Martin E. Marty

A recent obituary leads me to return to a question that now and then shows up in my writing and speaking: what happened during the recent past to change a formerly virtuous America into the chaotic...

In the long history of this column, I have never received so much positive and helpful correspondence as I did in response to the one (January 24) that incidentally mentioned how I had cherished bu...

With the beginning of the kamikaze missions we call denominational conventions only a month or two off, it is proper and wise to prepare ourselves for what will happen at most of them....

To sustain a weekly column over a 40-year period requires paying attention—and getting more than a little help from others....

The second best-selling book on campuses these days is Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht’s straight-faced but not unhumorous The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook (Chron...

Catechism class will now come to order....

I think of this column as a kind of search engine. Mention a puzzling item here and you’re sure to get a response....

"There’s a long line of people who on the basis of their position on life couldn’t be attorney general. We could start with Jesus Christ himself.” So said Senator Robert C....

Wife Harriet claims to be able to tell whether we are at a meeting of the American Historical Association or the American Academy of Religion by looking at the kinds of tweed jackets men are wearin...

The Martin Martys of Chicago are friends with the Martin Martys of Zurich, Switzerland. Decades ago the Chicago Martys had the Zurich Martys as house guests....

In this ecumenical era not only churches but cultures are melding, merging, learning from one another and even transposing and trading their distinctive characteristics....

Moons have passed since I’ve passed on to you some of the little items readers send me....

For those who date the birth of Jesus from zero, this Christmas season was his 2,000th birthday. Aware of that, my son Joel asked, “Dad, you read all the periodicals and notices?...

Things seemed to be going smoothly on the ecumenical front at the beginning of the new millennium....

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?...

Unsolicited, unwanted or unforwarded Christmas cards and gift catalogs keep coming to my temporary abode in the president’s house at Minnesota’s St. Olaf College....

The Marty male line since 1792 goes like this: Rudolph begat Bendicht begat Gottfried begat Emil begat Martin begat Joel begat Noah begat Muhammed....

The other night, while doing my bathtub reading of scholarly journals, I came across two references to one subject. Taken together they almost roused me from the torpor induced by the whirlpool....

There are more possible moves on a chess board than there are neutrons in our universe, I once read in a chess encyclopedia....

What motivates people to buy nine or more Bibles? A good question, asked by Kimberly Winston in Publishers Weekly (October 9)....