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In the forty-third episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Peter W. Marty, Editor and Publisher of The Christian Century. Marty opens by discussing the theological commitments that prove imperative when coming to terms with grace. When doing so, he compares the commitments Dietrich Bonhoeffer noted in The Cost of Discipleship with the commitments he noted in The Anatomy of Grace. He then transitions to discussing his call to the ministry, one with which he did not begin to grapple until his senior year at Colorado College. After attending Yale University Divinity School, that calling would eventually lead him to serve as the senior minister at Davenport, Iowa’s St. Paul Lutheran Church for 28 years. Marty discusses the vocational satisfaction he experienced while serving in the same roll that long while also thinking through the practices and habits that make such a tenure possible. Marty’s retirement, however, would prove short-lived as he would soon accept an appointment as editor and publisher of The Christian Century—a role from which he also derives great vocational satisfaction and still holds to this day. Marty then closes by discussing the virtues one needs to cultivate when leading such an effort in the age in which we presently live.
- Peter W. Marty’s The Anatomy of Grace (Augsburg Fortress, 2008)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Peter W. Marty, the editor and publisher of The Christian Century. Thank you for joining us.
Peter W. Marty: You’re welcome. It’s delightful to be with you, Todd. Thank you.
Todd Ream: In one of his more widely read books, The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer makes the distinction between what he calls cheap grace and costly grace. By 1937, the year the book was published, the National Socialist Party was securing its position in German politics, tightening its grip on competing voices, including closing the Confessional Church’s seminary at Finkenwalde, was about a year away from Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, and two years away from the invasion of Poland. Time unfortunately prohibits me from offering more than noting Bonhoeffer’s argument that grace demands transformation, and grace in relation to the person who accepts it may prove costly.
In 2008, Augsburg Press published your Anatomy of Grace, 73 years and a continental context separate your effort and Bonhoeffer’s effort. As I understand it, the reflections you offered in your book are based upon reflections you offered during your Grace Matters radio broadcasts, recorded over a five-year period in the early 2000s.
As you think back through your book and the messages you offered on those radio broadcasts, how do you define grace? In what ways do Christians encounter it? And in what ways do Christians participate in it?
Peter W. Marty: No, those are great questions, and I, I must qualify the add a qualification, I should say, to the Bonhoeffer-Marty distinction here, besides continent difference and 73 years, my little book was a little, it was a light touch compared to the costliness and the gravity of what Bonhoeffer did, of course. Uh, he was irritated by what he considered the inexhaustible treasury of the Church that was freely dispensing knowledge and a guarantee of God’s grace without any, as he would put it, price attached to it.
That Christ, when Christ died for our sins, to use the common Christian phrasing there was a cost to that. And he was seeing in certain, in the Reich Church, but among so many German Christians, was in fact an absence of any willingness to abandon attachments to life, any, commitment to understanding the cross of Christ as as requiring some suffering. So he saw the cross as without Jesus, he saw Jesus followers without deep commitment, and it was, if you’re in it for the, for the long term, if, if he returned to Europe from America precisely because he wanted to share in the sufferings of his people, he wasn’t seeing that among his own folks.
So the seriousness with which he took the concept of grace what’s that old adage? You know, a kid comes home from some grievous stealing of candy in the store, and he said something to the effect of, “You know, I love to commit sins and God loves to forgive them, so the world is just great.” Uh, Bonhoeffer just was frustrated that, that supposedly deep Christian people of the German populace were just simply capitulating and not understanding the, the following of Jesus. So I think what he saw was no
Todd Ream: distinction
Peter W. Marty: between those who pretended to be followers of Jesus Christ and those who had nothing to do with Christianity, and hence this magnificent work that of course, came out of it.
When I think about grace, and I think it’s important that churches remember this too, that grace isn’t just willy-nilly. It isn’t just dropped in our lap. Sure, it’s not deserved. It’s the favor, it’s the love of God that’s unconditional. But it’s not just dropped in our lap. There’s expectations come, that come with it. I always like to believe, for example, you know, forgiveness is, is prior to asking for forgiveness. Luther, Martin Luther used to say, “Sometimes it’s important not to confess your sins so that you realize that forgiveness comes irregardless of, of your, confession.” And so I think there’s a way in which we need to understand that grace has commitment attached to it. There’s an appreciation for it. And if my sins are forgiven, I ought to live differently because of that.
