Journalism adventures with Martin Marty
Four columns demonstrating the range of the historian's quips and interests
First, a personal note. While I am currently in Wellington, New Zealand, I did not run into Peter Jackson today.
Yes, it would have been nice to get to interview him again. No, I don’t think he has any reason at the moment to hang out with a religion writer — one of the scribes he met in what he called “the God room” during “The Lord of the Rings” press events.
But, as a J.R.R. Tolkien nerd of the text-oriented Baby Boomer generation, I am excited that our travels Down Under are getting close to our scheduled visits to the WETA empire here in Wellington and then the amazing Hobbiton movie set that is now open for public tours.
I intend to write an “On Religion” column after the Hobbiton visit. Anyone want to guess the main question that I will be asking the folks there? I do hope that there is a media team on site, someone well versed in the logic behind the creation of this permanent site.
Meanwhile, I would like to thank readers for hanging in with me during these weeks of intense travel. It has often been a challenge to post at Rational Sheep, while also getting my syndicated column written and the “Crossroads” podcast recorded. We will get home in the middle of next week for a few days before I briefly hit the road again, headed off to do some long-awaited work at Saint Constantine College and the University of St. Thomas in Houston. Pray that I survive the traffic in that sprawling mega-city.
After that, things should return to normal, schedule wise (for a month or two).
Also, I did promise that I will begin circulating my columns here, after the rights return to me for storage at Tmatt.net.
But. why send readers only one column, when there is a chance to put a new column into some kind of wider context?
Thus, this post will end with my recent column about the life and legacy of the late Martin Marty, easily the most read and quoted historian of American religion in the past 60-plus years. If that’s what you want to read, just jump to the finale.
But let me start with three columns that demonstrate the RANGE of Marty’s interests and why his wit, candor and sound-bite skills were so important to journalists of a certain age who covered religion news.
We will open with a very important question — I added bold face in the text — from a conference years ago at the University of Nebraska journalism school. Then there will be columns about the religion of Washington, D.C., and, well, Texas Baptists and the worship (almost) of football.
It is Martin Marty's custom to rise at 4:44 a.m. for coffee and prayer, while awaiting the familiar thump of four newspapers on his porch.
A week ago, America's most famous church historian prepared for a lecture in Nebraska by ripping up enough newsprint to bury his table in headlines and copy slashed with a yellow pen.
A former WorldCom CEO kept teaching his Sunday school class. A researcher sought the lost tribe of Israel. Believers clashed in Sudan. Mormon and evangelical statistics were up – again. A Zambian bishop said he got married to shock the Vatican. U.S. bishops kept wrestling with clergy sexual abuse. Pakistani police continued to study the death of journalist Daniel Pearl.
Marty tore out more pages, connecting the dots. Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey feared an Anglican schism. Public-school students prayed at flagpoles. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explored the border between church and state. And there were dozens of stories linked to Sept. 11, 2001.
"When I read newspapers, I see religion all over the place," said Marty, whose University of Chicago Divinity School career has led to 50-plus books and countless media appearances. "This has always been the case. I simply think it has been easier for others to see this reality during the past year."
For decades, Marty has been America's most quoted expert on the question: "What is religion news?" But the University of Nebraska's journalism school challenged him to answer a new question: "Is There Any Non-Religious News After 9/11?"
It is certainly harder for journalists to avoid religion now, said Marty. This is true from Washington to Islamabad, from Wall Street to Hollywood. But the deeper reality is that Sept. 11 didn't change anything. It only made the power of faith – as a healing force, as well as a deadly force – more obvious.
Truth is, most Western leaders have long believed that religion would inevitably fade, he said. Thus, the West has been dominated by two big ideas.
"One idea was that every time you looked out your window, there was going to be less religion around than there was before," said Marty, in a forum for journalism students, ministers and media professionals. "The other idea was that whatever leftover religion you find, it was going to be tolerant, concessive, mushy and so on.
