Martin Emil Marty, a notable former Riverside resident, religious historian and retired University of Chicago Divinity School professor, died in his Minneapolis care community on Feb. 25, 2025. He was 97. The family noted the cause of death as “old age,” though his trademark sparkle-in-the-eye and generosity of spirit remained with him to the end.
In an email to the Landmark, Joel Marty, one of the Marty’s six children – four sons and two “lifetime foster” children – wrote that the family’s deep connection to Riverside was life-changing for each of them.
“I feel it is important [to note the Riverside connection] because of how much Marty (and all the Marty’s) truly loved Riverside. Our family grew up in Riverside and its schools. For 43 years, 6 months and 0 days, we lived in what was originally known as the Lowell Leonard House (built in 1894) at 239 Scottswood. The Leonards only lived there for 40 years, so maybe henceforth it will be known as the Marty House. Marty lived there from 1963 until 2007 and maintained an office above what is now First American Bank.”
Joel Marty was a 1973 graduate of Riverside Brookfield High School.
In 1997, Ken Trainor of the Landmark staff wrote a long profile of Marty, he explained how the family wound up in Riverside.
During his doctoral work at the University of Chicago, he preached once a month at Ascension Lutheran Church, where he got to know the people and found Riverside to be “a wonderful town.” When the kids got to be school age, the Martys wanted to move from Hyde Park to the western suburbs, and Riverside made sense. “I have three bases,” Marty says, “the Loop for the editing, O’Hare for the travel, and the university for the teaching.” Connect the dots and Riverside fits right inside.
In a 2014 column in the Landmark, JoAnne Kosey noted that Marty was returning to Riverside that January for a Taize Prayer service at St. Mary Parish. He was to offer a personal reflection after the service.
Kosey wrote, “Those who remember Dr. Marty from his time in Riverside might recall him walking around town, a man with a warm smile, greeting those he encountered. Music was also a part of the Marty household with his wife, Harriet, being a musician.”
In the 1997 Landmark profile Trainor wrote:
Marty likes the village’s “beauty and tradition. I’m a fan of Frederick Olmsted who designed the town.” Riverside, he said, attracts a lot of writers and scholars because “they like to be in a place where there’s heritage.”
Their home was the only one they looked at. “It’s a great house to grow up in,” he observed, and the family’s experience with the public school system was extremely positive. In fact, “virtually every teacher the boys had, had dinner here.”
When they sit on their wraparound porch on a summer night with friends, listening to the cicadas, he hears comments like, “We could be in Mason City, Iowa.” Marty said Riverside is an ideal mix. “I love the urban world, and I love roots and soil.” And while he wishes there were more of a racial mix here, there is plenty of ethnic diversity — especially residents of Czech and Slovak descent, who migrated from Cicero and Berwyn to diversify what was “a WASP stronghold.”
“I love middle Europe,” he said. “If I couldn’t live here, I’d live in Prague or Budapest. I like that culture — and the restaurants that go with it.”
Riverside is also denominationally diverse, and he finds a strong ecumenical spirit active here, he said.
“Marty,” as he was known to the world, was born in West Point, Nebraska on Feb. 5, 1928, the son of Emil A. and Anna L. (Wuerdemann) Marty. Although he left Nebraska for good by the age of 13 to begin studies in Milwaukee at Concordia Lutheran Prep School, A graduate of Concordia Lutheran Seminary, St. Louis (BD 1952) and the University of Chicago (MA 1954, PhD 1956), Marty served as a Lutheran pastor in the Chicago suburbs for 10 years, most notably at Grace Lutheran in River Forest and Lutheran Church of the Holy Spirit, a congregation he founded in Elk Grove Village. His pastoral heart and enthusiasm for ministry never disappeared, though in 1963 he transitioned out of the congregational setting to accept an invitation to teach church history and modern Christianity in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. It was there that he anchored his teaching and intellectual life for the next 35 years and where, upon his retirement in 1998, the Martin Marty Center was founded, an institution committed to the understanding of public religion.
For five decades Marty traveled extensively, delivering thousands of lectures, sermons, and commencement addresses. He authored more than 60 books, hundreds of scholarly articles, and countless essays, columns, and forewords for other books. Considered by many to be the most influential interpreter of American religion during the second half of the 20th century, Marty may best be known for the study of public theology, a phrase he coined to describe the critical engagement of religious and cultural issues that can foster the common good. His rich interest in pluralism allowed him to be conversant in different genres and among diverse audiences. For 50 years he served as an editor at The Christian Century, and for 41 years he authored the biweekly newsletter Context.
Marty married Elsa L. Schumacher in 1952, and together they raised four sons and two permanent foster children, while also periodically taking in additional foster sons. Following Elsa’s untimely death from cancer in 1981, Marty reconnected with the widow of a seminary classmate, Harriet J. Meyer, and they married in 1982. Over the past 43 years, Marty and Harriet have traveled the world, entertained guests enthusiastically and, as in Marty’s first marriage, enjoyed a life of devoted love. Every decade of life in the Marty household has been shaped and influenced by Marty’s own deep humility, personal faith, and abiding gratitude for life. He will be remembered as a disarmingly kind person who instinctively reached out to relate to and enjoy every person he had the opportunity to encounter.
Martin E. Marty is survived by his wife, Harriet; his sons, Joel (Susie), John (Connie), Peter (Susan), and Micah; his lifetime foster daughter, Fran Garcia Carlson, and lifetime foster son, Jeff Garcia; his stepdaughter Ursula Meyer (Jamie Newcomb); nine grandchildren; 18 great-grandchildren; and numerous nieces, nephews, friends, and admirers. In addition to his parents and wife Elsa, he was preceded in death by his sister, Mildred Burger, and brother, Myron Marty.