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Martin E. Marty has recognized the Louisville Cathedral Heritage Foundation's Festival of Faiths, in a November 25, 2002 article in Sightings. Sightings is a biweekly, electronic editorial published by the Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Subscriptions to Sightings are available at no cost. To subscribe, please send your email address to e-alvarez@uchicago.edu.

Interfaith Louisville

an article in Sightings 11/25/02
by Martin E. Marty

Sighting interfaith groups and movements nationally serves one kind of purpose. But just as "all politics is local" (and the local is the national/global), interfaith endeavors witnessed up close, in particular locales, are especially revealing.

While there are good reasons to support endeavors by people to cooperate and converse across the boundaries of religious communities, some of us develop a low threshold of boredom for those that confine themselves to joint worship, thinned-out theologizing, smiles, and similar expressions of good will. I'm in the yawning camp, so let me talk about an exception.

Louisville's Cathedral Heritage Foundation, with its annual "Festival of Faiths," stands out in the recall of my travels and probes. Since I've been a sometime consultant, speaker, awardee, and guest there, it's important to say "I have an interest." But this interest stems from my admiration of Louisville's model.

Most compelling to me is the way that the Cathedral Heritage people have created a paradigm in which the particular faiths do not lose their integrity while they learn from each other. Here's the deal: the Foundation has helped restore the Cathedral of the Assumption there, the oldest cathedral-in-continuous-use "west of the mountains," as East Coast folk would say. It was in danger of falling to the ground, as its parishioners dispersed. Now it is spectacularly restored, and a vital congregation worships there. When it is "Catholic space," it is very "Catholic space."

At the same time, the Foundation models an understanding of "public space." Weekly something or other goes on there for the public, at no cost. As few programs do, the Festival of Faiths involves the city's elites -- but also schoolchildren and a variety of publics. I've seen Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, and others not at all uneasy at this "Cathedral of the Assumption" -- doesn't exactly roll off the Protestant tongue -- being regarded hospitably, as peers, and made to feel at home.

Another feature: instead of celebrating celebration and being interfaithy about interfaith, the Heritage folks concentrate on a theme each year. This year it was how each faith regards "sacred texts." It has also dealt with multi-faith approaches to "the family" and similar substantive topics. It's no surprise then that one actually learns from these encounters.

If other cities match Louisville for enterprise, support, and achievement, I hope they are not made envious by my having selected this one. It would be good to have connections made among such city inventions, and even a bit of competition. I don't imagine Louisvilleans have had time to write a "here's how to do it" manual, but I'm sure www.cathedral-heritage.org is a good place to inquire and make contact. They can probably send stuff.

Martin E. Marty

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Sightings is a biweekly, electronic editorial published by the Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Sightings is available at no cost. To subscribe, please send your email address to e-alvarez@uchicago.edu.

Sightings Submissions policy
Sightings welcomes submissions of 500 to 750 words in length that seek to illuminate and interpret the forces of faith in a pluralist society.  Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays.  The editor also encourages new approaches to issues related to religion and public life.

Sightings Attribution
Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Sightings, and the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Sightings Contact information
Please send all inquiries, comments, and submissions to Elizabeth Hayes Alvarez, managing editor of Sightings, at sightings-admin@listhost.uchicago.edu.  Subscribe, unsubscribe, or manage your subscription at the Sightings subscription page.

Martin E. Marty, Ph.D. (University of Chicago) is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity in the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Committee on the History of Culture.

Martin Marty has taught in the Divinity School, the History Department, and the Committee on the History of Culture since 1963. He specializes in late eighteenth- and twentieth-century American religion and will, on occasion, hold seminars on subjects related to this specialty. His scholarly work is centered in a multi-volume work entitled Modern American Religion, three volumes of which have appeared: The Irony of It All; The Noise of Conflict; and Under God, Indivisible. An ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, he has put considerable effort into the Master of Divinity program at the Divinity School and in teaching for public ministry.

Current Activities:

Marty is the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he taught for 35 years and where the Martin Marty Center has since been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. He writes the “M.E.M.O” column for the biweekly Christian Century, on whose staff he has served since 1956. He is also the editor of the fortnightly Context, since 1969, and authors the Marty Center’s weekly e-mail column, Sightings.

Books:

The author of over fifty books, Marty has written the three-volume Modern American Religion (University of Chicago Press). Other books are The One and the Many: America’s Search for the Common Good; Education, Religion and the Common Good and Politics, Religion and the Common Good, and with photographer Micah Marty, Places Along the Way; Our Hope for Years to Come; The Promise of Winter; and When True Simplicity Is Gained. His Righteous Empire won the National Book Award.

Presidencies and directorships:

Marty is past president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association. He has served on two U.S. Presidential Commissions and was director of both the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago. He has served St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, since 1988 as Regent, Board Chair, Interim President in late 2000, and is now Senior Regent. He was the founding President of the Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith, and Ethics and is now the George B. Caldwell Senior Scholar in Residence there.

Honors:

Marty’s honors include the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, the Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the University of Chicago Alumni 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, an elected fellow of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, and—a native of that state—is an admiral in the Nebraska Navy. Marty has received sixty-seven honorary doctorates.

Vita:

Born in West Point, Nebraska on February 5, 1928, Marty was ordained into the ministry in 1952 and served for a decade as a Lutheran parish pastor before joining the University of Chicago faculty in 1963. “Marty” and his wife Harriet, a musician, live in Riverside, Illinois, and enjoy an extended family of seven children, including two who joined the family as foster children, nine grandchildren, and one great grandchild.

For further background on Marty, see Who’s Who in America, Contemporary Authors, and similar guides.

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