"Instead, there has been an increase in religion and the prospering religions are all extremely intense. The versions of Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism that are prospering tend to be among people who care very much about what their faith is about."
Countless despots have learned that faith cannot be killed with force. This is especially true outside what Marty called the "spiritual ice belt" that extends across Western Europe and North America. Soon, Africa and Asia will be sending waves of missionaries to the West.
Meanwhile, most of the world's hot spots are occurring where Islamic expansion is colliding with the growth of traditional Christianity in the Third World. While the world watches Afghanistan and Iraq, the insiders are watching Nigeria and Indonesia.
It's all part of the same story.
In the mid-1990s, Marty directed a massive project to study the "militant religious fundamentalisms" on the rise worldwide. It concluded that the leaders of many such groups would resort to military action, when they failed to achieve victory through constitutional means. And if military might was not enough, Marty noted that the study warned that "they may very well take no prisoners, allow no compromises, have no borders and they might resort to terrorism."
How should networks and newspapers respond? It would help, said Marty, if they hired more journalists who are trained to cover the complex and emotional world of religion. But that response is no longer adequate, after Sept. 11.
"What I am talking about today is not a call for a huge flood of religion reporters. We need some. We need more," he said. "We need space in which they can write. ...
"But we are past that, right now. We are now dealing with issues that all journalists are going to have to try to understand. ... The horizons of religion and the news have touched and we all have to realize that, now."
Martin Marty and the soul of D.C.
A glance down from an incoming airplane is all it takes to see that Washington, D.C., is messed up.
Long ago, architect Pierre L'Enfant had of vision of grand plazas combined with a simple, logical grid of streets. But now visitors see politics all over the place. The Supreme Court sits in judgment across the street from the U.S. Capitol, which wrestles with the White House for symbolic supremacy on the map. Highways run into rivers and the National Mall, while cathedrals gaze down from distant hills at memorials to the secular saints.
Where is the heart of Washington? And if a city doesn't have a heart, where is its soul?
"We are in a society called 'pluralist,' "said historian Martin Marty, during a recent speech entitled "Building the Holy City on the Hill" for the College of Preachers at National Cathedral. "Our cities don't have that single axis. They don't have walls. They may have beltways, but they keep no one out. Commerce, industry, religion, academic life, media life, malls, all ... throw this off."
So Washington is not a New England village, in which all roads and energies converge on one marketplace, one government hall and one church, he said. People inside the Beltway worship all kinds of things in all kinds of places. Thus, it's hard to pinpoint the "soul" of America's complex and fragmented capital.
"It is a secular city," said Marty. "Believers may interpret it as God's gift, but it's not organized on those lines."
Nevertheless, he insisted that Washington does have a "soul," which he defined as: "The integrated vital power of any organic body that is full of awareness, openness to possibilities, expressive of freedom and having purpose." The good news for the city is that powerful displays of "soul" often follow moments of pain, conflict, sickness and anger. So he urged his listeners to keep their eyes open, right now.
During his 35-year career at the University of Chicago, Marty has been much more than a scholar whose 50 books and 40 years of Christian Century essays helped define an era of church history. His work has repeatedly bridged the wall between academia and the news. Any mention of his name is usually accompanied by the Time magazine quotation proclaiming him America's "most influential living interpreter of religion."
And Marty remains the master of finding grace in chaos – such as the storms currently gathering over Washington. For starters, he said, it's safe to say that no one on Capitol Hill is talking about building utopia anytime soon, in this day of almost supernaturally thin voting margins, non-existent mandates and bitter 50-50 splits over virtually every moral, cultural and political issue in sight.
This is good, he said, since most attempts to build utopias lead to bloodshed and war. Often, people who are divided, and know it, manage to get more work done than the people plagued by delusions of unity and perfection. The most crucial, creative decisions are almost always made right after the best-laid plans fall apart, after the utopian quests go astray. That is when progress often takes place in a fallen world full of flawed people.
