Conversation with Martin Marty

Daniel Pawlus: And now, we welcome Dr. Martin Marty. Marty, it is so good to have you with us today.

Martin Marty: It’s good to be back.

Daniel Pawlus: There are so many titles you’ve had: the Dean of American religion, the Master of the Mainline. I’m sure there are many more of them. I want to start by asking you, how has Chicago been so lucky to have you here all these years? I just imagine that at some point in time there was a call, or a number of calls, saying there is another opportunity. And to just tie this up, I think of Joe Paterno, that story where he was supposed to take over the New England Patriots and he woke up one morning and said, “No, this is my calling. I’m staying here.” So tell us a little bit about that.

Martin Marty: Right after I got here, we had just taken in two permanent foster children and by Illinois law we couldn’t keep them if we’d move. So the first two years I did get a couple of those offers and I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to without leaving them. But after, we got settled in here and wouldn’t have left for anything. We’re real lovers of Chicago. I travel a lot and can’t wait to come home. How did Chicago get lucky? I got lucky! It was all a very fortuitous kind of thing. I was called to a church in River Forest, Illinois, as a curate, a young starter. The head minister said, “This congregation believes in a learned ministry and we expect our assistant pastors to work on a PhD and you’re next!” That’s how I got started. I had never dreamed of going into graduate work.

Lillian Daniel: Did you ever have a tension between wanting to stay in the parish or be an academic? What led you to take the academic route?

Martin Marty: I could have been just as happy being in a parish. One side of me never quit. I like to think I’m dealing that way with students, whether they are people of belief or not. Graduate school is a very scary place and I really like to enter their lives, not in a snoopy, close-up way, but just with empathy. And that’s very similar to it. I’ve always kept on some range of sick-calling and dealing with the mentally ill, things that have come up along the way, if you let it happen. But once you plunge into it, it’s very hard to interrupt all these years, all these hours in the library putting it all together. And all of the sudden it starts clicking and you say, “This is the story I wanted to tell.” So I’ve been happy in both.

Daniel Pawlus: So fifty plus books, Marty. Publishers for sixty years now almost, right? What’s been the inspiration for some of these? You mentioned in the clip we saw there was a personal inspiration about the one book you talked about. How do you decide what you want to write about? Your books have been hugely impactful across the American landscape in terms of religion.

Martin Marty: Even the book I did allude to and wrote after my first wife’s death was asked for. The publisher said, “Would you?” We used to have a place on Washington Island in Wisconsin and in the summer different people would come by. Sometimes there were publishers We’d sit around the campfire and they’d say, “You know, this has been bugging me. Why don’t do so-and-so?” So I would say I’ve got an impoverished imagination, but hey, give me something and I can run with it. But I’ve said I think I should write so-and-so.

So where do you get the inspiration? What tends to happen is you go through several years…several years I was busy with the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics. I was told before that I had faith, but I didn’t have ethics! It was medical ethics and I didn’t know medicine. But they plunge you in it and I really loved it and got involved with it in many ways. And then the American Academy of Arts and Sciences said we’d like if you’d make a scholarly study with your associate, Scott Appleby, of comparative fundamentalism around the world. That took eight years right there. You do some spin-off books along the way, but this became the concentration. I think it’s been that way all the way.

Lillian Daniel: I found it remarkable to imagine how productive you’ve been in your writing and then to imagine all those children in the house. And you said you wrote in hiccups. Can you paint a picture of how that worked? What was your writing routine like?

Martin Marty: Okay. Maybe they were the inspiration. I mean I really, really love children and I learn from them. My dissertation advisor was Daniel Boorstin, later the Librarian of Congress, and he dedicated one of his books to his three sons and he said, “Like genius, simple. That’s why they are the best teachers.” And I think that you listen to them and follow that. We camped in all but three states, thirteen foreign countries, towing a little trailer behind and you learn so much through their eyes. I think that was often it. I often ask myself, can this be translated to their world? You can’t talk down. They’d catch it right away. But I think that’s always been a big part of it. I love imagination and they’re the ones that have it.

Daniel Pawlus: I’m fascinated by what you said before because you have the long view and you can take the long view. The publishing world has changed a lot, obviously, in the last sixty years. Was there a time when you were able to hang out or spend time with other writers in Chicago? I’m thinking of somebody like Andrew Greeley who has been writing for a long time.

Martin Marty: Andrew Greeley is very disrespectful of me because I’m three hours older than he is! We’ve kidded through the years about that. He said, “Marty has that sagacity and wisdom of age and I have the youth.” We hung out a great deal, at the University of Chicago a great deal. I love the Chicago writer orbit and the voice.

Daniel Pawlus: So was there a time when you all would—you’re all doing your own thing—get together around coffee? Would you talk about what was going on in the landscape? Did that happen?

Martin Marty:  It happens inevitably and, of course, the campus is the first place. But you have Northwestern up the street and the number of the small colleges here have some very good writers. They welcome a larger company. At the University you’ve got Saul Bellow, Richard Stern. You can go right down the list of all these famous people. But it’s more fun to catch them on the way up before it’s all formed.

Lillian Daniel: I want to ask you, as an historian you take the long view. In all your years as an historian, what’s been the change in the world of religion that has most surprised you?

Martin Marty: I think probably there are two of them that come right away. You can’t take anything for granted anymore. Before I said, when I was a minister, it wasn’t as hard as it is today because people…if you were Catholic, you’re going to stay Catholic; if you’re Methodist, you’re going to stay Methodist. You are what your parents were. That ran through World War II and into the 1950s. Now pick and choose is a big part and every minister, every priest is very busy. I think there is an authenticity because you have to build loyalty to the Gospel and to the cause.

Lillian Daniel: And as we run short of time, what’s the second one?

Daniel Pawlus: We can come back to it, too. It sounds like you’re talking about how loyalty was different back in the day, right?

Martin Marty: Not that people are worse, it’s just that the rules have changed. The other, I think, is the extremism in religion. I grew up in the 50s, which was an era in which…I mentioned Daniel Boorstin, my advisor, who was with a group of people called consensus historians. They really didn’t believe that America had big extremes except the Civil War. You could really coast in the Eisenhower era on some common assumptions. And now every time you open your mouth, or every minister, you’ve got people out there that didn’t join the church because of a particular message or that sort. And yet you’re supposed to be prophetic and non-judging and preaching Gospel. That’s hard.

Daniel Pawlus: Let’s pick up there when we come back, Marty. A great place to stop.