Congregants at the Sedona Unitarian Universalist Fellowship mourn the recent passing, at 97, of Martin E. Marty, who was an Evangelical Lutheran minister, religious historian, prolific author, and staunch champion of pluralism.
He marched for civil rights, with Martin Luther King Jr., in Selma, Ala., attended the Second Vatican Council as a Protestant observer, and helped found the antiwar organization Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam. Marty was president of the American Academy of Religion, won a 1972 National Book Award, and taught religious history at the University of Chicago Divinity School. (Time magazine once described him as “the most influential living interpreter of religion in the U.S.”)
In his many books, Marty praised the contributions of white, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism to American life and chronicled the gradual decline of its cultural impact. He foresaw that no group would ever again dominate American religion, and he welcomed the resulting freedom to choose and the “space to try things,” which have given American religion the vitality to empower its resilience.
He worried about religious groups turning their backs on working together ecumenically and collaborating to address matters of public concern. He decried over-emphasis on a privatized, personal faith and on each groups’ own institutional well-being. He valued the ideals of American’s shared pluralist heritage and decried the political and cultural fracturing of the nation.
He disdained extremism and fundamentalism, both by Islamist terrorists and right-wing Protestants. And he warned that culture wars undermine the ideals of e pluribus unum.
“Nothing is more important than to keep the richness of our pluralism alive,” Marty once wrote. “To be aware of many different people and different ways, and deal with it.”
For him, the only real swear word was “tribalism — watching out for my interest, my family, my town, my country, my tribe — at the expense of others.” He felt that everyone, and he meant everyone, deserved a seat at the table of public discussion as long as they were willing to play by the rules of civility and reasoned examination of the evidence.
He will be missed.
March 14, 2025