at the University of Chicago, qualify him as a historian. Having finished his doctorate, Marty founded the Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit, Elk Grove Village, Illinois, in 1956, remaining there as senior pastor until he returned to the University of Chicago Divinity School as faculty professor in 1963. By this time he had published his first book, A Short History of Christianity (Meridian Books, 1959), even prior to the publication of his dissertation (1961).

At this point he became a working research historian of the American religious experience, launching an academic career that spanned thirty-five years and had Bill Moyers, again, commenting, “No one knows how many books Marty has written, including Marty. Many of his works have been published under a pseudonym, The Encyclopedia Britannica.”[14] Marty achieved the title of “Historical Historian” while attending a conference in Tubingen, Germany. “When they learned that I taught in social science, humanities, and divinity faculties, they found no matching description. Having prepared badges identifying other conferees as ‘Theologian,’ or ‘Historian of Theology’ or ‘Historical Theologian,’ they labeled me ‘Historical Historian.’ That fit.”[15] To dwell longer on biography would be to begin to analyze his prolific writings – to begin to dissect the influences that stimulated his fifty books and 4,000-plus articles interpreting American religion, both historically and spiritually – a dissection best left to the following section.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true, or beautiful, or good, makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, could be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint; therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.
Reinhold Niebuhr

III. Contributions to the Profession

A few rather broad distinctions and limiting parameters need defining prior to considering the contributions made, at this point in his journey at least, to the profession of history embodied by the life works of Martin Marty. Again, and without apology, Bill Moyers defines the difficulty, “The phenomenon is that this pastor, professor, editor, author, historian and journalist, this father, husband, and friend, who has for years been acknowledged to be the most influential interpreter of religion in America, could so consistently practice what he studies.”[16] In the lexicon of crisis management, sorting out the dimensions of a truly multi-dimensional, influential person is what is referred to as a “good problem.” Good or otherwise, this sorting is absolutely necessary regarding what counts as Marty’s historical canon. Marty is an acknowledged Protestant theologian, prepared and more than intellectually equipped to hold forth on the mysteries of the faith. In a certain sense, his more decidedly theological writings can be held to be historically informed and informing – but that is not the focus here. And so a distinction is made, to the best of the author’s ability, between historical and non-historical writings. This distinction does not entirely resolve the difficulty, though, as the remaining historical writings account for greater than seventy percent of Marty’s entire body of work, an unmanageable percentage given the scope of this paper. Hence, a limiting parameter of considering five historical volumes for which Marty is perhaps best known is invoked, four of which he wrote personally, the remaining a series of volumes of which he co-directed and co-edited.

Fortunately, a hallmark of Marty’s historical writings, in all modes, is a conscious lack of truth assessment related to the belief system under consideration. In terms of historical methodology, this is how it should be – a plain but insightful statement of what happened and the subsequent events unfolding from those historical moments, unadorned by value judgments regarding the beliefs of the actors in question. And yet, while Marty’s own denominational theology is expansive, he quite obviously avoids theological comparisons within his historical writings.

By way of example, and as a segue into the aforementioned volumes, consider Marty’s essay “Sneers,” (2006) written as a review of Richard Dawkins wildly popular book, “The God Delusion.” Dawkins argues in his book that humanity would be better off by jettisoning all vestiges of religion. Marty responds, “My vocation is to do my doubting within the context of faith. My theme…is to note that, around the world, faith communities, religion and spiritual forces are growing in size and intensity. This is a phenomenon that has nothing to do with truth or falsehood, their goodness or evil…it does suggest [however] that it is pointless to talk about and work on doing away with them. Ancestors of Dawkins like Robert Owen, Robert Ingersoll and H.L. Mencken drew crowds and sales in their times, always with show-biz effects....Many reviewers [of “The God Delusion”] responded the way William Paley did in the nineteenth century when he was faced with a truly great attack on faith, Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Paley’s response: ‘Who can refute a sneer?’”[17] No doubt, Marty believes in a Christian God and does his doubting within a context of theological faith. But the telling detail, the take-away insight to the mind of Marty is that his critique of Dawkins is pure historian. There is no argument for proofs of [a] god here – Marty methodically (but with wit) points out that Dawkins is swimming upstream against the current of observable history, and that early history even accounts for Dawkins’ own position, and offers the historical response to him. This is the unique fusion of dispassionate historian and Lutheran minister.