If I appreciate the grace of God, gratitude should just ooze from my heart. I, I shouldn’t have to be prompted to, to give thanks. So for me, grace is in fact what we need, but it’s not what we deserve, and it’s not even, I don’t believe, what we want. The whole concept of God’s justice, divine justice in the Scriptures, is based upon God’s sense of what we need, not just what we want. And a lot of contemporary forms of justice are, “Well, this is what I want. This is what we, you know, want.” And, and it should be based on need. So I love that undeserved quality of grace, that it’s never something we get, but it’s always something we receive.
And, you know, if, if, if you’re gracious to me, it’s just a gift. It’s nothing I did to earn it. When we, when, when many Christians come to the communion table, they hold their hands out as if to receive a gift. People sometimes say to me, “Should I take communion, Pastor?” I say, “You don’t take any gift. You have to decide if you’re going to take it. You receive a gift.” And I think that concept of reception is really important if we’re going to appreciate the magnificence and the stupendous character of God.
Todd Ream: Thank you. If we were to, on Bonhoeffer’s behalf, erase that continental divide and the 73 years, and he were to be here with us today in North America and in particular in the United States, rewrote his book, in what ways do you think the insights he sought to offer would be comparable or different from the ones that he offered at the time?
Peter W. Marty: Oh, yeah. That’s a marvelous uh, pondering because I don’t really know if he would’ve written it much differently since it was based, his writings were based on the commitment of his heart, his deep, deep sense of what it means to be Christian in the world. A lot of especially right-wing Christians in this day want to make him a heroic figure, you know, who liberated, who was out to liberate the people or the Church or he was simply trying to stay faithful to, he was quite conservative in his theology and his politics. He was simply trying to stay faithful to Jesus Christ. Um, and that’s the best way I can put it.
And I don’t really believe he would write much differently today. I think he’d be shocked at the capitulation of so many Christians to certain moral decapitation, this inability to, to discern moral right from moral wrong and placing politics in front of religion, which is a complete flip of two generations ago, when in fact we used to go to church to, you know, create a moral structure and a value system. And from that, we’d go to the ballot box, and we’d make determinations.
And, and nowadays politics is our ethnicity. It’s our moral identity. So when people come into the pew now, it’s as if “How can I warp and shape my religion around my politics and come up with something that I can justify?” That would’ve ticked off Bonhoeffer, seriously. And I, I don’t really believe many paragraphs of his, his book would be different today. I really don’t.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Absent revisiting the wisdom of the saints, to where and/or to whom do you turn for theological counsel today concerning grace?
Peter W. Marty: Wow, that’s a great question. I often, I could immediately turn to, you know, significant theologians and intellectuals, but honestly, I, I turn to the ordinary person, to the waiter last night at a restaurant who went out of her way to make sure that we were cared for and did so with so much grace and smile. And I thought, man, she’s had a long day. We came into this restaurant at 8:00 PM, and she doesn’t have to be this way. And our tip will be generous, but our, our order is not that big. And so she depends on people like us, and she’s gracious. And given all the beef that people give her sometimes, she wouldn’t have to be.
So I, I always want to learn from the next person I meet, how can I be more than I am? How can I be including more gracious than I am? You know, how can I, can I be a better receiver? If, if reception has to do with grace I often think, wow, we got to figure this idea out how to be better receivers. If, if I give, I’m in control. I can give you a compliment, Todd, and I’m in control. I can give you lunch tomorrow if we were in the same town, and I’m in control.
When you receive, I don’t care if it’s a compliment, a lunch any act of God, you’re not in control. And I can learn that from children, I can learn that from the next wage worker I meet much better, I think, than some theologian writing a big tome about grace.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it’s an important reminder for all of us in terms of where we see it and whether we’re prepared to receive it when we do encounter it.
Peter W. Marty: The trick is to receive as we are, not as we wish we were, right. I mean my son bought a used electric car recently, and turns out that the battery when he’d climb hills would just drop precipitously till he was just frightened. And he was reminded that he had an as-is sticker on that car. And grace comes to us as we are, not as we wish we were, right?
