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As Trump returns, be a Martin Marty, not a Billy Graham
January 21, 2025
Martin Marty in 2017. The University of Chicago religious scholar, 96, believes faith should bring people together, not drive them apart. “Nothing is more important than to keep the richness of our pluralism alive,” he wrote, words more true now than ever
Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times dedicated his Sunday, January 19, 2025 column to the legacy of Professor Emeritus Martin Marty, writing:
Marty warned against acting as the “servant of a God of prey whose goal it is to annex and enslave.”
He reminds us:
“Nothing is more important than to keep the richness of our pluralism alive. To be aware of many different people and different ways, and deal with it.”
I had lunch with Marty in 2017, when his book on Martin Luther’s 95 Theses was published, and reached out to him to plumb his thoughts now. But he’ll be 97 in a couple of weeks and avoids the public eye he used so well for so long. No matter, his voluminous writings — he is the author of more than 50 books — provide what we need.
“One of the real problems in modern life,” Marty writes, “is that people who are good at being civil lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions lack civility.”