Martin E. Marty
Wheels of fortune: "In case of rapture, I have dibs on your Bugatti"
Luxury, the dictionary tells us, is “the use and enjoyment of the best and most costly things that offer the most physical comfort and satisfaction.” In a special advertising section on luxury auto...
Snookered: A call to look to the Bible for the Word of God
It’s been said that a fundamentalist is an evangelical who got mad....
Creepy: Pondering the question of insects and origins
There are 3,700 known species of cockroaches alone, and they will outlive us all. This statistic ought to disturb literalists who recall that Noah’s family caught and brought on the ark “of everything that creeps on the ground, two and two, male and female” (Gen. 6:8). Noah also had to avoid the hazardous secretions of these creatures, some of which produce repugnatorial secretions containing compounds that generate hydrogen cyanide.
Professor Pelikan: A keen sense of what matters
Church historian Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, who died May 13, felt like a relative, thanks to consanguinity among our Slovak friends....
Me and my mausoleum: The latest in funeral fads
On Sunday drives some 40 years ago, our family would travel up and down Des Plaines Avenue, which cut through Jewish Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois....
Lonely in Dakota: A celebration of ministry in the waning places
Baltimore, our declining but still 12th-largest city, has a larger population than the entire state of North Dakota, which has 634,366 people....
Doing it by the book: Evangelical sex manuals
Expect to see banners with “Song of Solomon 2:6” or “Genesis 2:25” unfurled in sports stadiums along with the customary “John 3:16” signs....
Opening act: Uniting church and state
That’s ridiculous! So spake the brilliant, productive, acerbic federal judge Richard Posner....
Hooked on war: The psychology of car sales
Sixteen toy Model A Fords greet me each day in my study. In the 1927 model, modest headlights are connected by a straight bar. Its symbolic straight face is noncommittal....
Party on: Anniversary planning
For years my multiyear calendar has had a listing for April 19, 2009: “Mt....
Acting Methodist: A history in theater
Mario cuomo, no mean rhetorician, is no expert on Christian denominations....
Pray without yawning: The power of intercessory prayer
Some questions just will not die. “Why is there something instead of nothing?” is a perennial....
Time capsule: Flawed prediction
The theological education issue of this magazine in 1958 featured a ruckus-raising editorial, “Domesticity in Our Seminaries” (April 23)....
Bonhoeffer for us: Asking the key questions
For the first time in the United States,” said the book blurb, “a number of Christian thinkers gathered to analyze Bonhoeffer’s theological achievement for publication.” So eight of us claimed—I wa...
Pucker up: The Christian kiss
A book by Michael Philip Penn titled Kissing Christians is attracting attention....
You can look it up: Marty in Wikipedialand
Told that there is an online encyclopedia, I did the natural thing: I looked to see how it treated me. Of course, I hoped to find something like this:
...Name-dropping: Errors in appellation
Jeff Samardzija’s is not the first difficult name on the Notre Dame football roster, nor does one expect to find familiar names—that is, familiar to Anglos—in sports in this cosmopolitan era....
The true and the gray: Ambiguity in the human condition
Like most artists, the sculptor and painter Anselm Kiefer favors certain hues and materials. His chosen hue is gray, in all its shades, and gray is nothing if not shaded....
Ankle-deep in danger: Staged news
In October NBC’s Today show covered the floods in New Jersey with a live shot of correspondent Michelle Kosinski, who was paddling a canoe....
In distress: The designer jeans industry
Soon the fashionistas will fashion a new craze to replace the craze for distressed jeans....