Want to know what books Martin Marty recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Martin Marty's favorite book recommendations of all time.
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Martin MartyI think the subtitle of this book gives you a clue as to why I included it. Fenn believed that humans and society are always dreaming of what he calls the perfect act. That would mean the ‘total thing’, where humans will have all the answers. Fenn thought that this impulse usually showed up in worship when people are addressing or bowing or somehow interacting with someone they cannot see. This... (Source)
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Originally published in 1938, this book interprets modern Western history as a single 900-year period, initiated by total revolution, and punctuated thereafter by a series of total revolutions which broke out successively in the different European nations. more Originally published in 1938, this book interprets modern Western history as a single 900-year period, initiated by total revolution, and punctuated thereafter by a series of total revolutions which broke out successively in the different European nations. less Martin MartyMany people might think of this as a strange choice, but it strongly influenced my interpretation of Bonhoeffer. (Source)
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On November 16, 2017, Pope Francis tweeted, "Poverty is not an accident. It has causes that must be recognized and removed for the good of so many of our brothers and sisters." With this statement and others like it, the first Latin American pope was associated, in the minds of many, with a stream of theology that swept the Western hemisphere in the 1960s and 70s, the movement known as liberation theology.
Born of chaotic cultural crises in Latin America and the United States, liberation theology was a trans-American intellectual movement that sought to speak for those parts of... more On November 16, 2017, Pope Francis tweeted, "Poverty is not an accident. It has causes that must be recognized and removed for the good of so many of our brothers and sisters." With this statement and others like it, the first Latin American pope was associated, in the minds of many, with a stream of theology that swept the Western hemisphere in the 1960s and 70s, the movement known as liberation theology.
Born of chaotic cultural crises in Latin America and the United States, liberation theology was a trans-American intellectual movement that sought to speak for those parts of society marginalized by modern politics and religion by virtue of race, class, or sex. Led by such revolutionaries as the Peruvian Catholic priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, the African American theologian James Cone, or the feminists Mary Daly and Rosemary Radford Ruether, the liberation theology movement sought to bridge the gulf between the religious values of justice and equality and political pragmatism. It combined theology with strands of radical politics, social theory, and the history and experience of subordinated groups to challenge the ideas that underwrite the hierarchical structures of an unjust society.
Praised by some as a radical return to early Christian ethics and decried by others as a Marxist takeover, liberation theology has a wide-raging, cross-sectional history that has previously gone undocumented. In The World Come of Age, Lilian Calles Barger offers for the first time a systematic retelling of the history of liberation theology, demonstrating how a group of theologians set the stage for a torrent of new religious activism that challenged the religious and political status quo. less Martin MartyReaders today may be surprised to find out that a substantial interpretation of Bonhoeffer came from the Marxist author Mueller, in a book never translated but condensed in Smith’s book. Its author intended to shock people who knew Bonhoeffer as a Lutheran Christian theologian and participant in church life. Mueller helped make Bonhoeffer, for a time, the favoured theologian in Communist East... (Source)
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In this book Professor Markus's main concern is with those aspects of Augustine's thought which help to answer questions about the purpose of human society, and particularly with his reflections on history, society and the Church. He relates Augustine's ideas to their contemporary context and to older traditions, and shows which aspects of his thought he absorbed from his intellectual environment. Augustine appears from this study as a thinker who rejected the 'sacralization' of the established order of society, and the implications of this for a theology of history are explored in the last... more In this book Professor Markus's main concern is with those aspects of Augustine's thought which help to answer questions about the purpose of human society, and particularly with his reflections on history, society and the Church. He relates Augustine's ideas to their contemporary context and to older traditions, and shows which aspects of his thought he absorbed from his intellectual environment. Augustine appears from this study as a thinker who rejected the 'sacralization' of the established order of society, and the implications of this for a theology of history are explored in the last chapter. less Martin MartyAlmost everyone who confronts this slim 47-year-old book testifies that it brought a fresh understanding of the monumental ancient Christian thinker, St Augustine. Why, you may ask, should he show up when we are trying to make sense of the world around us, and, in the present case, of Bonhoeffer’s letters? Well, what Augustine argued was quite radical. We think of him as one of the four or five... (Source)
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Almost everyone would agree that the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly over the years. This book takes up the question of what these changes mean—of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others. more Almost everyone would agree that the place of religion in our societies has changed profoundly over the years. This book takes up the question of what these changes mean—of what, precisely, happens when a society in which it is virtually impossible not to believe in God becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others. less Martin MartyCharles Taylor, a Canadian Catholic philosopher, is among the most notable thinkers on these themes in North America these days. This is a massive, almost 800-page book that really attracted attention and debate. He argues that most can’t really make sense of the modern world or life today without some version or other of religion. He defines religion very broadly. He is not pointing to... (Source)
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