The last thing to note before proceeding to the books is that these are not popular press, recreational reading narratives. They are, in every sense of the word, scholarly productions, including vocabulary. While having asserted his scholarship, Marty injects the master’s touch into his narratives such that they are, or can be depending on the audience, riveting. The first work to consider is Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America.[18] Marty divides the Protestant American experience into two distinct periods, the Evangelical Empire and then, transitioning, the Protestant Experience. In the former period, 1776 to 1877, he includes analyses grouped into “The People,” “The Land,” and “The Empire.” Within these broad categories he assesses the removal of the Native American Indian, the nature of the white Anglo-Saxon, the taking of the land and the rise of denominationalism. In the latter period, 1877 - present, he explores post-Civil War Reconstruction through the eyes of Protestantism, the pressures of the urban-immigrant environment, and, finally, theological evolution leading to a rise in pluralism.

Marty comments that he was asked to write the book as one in a series on world religions, he would be tasked with Protestantism. “I conceived it during a visit to Israel. Outlining it on that scene, I asked what part religion plays in the shaping of public life, and translated that to the very different American pluralist scene. It won the National Book Award in 1972.”[19] In a densely-worded fashion, Marty tracks the vagaries of the Protestant American experience from 1776 into the 1960’s, coming to rest with, “Resort to the old covenants in American Protestantism gradually came to be in the hands of two clusters of interpreters. Jonathan Edwards stood at the head of the postmillennial tradition…the millennium was attainable in America…[as opposed to]…Dwight L. Moody picked up the loose strands of premillennial theory and reversed the process. The Moodyites have been the more pessimistic, concentrating on rescuing the individual and then turning him loose, if he will, to help save other persons in society.”[20]

As evidenced by its winning the National Book Award, this volume reflects Marty’s skill and insight as an interpreter of American religious history. He answers his own question as above, periodically throughout the text, as with, “But these ideas of conversion and salvation were by men whose bodies occupied space in the world, whose activities were influenced by the civil order, and who came to care greatly about the secondary effects. Where once upon a time Calvinism had provided the integrating context for all of life, now the American civilization itself was beginning to do this.”[21] As with his other treatises, there is no one single answer that presents itself easily to the questions he puts to history – hence, there is no one single page to turn to, to see how religion affects public life in a pluralistic society. In this sense, Marty challenges the popular assumption that, once upon a time in a land ordained by manifest destiny the moral citizens of that good nation all held parallel beliefs in an omnipotent creator.

His citations and sources are “spot-on,” conceding that “[w]herever possible I have tried to let people of the past speak for themselves, by introducing numerous quotations; since these are illustrative more than demonstrative and because the format of books in this series discourages footnoting, references have not been provided, but some suggestions for further reading have been appended.”[22] Having made this admission, though, Marty goes on to provide three pages of chapter notes referencing what appears to be every primary and secondary source he utilized. There appears to be no voice of opposition to this book, his methods, nor conclusions posited. The contribution to the corpus of American religious history seems to be significant.

