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Who is Martin Marty?
| Article
# : |
13428 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1987 |
3,024 Words |
| Author
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Richard Quebedeaux
Richard Quebedeaux is a senior consultant for the
International Religious Foundation in New York. He is the
author of The New Charismatics II (1983), By What Authority:
The Rise of Personality Cults in American Christianity (1982),
I Found It! The Story of Bill Bright and Campus Crusade
(1979), and The Worldly Evangelicals (1978). |
In academic circles and the mass media, Martin E. Marty is recognized as the principal interpreter of the American religious scene. It is rare, when a major religious news story breaks, not to find him quoted in the New York Times, Newsweek, Time, or U.S. News and World Report. In an increasingly pluralistic, secular society, the authority of theological systems in public life is virtually nonexistent, but religion, now mostly "privatized," is still important in contemporary America. We still need scholarly and understandable interpreters of the shapes and moods of American religion who can tell us where we have been and where we are likely to go. Foremost among these commentators is Martin E. Marty.
The context of Marty's rise
The death of Paul Tillich in the mid-1960s marked the end of an era in American theology. Tillich had tried to make God relevant to a modern world in which science and the rational methods of scientific investigation had rendered traditional theological metaphysics largely irrelevant. Tillich attempted to accommodate the God of classical Christian tradition to modern thought by defining God as "the ground of being," or "being itself." Bringing a transcendent God "down to earth" and making God "immanent" in human affairs and history had been attempted before but never in such a definitive way.
After Tillich, theology centered on human experience. Much contemporary theology arises from reflection on the reality of the human condition in its various historical and social contexts, rather than on God as first principle. Thus, in recent years we have seen a plethora of works dealing with ethnic theology, women's theology, ecological theology, and the like. These theologies stress God as a potential liberator from social and economic oppression much more than as the traditional creator or redeemer from sin. When not politicized, modern theology has been psychologized, focusing on human problems and personal well-being, rather than "God's will for the world."
Today the mass media are not interested in covering the latest developments in theology except when they seem to influence the political and social order. So, TV evangelists (as leaders of the so-called New Christian Right) are of concern to the media because they may contribute to the growth of political and economic conservatism in America and elsewhere in the world. "Liberation theology" - with its Marxist and other leftist connections in Latin America - can be an appropriate subject of concern for a front page article in the Wall Street
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