"I am assuming," said Marty, "that the search for the holy city of Washington is going to go wrong, because you have to work with the crooked timber of humanity – conflicting interests, conflicting wills, conflicting visions of the good. ... We never say that we learn by trial and rightness, nor by trial and triumph. No, we learn by trial and error."
It's true that anyone searching for "soul" in Washington can look in churches. There are, he noted, 92 brands listed in the Yellow Pages – between "chiropractors" and "cigars." But they also should search in schools, where a janitor may help a student through a troubled day. They should visit an unheralded recovery program for prostitutes. "Soul" may even show up in efforts to replace out-of-date voting machines. Angels live on many of the city's forgotten streets.
Washington isn't perfect. That's the good news. And don't worry, said Marty, about times of conflict. Never forget that " you can't get justice without argument."
Baylor's clash of two religions -- Christian faith and big-time football
For half a century or more, journalists seeking insights on religion news in America have given a consistent answer to the question, "Who you gonna call?"
The proper response, of course, is "Martin E. Marty."
So it's no surprise that the 88-year-old historian – author of 60-plus books – has weighed in on the media storm surrounding Baylor University's Christian identity, big-time college football and the painful challenges facing educators wrestling with sexual abuse, alcohol and the law.
The key, according to Marty, is that Baylor is involved in a clash between two religions – Christianity and football.
"But isn't football just football, a branch of athletics, classifiable as entertainment and capitalist enterprise?", he asked, in a "Sightings" essay for the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Marty's answer: "No." Anyone with a good world-religions textbook or encyclopedia will recognize the characteristics that define "religious" activities, he added.
Is this activity an "ultimate concern" for those involved? Put a checkmark there.
Does football provide "ceremonial reinforcement," adding a kind of "metaphysical depth" to life? Check and check. Are deep emotions involved in these rites, providing a crucial sense of "communalism" among the faithful? Once again, add two checkmarks.
Now what about football, especially in Texas?
Marty added: "Football, on the collegiate and professional levels and, in a world of trickle-down religions, often in high school and little-kid versions, fits most definitions of religion, some of them vividly at Super Bowls and Texas High School rites, sacrifices and glorifications, more than they might be visible at the friendly neighborhood church or synagogue or even in 'spiritual but not religious' (and yet 'religious') circles. We do not claim to be particularly original or perceptive in pointing here to the religious dimensions as seen … at Baylor but almost as dramatically year-round in the higher levels of football authority and engrossments."
Baylor officials are well aware that millions of sports dollars and national prestige are at stake. But at the same time, noted Marty, "Baylor does not hide its official and traditional faith commitment, and puts it to work in many policies, such as compulsory chapel for students for a year or two. Let it be noted … that some features of the commitment are strong: a 'Top Ten' (in some measures) religion department, notable graduate programs, and not a few eminent scholars. But they are in the shadows cast by the scandal right now."
When this story broke, even before the firing of head football coach Art Briles, The Washington Post contacted me seeking my point of view, as a journalist with two degrees from Baylor and two decades of experience teaching in Christian higher education. I noted that, even during my student days in the 1970s, Baylor was wrestling with public debates about sexual assault.
Here's the bottom line, I told the Post: It's already difficult for a university to defend centuries of Christian doctrines on sex in America's current legal and cultural climate. Meanwhile, as noted in media reports, nearly 200 colleges and universities are currently facing investigations under Title IX linked to sexual violence cases.
Baylor is one of a few major schools that face both tests.
After all, Baylor's "sexual conduct" guidelines proclaim that students, faculty and staff will be "guided by the biblical understanding that human sexuality is a gift from God and that physical sexual intimacy is to be expressed in the context of marital fidelity." In a support document, marriage is defined as the "uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime."
