Renowned Biblical historian to speak at Opening Convocation
August 21 , 2006
Dr. Martin E. Marty, one of the nation’s leading teachers of religion, will deliver the keynote address at LaGrange College’s Opening Convocation, which will be held Wednesday, Sept. 6, at Callaway Auditorium at 7 p.m.
Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago where he taught chiefly in the divinity school for 35 years and where the Martin Marty Center has since been founded to promote public religion endeavors.
Described as one of the most respected historians of religion in the United States, Marty has authored more than 50 books and 5,000 articles. Among his books are the three-volume “Modern American Religion” and “Righteous Empire,” for which he won the National Book Award.
Marty is an ordained Lutheran minister who served in parishes in the west and northwest suburbs of Chicago from 1952 until 1963, when he joined the University of Chicago faculty.
A past president and director of several associations and projects, Marty has served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History and the American Catholic Historical Association. He also has worked on two U.S. Presidential Commissions and was director of the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago.
In addition to his years of association with the University of Chicago, Marty has served St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., in various capacities since 1988. He has worked for the college as a regent, board chair, interim president in 2000, and now, as a senior regent.
Marty is the recipient of numerous honors, including the National Humanities Medal, the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the University of Chicago Medal, the Distinguished Service Medal of the Association of Theological Schools and the Order of Lincoln Medallion, Illinois’ top honor.
He is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society and of the Society of American Historians. Additionally, he is an elected fellow of the American Philosophical Society and is the Mohandas M.K. Gandhi Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. Over the years, he has received 75 honorary doctorates.
Born in West Point, Neb., in 1928, Marty lives with wife Harriet in the same house to which the Martys moved in 1963, in the historic Chicago suburb of Riverside. They enjoy an extended family of seven children, including two who joined the family as foster children, nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
An annual tradition at LaGrange College, Opening Convocation is a ceremony that celebrates the college as a community of students and faculty, and provides a time of commitment to joint teaching and learning for the year ahead.