Todd Ream: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you
Peter W. Marty: And it has nothing to do with our goodness. Uh, the, the old Dennis the Menace cartoon is just a favorite. Here’s Dennis and his buddy Joey, they’re walking out of who is that? Mrs. Mrs. Wilson’s house. He’s got this, Joey, Joey says to Dennis, “Man, we, we must be really good.” Dennis turns to Joey and he says, “Joey, it’s not we who are good, it’s Mrs. Wilson who is good. The giver who is the good.” And we need to remember that as we navigate life.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to transition now to asking about your formation as a clergy person and also as a journalist. You earned an undergraduate degree from Colorado College and a graduate degree from Yale University Divinity School, and you’re an ordained Evangelical Lutheran Church in America minister.
At what point in time did you begin to discern that you were called to the ministry?
Peter W. Marty: Well, it’s interesting that in high school I seemed to take more interest in the old ladies at church than I did in my high school peers. I don’t know why, but I just loved the old people who made the commitment to be there every week and took an interest in us little kids, you know? Honestly, though, it wasn’t on my radar until the very end of college. I was a history major. I was determined to be the next David McCullough in the world, you know, teaching history in a profound way and writing big books.
And, my senior year, I had a, a history fellowship to Oxford University, and I was all by myself living there trying to write this thesis. And every night partly for company and partly for solace, I would go to evening prayer in one of the, in one of the chapels of New College or Magdalen College or Christ Church College or Lincoln College or Keble College, and, and every one of those had a boy choir. You know, these boys would go to a prep school where they sing a lot, and they were required to sing for services.
On these rainy Oxford, England nights, I’d take my umbrella. I’d sit in this gorgeous Gothic chapel with maybe 20 worshipers and about 18 to 20 boys, and it was a 25-minute service, and I mean, it was transcendent music. I’d leave there and I’d think, “Wow, this is unbelievable. I want to spend my life in the Church.” Not this church, the Church of England, but the Church.
Todd Ream: Yeah
Peter W. Marty: It was that musical transformation that led me into ministry.
I came home and I said, “I’m too young for, I’m, I’m 21 years old. I’ve never taken a religion course in college. I, I, I need to do something else.” So I headed to Africa for a year and a half. I was a builder over there in the middle of nowhere practicing my French and learning to get by without electricity, plumbing or anything else. And while there I filled out my application to seminary. I came home and entered Yale Divinity.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Well, that’s wonderful.
Mentors who assisted you with that discernment process and/or authors also who you found counsel?
Peter W. Marty: Yes. I would say the mentors in my life there’s so many of significance, but the family I grew up in was deeply religious, and our household was a household of ideas. dinner table conversations, as my wife is still mystified hearing stories about, were very intellectual. I mean, we talked about the world. And Father would read to us from all kinds of books. This is well into middle school, practically. You know, just wanting to bring articles to our attention, ideas to our attention. And the clergy I was able to be around as a child, they were very foundational pastors, you know? So mentors were aplenty.
Uh, it wasn’t long in seminary before I realized there’s some giants that are influencing me from the likes of Walter Brueggemann and Eugene Peterson, was not only a good friend of mine, but a very important and gifted writer. I’ve always looked for people who can write well. And so the whole panoply, I, I, I never got rid of David McCullough or John Meacham types or all, you know, these historians, but I quickly gravitated towards Barth and Bonhoeffer and Frankl.
And in contemporary terms, you know, Barbara Brown Taylor and Philip Yancey and Richard Lischer. You know, Richard he writes magnificently. I never took a class from him in preaching because I didn’t go to Duke Divinity, but this man can write, and I feel privileged to know many of these people and to be influenced by them.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You spent 39 years serving as a parish minister, 28 of those spent serving St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport, Iowa.
For individuals discerning whether they are called to the ministry today, what advice would you offer them?
Peter W. Marty: I would say that the number one quality or qualification for ministry is to know that you have the capacity to learn from other people, and that you’re willing to approach ministry with deeply servant-like characteristics. None of us have any edge on humility, I understand. But a lot of people enter ministry either because they’re broken and there’s just, they’ve had a personal religious awakening from their divorce or whatever else. Um, or they approach ministry because they think they’re the hottest thing since, since the word strategic planning was ever invented. They think of themselves as an innovator, as a leader.
