Martin Marty

Martin Emil Marty (born February 5, 1928 in West Point, Nebraska) is an American Lutheran religious scholar who has written extensively on Religion in the United States.

He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Chicago in 1956, and served as a Lutheran pastor from 1952 to 1967 in the suburbs of Chicago. From 1963 to 1998 he taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School, eventually holding an endowed chair (the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professorship). Marty's doctoral advisees at the University of Chicago included religious scholars James R. Lewis, Jeffrey Kaplan, Jonathan M. Butler, and Vincent Harding, as well as Shimer College president Susan Henking.

Marty served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association. He was the founding president and later the George B. Caldwell Scholar-in-Residence at the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics. He has served on two U. S. Presidential Commissions and was director of both the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago (sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts). He has served at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota since 1988 as Regent, Board Chair, Interim President in late 2000, and now as Senior Regent.

Marty retired after his seventieth birthday. He holds emeritus status at the University of Chicago; he additionally served as Robert W. Woodruff Visiting Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Emory University 2003–2004. His first wife, Elsa, died. He is now married to Harriet. He has seven children (including two who joined the family as foster children), among whom are Minnesota State Senator John Marty and the Rev. Peter Marty, who hosted the ELCA radio ministry Grace Matters from 2005-2009.

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