The second text, A Nation of Behavers,[23] is perhaps the least ‘historical’ of Marty’s historical writings considered here. Chartered by the University of Chicago, to be published for the Nation’s Bicentennial, A Nation of Behavers uses cartographic language to ‘map’ group identity and social location with religion as the focal point. Marty comments that “it was a more theoretical and programmatic, less narrative book than most, designed to stress the way religious movements cluster and are perceived in public.”[24] Here Marty integrates religious persuasion with identity, both personal and group, and charts these loyalties across (then) contemporary America. It is contemporary history at its finest, catching the faintest echoes of the voices of Thucydides and Herodotus. Marty introduces it as such; “This essay in contemporary history provides a new map of religious America based on the visible loyalties of people as evidenced in their beliefs and social behavior and expressed in their public quests for group identity and social location.”[25] The text is wide ranging, from early American religious history through modern mainline religions, from the Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism movements to the new religions, and on to ethnic and civil religions – with a glance toward the future to close out this balanced reflection.

It is said that, to break the rules and have the violation seen as innovation is to be the master craftsman – thinking of a Bach or a Mozart here. Perhaps the greatest violation a historian can commit is to make predictions of the future. Marty, while most likely demurring from the aforementioned company, concedes “My ‘likelies’ and ‘possibles’ in this epilogue hardly amount to predictions; they are ways of hedging one’s bets and locating oneself in the stream of history. But I am trained not to be chagrined at the end of a limb. It is simply a too delightful and advantageous position from which to continue observing this ‘nation of behavers’ and map their ever-changing ways.”[26] Reminding the reader once again that this book was published in 1976, Marty suggests that “The Evangelicals are making more and more compromises with the larger culture, and Fundamentalism seems to be reaching the outer limits of its potential market.”[27] In this particular case, in the broadest sense, Marty got it wrong in 1976. However, eleven years later, he would be asked to co-direct The Fundamentalism Project – an exploration that would take on even greater historical significance subsequent to September 11, 2001 – the mark of a true master craftsman, acknowledging the flaw, and continuing to innovate.

The Pro & Con Book of Religious America[28] is unusual, particularly as a form of history text, in that it is a ‘flip’ book – one side contains pro arguments about religious America, then the reader flips the book end-for-end and the other side contains the con arguments. If one strays too far proceeding from either side, one encounters the up-side-down text of the opposite side! Marty himself introduces it more efficiently than anyone else could, “This book tries to tell in brief outline what is right – religiously and spiritually – about the two-hundred-year-old United States. The reader who feels it is one-sided need merely flip it over to read the other side since the second half of the book tells what is wrong about the same nation. Each chapter has a counterpart…and is designed to stimulate creative debate within and among persons during the years surrounding the bicentennial observance – though I hope it will be useful for many years to come since it deals with what may be among the most important issues with which America has to wrestle.”[29]

With chapters titled, “Historical Awareness versus Amnesia and Present-mindedness,” “Religiously Tolerant Tribes versus The Religiously Prejudiced People,” and “Theology Interpreting Experience versus Experience Without Interpretation,” Marty got it precisely right when he opined that these issues would persist – perhaps agelessly. Returning once again to the theme of identity, Marty, in the “Historical Awareness” pro argument chapter, posits, “Why does the study of history, the past, and the tradition become an important subject in such a culture? The best answer, both for the individual and for society, is that history can make at least a modest contribution to our identity and thus to our well-being. It is a part of our self-understanding, because it locates us in a landscape whose terms and images we have inherited.”[30]

In this text, more than any other considered here, the professor of history makes an appearance, educating the public about what history can, and cannot, do for our society. While not footnoted or referenced in a rigid scholarly fashion, Marty makes smooth use of in-text referencing, a variant of our current MLA system of citations, and it works well for the format of this book. While it would be an overstatement, and inaccurate, to say that this book is not scholarly; it was written for a much broader audience than the other texts considered here. The fundamental principles of unbiased argumentation underpin Marty’s effort at stimulating meaningful dialogue across Bicentennial America – an effort, one might add, that is as needed today as ever in any past moment. Again, while an unusual offering, Marty brings true historical methodology wrapped in (then) contemporary issues to the front porch of Americans.