The Baylor regents, in their "Findings of Fact" about the current crisis, admitted that independent investigators said key administrators had a "limited understanding of the dynamics of sexual violence and existing barriers to reporting on Baylor's campus, including the impact of other campus policies regarding the prohibition of alcohol and extra-marital sexual intercourse."
Can Baylor honor the laws of God and man?
"Baylor is at least temporarily paying for its over-investment in the religion of football or in its failure to let norms of Baylor's faith-context and its monitors be alert, conscience guided and able to provide perspectives," noted Marty. "If the school can regain perspectives available in the better resources of its Baptist/Christian origins, it can serve as an alerter and guide for others."
The legacy of Martin Marty is much larger than shelves of books in libraries
For decades, religion-beat journalists in the mainstream press knew how to produce stories that would land on the front page.
The formula was stated in jest, but there was truth in it. I heard this version in 1982: "Three local anecdotes, some national poll numbers and a quote from Martin Marty."
At the peak of his career, Time magazine said Marty was "generally acknowledged to be the most influential living interpreter of religion in the U.S.'' The church historian wrote more than 60 books and influenced hundreds more. For 50 years he was an editor and columnist at The Christian Century and, for 41 years, wrote his own biweekly Context newsletter, followed by “Sightings” essays online.
“It is clear that we religion journalists needed Martin Marty and he needed us," said Kenneth Woodward, who spent decades at Newsweek. "We read his Context, his Sightings, his MEMO column, his books, his annual New Theology paperback, his books and we called him for quotes. In today's terms, he influenced the influencers."
Marty died on February 25 at the age of 97, a quarter of a century after retiring from teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The research center he launched in 1979 was then rebranded as the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. He received numerous other awards, including more than 80 honorary degrees, the 1992 National Book Award and the 1997 National Medal for the Humanities.
It mattered that, before becoming a superstar scholar, he spent a decade caring for Lutherans in pews, said Richard Ostling, known for his work at Time and the Associated Press. One reason Marty could offer analysis that connected with readers was that he was "a successful pastor and could talk to God's people without talking down to them."
Academic leaders would note that Marty's legacy includes legions of professors and scholars. He advised 115 doctoral dissertations and helped countless other graduate students. In my own case, he gave me multiple interviews – spaced over two days in his office – covering material crucial to my church-state studies thesis at Baylor University.
Our paths crossed several times, including a 2002 University of Nebraska's journalism school conference about religion-news trends. The topic was blunt: "Is There Any Non-Religious News After 9/11?"
Marty's address to students, clergy and journalists mixed scholarship and daily life. As always, he rose at 4:44 a.m. for coffee and prayer, followed by the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He brought those newspapers with him to Nebraska, where he covered the podium with torn pages annotated with a marker.
"When I read newspapers, I see religion all over the place," he said.
I was at the event as a journalism professor asked to speak in response to Marty's remarks. In an "On Religion" column the next week, I jammed his trip through one day's worth of newsprint into this collage.
"A former WorldCom CEO kept teaching his Sunday school class. A researcher sought the lost tribe of Israel. Believers clashed in Sudan. Mormon and evangelical statistics were up – again. A Zambian bishop said he got married to shock the Vatican. U.S. bishops kept wrestling with clergy sexual abuse. Pakistani police continued to study the death of journalist Daniel Pearl."
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury "feared an Anglican schism. Public-school students prayed at flagpoles. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explored the border between church and state. And there were dozens of stories linked to Sept. 11, 2001."
The bottom line: It should be obvious that religion is soaking into events from "Washington to Islamabad, from Wall Street to Hollywood." But there is, he added, more to this story than politics. Often it is impossible to make sense out of headlines in the business pages without understanding the power of religion, morality and culture.
But many public leaders still think the global power of religious faith is fading.
"One idea was that every time you looked out your window, there was going to be less religion around than there was before," said Marty.
"The other idea was that whatever leftover religion you would find, it was going to be tolerant, concessive, mushy and so on. Instead, there has been an increase in religion and the prospering religions are all extremely intense."