Martin E. Marty
F is for forgetting: A theological dictionary
A half phrase from Augustine has challenged and inspired me for a half century: “God is like the nature he made.” It appears as a virtual throwaway line, quoted in José Ortega y ...
News filter: Navigating the new media
We asked some expert observers of the religion scene how they are navigating the new media. What do they read, watch and listen to? How have their reading, listening and viewing habits changed over the past decade?Here's Mark Silk: "I’ve always been a news junkie. I still take two dead-tree newspapers—the New York Times and the Hartford Courant. I look at the Washington Post every morning, and I listen to NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered while driving to and from work. At work, I’m in thrall to the continuous news cycle. I check the AP wire on Yahoo as soon as I sit down at my desk, and then scan the general-interest blogs and blogzines—the Daily Dish, Politico, Talking Points Memo, Huffington Post, the Daily Beast."
H is for holy: A theological dictionary
No! blurted the expert on Japanese Buddhism. He was a member of a group of interreligious and interdisciplinary thinkers charged with coming up with a consensus statement....
F is for friendship: A theological dictionary
Fifty years ago, when a generation of seminarians was cutting its theological fangs, friendship was a disdained term....
A is for availability: A theological dictionary
God is “eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, holy, just, faithful, benevolent, merciful and gracious.” I can still rattle off those divine attributes learned in catechism class....
A theological dictionary: G is for generosity
2 Corinthians 8 contains the only New Testament reference, outside the infancy narratives, to Jesus being poor.
The road taken: Marty's final column
At age 12, when I still thought I was or would be or could be a poet, John G. Neihardt figured large in my imagination. For 50-plus years he was Nebraska’s poet laureate....
Cantus firmus: A melody that is firm and clear
To Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Executed by the Nazis in April 1945
Among royalty: Bishop Brazier passes the baton
In the 1960s, famed community organizer Saul Alinksy, Arthur M....
Market values: Christian symbols and pagan shrines
As Christians conquered pagan lands, they regularly superimposed Christian symbols on pagan shrines....
Line dance: Airport decisions
The next time I head for the airport security line, ready to be scolded for wearing too large a wristwatch, I will have to make a quick decision....
Ronald: To life!
Ronald Autry has always been called Ronald, never Ron or Ronnie, during the years that we have known him....
Old refrain: All together now
All together now, with heart and soul and voices, let’s sing number 1786. Why don’t I read the lyrics first, and then let the guitar and drums pick it up:
...What to say about hell: A symposium
Hell is talked about cautiously, if at all, in mainline churches....
Brand loyalty: Mainline persistence
On the way to the airport for my TWA flight to St. Louis, I gassed up at the Standard station....
Pewless: When to head for the door
This spring a certain Christian layperson has been criticized for not exiting his local church when he disagreed with something his pastor preached.
...Grace in the center: A sampling of sayings
Tim Goeglein, special assistant to the president and deputy director of the Office of Public Liaison, was recently caught plagiarizing Dartmouth veteran Jeffrey Hart....
Crime wave: Ecclesiastical theft
I wait each year for the January issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research with its “Table C....
My hometown: A place to stand to view the world
Sixty-nine years after I moved away, I still read the West Point News, the weekly in my Nebraska hometown....
All in the cortex: "My DNA made me do it"
The medial orbitofrontal cortex has given us much to think about recently....