Martin E. Marty

Seeing Beyond the World: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition, edited by Paul Corby Finney

Reviewing Jonathan Raban’s Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings (Pantheon) in the New York Review of Books (January 20), Larry McMurtry concentrates on the act of saying g...

If anyone ever did a word search of four decades’ worth of these columns, it is not likely that cat would ever show up....

I wouldn't recognize Rosie O’Donnell if we bumped into each other’s baskets at the supermarket, but I know she’s big on television....

The last time I wrote about scanning the obituaries, I referred to people whose accomplishments were widely recognized....

In Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong James W. Loewen tells us that he encountered a marker at the Little Bighorn River battlefield in Montana dedicated to U.S....

Recently I was in New York to hear the St. Olaf Choir sing, transcendently, at Carnegie Hall. I was there both as a member of the college’s board and as a devotee of a cappella music....

The church regularly gets criticized for being behind the times. Let the culture come up with something and, in time, churches follow, critics say....

If you were around any of the years in this chronology you probably didn’t notice—I didn’t—the instant effect of the following:

1944—first automatic, general purpose digital computer;

Every year I wait for the January issue of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research....

Four decades ago, when I began to write this column, my assignment was to “lighten up” the magazine by gently poking fun at the foibles and follies of the mainstream and all the other religious str...

When we Marty kids were in grade school, we entered any contest that pointed toward a prize. During those Great Depression years, we would have experienced great elation if we’d won even a bauble....

The only college paper I saved was written when I was a sophomore. Dated “Thanksgiving 1946,” it turned up a couple of years ago in my files....

Aristotle says that three elements are necessary for a successful argument: ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos refers to the character of the one who speaks or writes....

Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America, by Randall Balmer

Let's institute a moratorium on citing the sexual (or fiscal) indiscretions of various leaders and linking their misdeeds to the individuals' ideology, whether of the left or right.

I almost got through the '90s without mentioning contemporary art controversies....

The Alexian Brothers established Bonaventure House some years ago as a place of refuge, spiritual care and healing of many sorts for people afflicted with AIDS....

Recently I cohosted with actor John Mahoney (of the TV show Frasier) an annual event called "Jubilate." It supports Chicago's Bonaventure House, where the Alexian Brothers serve AIDS victi...

A reader from Texas sent us a copy of a letter issued by a church summer camp: "Dear Parent(s): As you were aware, yesterday we went to the Mary T. Meager Aquatic Center....