This is thinking in public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about

front-line theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them.

I'm Albert Moller, your host and president

of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. There are several privileged

positions from which to observe religion in America, but few of them can match a 40-year tenure at the

University of Chicago Divinity School and few eyes have been so perceptive as those of Martin

Marty.

For many years the professor at the University of Chicago

Davendy School and a man who is perhaps better than anyone else in America

demonstrated the merger between academia and journalism.

I'm looking forward to this conversation

with one of America's most prolific historians. Martin E. Marti is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago.

He taught there in the

Divinity School for 35 years and there at the university. The Martin Marty

Center is a foundation for the study of public religion in America. He's also been a columnist for the Christian Century,

the editor of the newsletter known as Context, and a contributor to so many other works.

Beyond that, he's the author of over 50 books and is one of the most influential

scholars in American academia today. Professor Marty, welcome to

thinking in public. Thank you. You know I just have to tell you right at the very

beginning that you have been a model for me in terms of a scholar who writes and and yet even as I say that I just have to say that 50 books is absolutely beyond the estimation and these are real books these

aren't just compiled volumes when you began your professorial career did did you know you were going

to do this?

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