Walter Ralston Martin

Walter Ralston Martin
Walter Ralston Martin in 1980s
Born	(1928-09-10)September 10, 1928 Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Died	June 26, 1989(1989-06-26) (aged 60)

Walter Ralston Martin (September 10, 1928 – June 26, 1989), was an American Evangelical Christian minister and author who founded the Christian Research Institute in 1960 as a para-church ministry specializing as a clearing-house of information in both general Christian apologetics and in countercult apologetics. As the author of the influential The Kingdom of the Cults (1965), he has been dubbed the "godfather of the anti-cult movement".

Martin was born in Brooklyn, New York to George Washington Martin II (1876–1948) and Maud Ainsworth (1892–1966). His father was a prominent figure in the legal profession who served as an assistant District attorney, before working as a criminal trial lawyer. In 1920 George Martin became a county court judge and presided over cases involving some of the notorious Murder Inc criminals.

Martin's mother, Maud Ainsworth, was born in Chicago to Joseph Ainsworth and Annie Young. She was one of several children born of that marriage, but was put up for adoption. She was adopted by her uncle and aunt James McIntyre (theatrical actor) (1857–1937) a vaudevillian (one partner of the black-face duo: Thomas Heath and Jim McIntyre), and Emma Maude Young (1862–1935), a dancer and balladeer (known on stage as Maude Clifford and Maud Clifton).

Martin was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, and was the youngest of six children. In his earliest years the family lived on Macdonough Street, and then from 1930 onwards on Bainbridge Street, Brooklyn. In the mid-1940s he attended The Stony Brook School where he obtained his high school diploma.