The fourth text, Modern American Religion,[31] is actually three separate volumes, dedicated to a synthetic analysis of pluralism and public religion. And while the three volumes in the aggregate amount to only 900 pages of actual text, they stand as testimony to the monumental feat of erudition required to attempt an analysis of that magnitude. To any but the most dedicated religious history scholar, the introduction to the first volume is enough to be off-putting to all others,
Four of the Aristotelian categories figure chiefly in this plot; time, space, substance, and quality. They provide the framework of a narrative and analysis of religion in the fifth American century. Three planned volumes will continue the project through the twentieth century. Each successive book will focus on a later period and each will isolate a different quality. They will also be able to stand independently of each other. Together they will make up the first history of twentieth-century American religion, the first to attempt to discern its basic shape whole.[32]

The text is demarcated with margin markers, 1:1, 1:2, 13:31, and in the very best sense of the word these volumes are, indeed, scriptural. All volumes are heavily end-noted, practically sentence by sentence with nothing appearing to be amiss with the quality of sources. The books do precisely what their author states as their purpose; present the first scholarly history of twentieth-century American religion. Marty comments, “The University of Chicago asked me to do a kind of summa of my teaching and writing, to do a first book by anyone that aspired to be synthetic – one cannot be comprehensive – about pluralism and public religion.”[33] It remains the authoritative text in its field – a tremendous contribution to the canon.

The fifth, and final, text to be considered here is not really a work authored by Marty at all. Chartered under the auspices of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987, the project, to ultimately be titled The Fundamentalism Project, resulted in a seven-year, five-volume study of modern religious fundamentalisms. Marty, in his Stated Meeting Address to the Academy in 1995, titled Too Bad We’re So Relevant, made the following opening comments;
Over the past seven years—in the face of changed political, economic, social, and religious realities; after ten conferences, the employment of the energies of two hundred international scholars, considerable financial expenditures, and thousands of hours of fieldwork, air travel, computer use, telephone calls across time zones, and visits to libraries; after numerous conversations among experts, testings of existing hypotheses and inventions of new ones, wieldings of editorial blue pencils, and the like—both the Fundamentalism Project and its theme could have become irrelevant. That would have been the case if civilizations turning toward what has come to be called the “postmodern” had found they no longer had room for “modern” movements like fundamentalism; or if secularity and secularism had swept the globe, leaving little room for anything religious; or if the prospering forms of late-modern religions had turned out to be modernist, liberal, moderate, concessive, reconciliatory, and interactive, leaving no room for fundamentalism. But none of those things did happen. Nevertheless, knowing that stunningly rapid changes would have rendered irrelevant many of the other alternatives entertainable back in 1987, those charged by the Academy to pursue the Fundamentalism Project had reason for anxiety in respect to its theme.[34]

Given that the address occurred in 1995, we can only speculate as to what Marty may have said in his opening remarks if given subsequent to September 11, 2001, just how exceedingly relevant this study has become. The Fundamentalism Project resulted in five volumes, each volume approximately 900 pages in length, with contributing scholars writing the pieces of global fundamentalism to then be woven into a whole. Marty co-directed this project with R. Scott Appleby (a noted writer and scholar in his own right – Strong Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)). Of note, Appleby currently directs the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. These volumes aggressively seek out militant modern religious fundamentalisms around the globe, describe them, assess their nature and trends, and analyze goals. In the introduction to volume 1[35], though not attributed to Marty (nor anyone else for that matter), it is clearly he who worries over the precise definition of each of the three words, Modern Religious Fundamentalisms – what exactly is this body of scholars to be looking for? While early on Marty suggests he does not have the chops to ‘do theology’ (philosophy) – his philosophical bent shines clearly through as he defines the boundaries for the project.

The sources used by the appointed authors are all practically first hand observation combined with deep research into historical roots. And while Bill Moyer may not have had the Fundamentalism Project in mind when he mentioned Encyclopedia Britannica – these volumes amount to just that – an encyclopedia of militant fundamentalisms within contemporary humanity. While one may be certain that discrete aspects of the volumes may be open to objection from various perspectives – i.e. if one happened to be a member of one of these studied fundamentalisms, one might object to various interpretations as being inaccurate. However, in the aggregate, the study and resulting volumes are unassailable in their reflection on the fundamentalist mind-set and burgeoning movement.

Marty synopsizes the study better than any other might hope to, “That jumbling of possibilities within one paragraph is a way of saying that the Fundamentalism Project has tried to isolate some patterns and frameworks within which one can observe fundamentalist movements, but only careful tracking of individual movements will do justice to them and their futures. After all, is that not also the case with secular political movements and other cultural expressions of the life of the letter and the spirit? Thus, although the Fundamentalism Project has formally ended, the questions and agenda it has projected should, like the Academy itself, remain relevant for years to come.”[36] This prediction, unfortunately, puts Nostradamus to shame.

St. Augustine, at the beginning of his Confessions, makes a great and beautiful statement: 'Thou has made us for thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.' Back of that statement lies a proposition which says that the human is created for transcendence … that we are by nature created to envision more than we can accomplish, to long for that which is beyond our possibilities.
Martin E. Marty

IV. Evaluation of the Historical Historian

Here I will adopt a more personal approach and speak for myself. I am tempted to assert that there may well be nothing original left to say about American religious history in the wake of Martin E. Marty, that is until or unless the current landscape erodes and/or evolves into a radically different topology than what he has already described and analyzed. I know intuitively that this cannot be right, but such is the nature of his work – the overwhelming nature of it. Very similar to that feeling one encounters while involved in continental philosophy, when one realizes that all she/he is doing is commenting on the comments of other commentators. Rarely, I believe, can one individual be identified who shifts an entire paradigm for an entire field of study. We closely study those that have accomplished just that; Aristotle, Da Vinci, Newton, Einstein, Stephen Hawking. And yet I genuinely believe that the Reverend Dr. Marty has not only provided us with a fresh, or first, exegesis of American religious history, I believe, as a more profound contribution, he has taught us a new method of assessing and narrating our social past, of allowing our perceived transcendence into the equation – of accounting for it in our social construction – and, finally, of recognizing it and describing it in our histories.

Religion as we perceive it is not a compartmentalized concept, surreptitiously spoken of in classrooms and avoided altogether in bar rooms. The history of the American religious experience, in Marty’s hands, becomes the social ‘background’ within in which all other historical events come to pass. The noted philosopher John R. Searle asserts this about the ‘background’ I intend, “The simplest argument for the thesis of the Background is that the literal meaning of any sentence can only determine its truth conditions or other conditions of satisfaction against a Background of capacities, dispositions, know-how, etc., which are not themselves part of the semantic content of the sentence.”[37] If we consider “cut my hair” and “cut the grass,” we see immediately that context is everything, hopefully before someone approaches my head with a lawnmower or the grass with a pair of scissors. Note also, that atheist-based systems can, and are, accounted for within a religious capacity, as to be against a concept belies the same capacities, dispositions and know-how. Marty speaks not for the religiously persuaded, but for religion as the unavoidable contextual background to American history.

Marty contends that American history was, and is, enacted within a religious background of capacities, dispositions and know-how. While this insight is not particularly earth-shattering, the drive to successfully describe that historical religious background accurately is unique, and Marty’s life work in this regard, singular.

Marty is not easily categorized within any particular school as a historian. He inhabits sectors of the Progressive history movement, writing history as shaped by the religious forces of the day. As well, though, he comfortably exists in the Counter-Progressive movement in that ideas, not uncontrollable forces, move humanity. Finally, he may most appropriately fit in the New Political History movement where ideas and political forces seem to acquire a synthesis, a combination of ideas and forces. The interesting thing about differentiated categories is that to belong to one generally annuls membership in the others. Each category, if you will, highlights the procedural flaws of the others. In this sense, that Marty is difficult to locate categorically, we may take a hint that, methodologically, he avoids the flaws of particular schools and enjoys the strengths of many.

In short, my assessment of Marty as a professional historian can be articulated in two words, Paradigm Shifter. Where does that leave us fledgling historians, interested in the history of religion? Is there a corner of the room left for us to carve our space from? Of course there is, we are left in good stead – by reflecting deeply on Marty’s approach to identity, our habit of social construction, and the infinite ways in which these themes drive our public and private lives against a background of religious understanding. There will indeed be American religious history to be written about tomorrow, it is happening right now, today. If one intends to write about it, though, better be quick – Dr. Marty is still delightedly observing this odd world of America.

Endnotes:
[1] www.illuminos.com/mem/bio.html, cited 30 Mar 07
[2] Ibid.
[3] Martin E. Marty, “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” Contemporary Authors, 194 (2001)
[4] “70th Birthday Tributes,” Criterion, 37, no. 2 (1998).
[5] “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” 15
[6] Martin E. Marty, “A Life of Learning,” Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture for 2006, ACLS Occasional Paper, No. 62 (2006).
[7] “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” 17
[8] Ibid., 20
[9] “A Life of Learning,” 9
[10] Ibid., 8
[11] “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” 18
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid., 19
[14] “70th Birthday Tributes,”
[15] “A Life of Learning,” 17
[16] Ibid.
[17] Martin E. Marty, “Sneer,” Christian Century (November 14, 2006)
[18] Martin E. Marty, Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America, (New York: Dial, 1970).
[19] “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” 24
[20] Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America, 265
[21] Ibid., 53
[22] Ibid., Foreward
[23] Martin E. Marty, A Nation of Behavers, (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1976).
[24] “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” 25
[25] A Nation of Behavers, 1
[26] Ibid., 206
[27] Ibid., 205
[28] Martin E. Marty, The Pro & Con Book of Religious America: A Bicentennial Argument, (Waco, TX.: Word Books, 1975).
[29] Ibid., 9
[30] Ibid., 27
[31] Martin E. Marty, 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).
[32] Ibid., Volume 1, 1
[33] “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” 25
[34] www.illuminos.com/mem/selectPapers/fundamentalismProject.html, cited 30 Mar 2007
[35] The Fundamentalism Project. With R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Volume 1: Fundamentalisms Observed (1991); Volume 2: Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education (1993); Volume 3: Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economics, and Militance (1993); Volume 4: Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of the Movements (1994); Volume 5: Fundamentalisms Comprehended (1995).
[36] www.illuminos.com/mem/selectPapers/fundamentalismProject.html, cited 30 Mar 2007
[37] John R. Searle, The Construction of Social Reality, (New York: The Free Press, 1995), 130.

Bibliography

Marty, Martin E. “A Life of Learning,” Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture for 2006, ACLS Occasional Paper, No. 62, 2006.

Marty, Martin E. A Nation of Behavers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Marty, Martin E. “Biography,” www.illuminos.com/mem/bio.html. (Accessed 30 Mar 2007).

Marty, Martin E. 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).

Marty, Martin E. Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America. New York: Dial, 1970.

Marty, Martin E. “Sneer,” Christian Century (November 14, 2006)

Marty, Martin E. The Pro & Con Book of Religious America: A Bicentennial Argument. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1975.

Marty, Martin E. “The Provincial, the Parochial, and the Public,” Contemporary Authors, 194, 2001.

Marty, Martin E. and Appleby, R. Scott. The Fundamentalism Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Volume 1: Fundamentalisms Observed (1991); Volume 2: Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education (1993); Volume 3: Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Polities, Economics, and Militance (1993); Volume 4: Accounting for Fundamentalisms: The Dynamic Character of the Movements (1994); Volume 5: Fundamentalisms Comprehended (1995).

Moyers, Bill. “70th Birthday Tributes,” Criterion, 37, no. 2, (1998).

Searle, John R. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: The Free Press, 1995.