And I want to say, you know, you want to be able to love God so deeply from your heart that other people can’t mistake that that’s why you love them so much. And so to bring that, those, those elements into your appraisal of ministry, is this, is this a profession for me, a vocation for me or not? I guess that’s what I look for, is people who not only have a depth of faith and a, and a character or disposition to their faith that’s powerful and awesomely strong, but they really want to serve, and leadership emerges from their servant qualities. They know who they are, in other words, you know?
Uh, there’s a passage in, in the John 13th 13th chapter of John’s gospel, and it’s the Last Supper, it’s the love commandment, it’s the washing of feet. And, and the verse that never gets read on Maundy Thursday evenings in churches, I think is, John says something like, knowing where, God placed all things in his hands, and Jesus, knowing where He had come from and where he was going put a towel around His waist, got down on His feet, and started washing feet. Got got down on his knees and started washing feet.
And that is to say Jesus knew who He was. He knew his origin, He knew His destiny. And He could do anything. He could wash dirty feet. And that’s what I want pastors approaching ministry to think of. How can I know so deeply who I am in, with God in Christ that I can do anything? Anything, including putting a towel around my waist and washing some homeless guy’s feet if it came to that.
Todd Ream: Yeah. As someone who served as a parish minister for 39 years, and with 28 years of those in the same church, what advice would you offer mid-career clergy in terms of longevity of service?
Peter W. Marty: That’s a good question because there’s a lot of debate how long should one serve a parish. In my particular place which was fairly large, we had a staff of 40 people. It was a complicated system. And I don’t think one should leave those casually as if to say, “I’ve got an every eight-year rotation. I need to keep, you know, moving parishes.” It’s another thing, I suppose, if you’re in the Methodist tradition and you’re required to move.
But I often think that people who are required to move or who move prematurely from one parish to another, they get to leave their problems behind. They don’t really have to wrestle with what they’ve created. can rejoice in a few beautiful things and transformations and successes, but the longer you stay at a place, the more you have to really embed yourself in both the mistakes and failures, as well as the gains and successes. So, I don’t really have a cardinal rule for how long one should stay, but I think the beauty of longevity is that, the number one beauty is the building of trusting relationships.
And when you have trust, I trusted my life to these people, and they trusted their life to mine. I mean, everything, every bedside conversation and, and burying grandparents and baptizing and marrying kids, and they trust you. And once you have that trust built up, if you have the least capacity to lead, you can do anything. I mean, you can move the world. You can move the needle on uh, on poverty in your nearby community. You can, you can connect everyday Christians, that was Bonhoeffer’s concern, you can connect them with realities that they can engage that will shape and change the world.
So, I love the idea if it’s, if someone is blessed to be in a long situation, you deepen trust, and therefore you deepen possibilities or expand them. But I’m also very admiring of those who have served five, six, seven churches very effectively, and they’re not forgotten in any one of those churches.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. You also obviously serve as a journalist, leading The Christian Century since 2016. What experiences contributed to that calling?
Peter W. Marty: Well, I’d say two things. One is I care a lot about writing and good writing. And I’ve always thought this was planted in me by different mentors, but pastors need to communicate through a kind of writing style that will open up horizons for the people in their community.
And when I was early in ministry, I would get all these newsletters, that’s what they were called, from different churches. And I was, I was stunned by the blather that constituted the pastoral columns. “We are in the season of Lent. The color of Lent is purple. In this 40-day season, modeled after the 40-day wilderness temptations of Jesus, we have the opportunity to fast, pray.” And, and I think, oh, come on. Can’t you say anything more creative about your life or theirs in which you hope to experience mutually in the next 40 days? And thus, it triggered my attempt to try to write creatively and expansively for people who need to be challenged by their church, excited by their faith given reason to sustain their Christian community. So that’s one thing.
Uh, the writing and the effort and the task and the commitment to trying to become a better, better writer. I don’t think we ever achieve that. Uh, someone once asked Maya Angelou in an interview, “What do you hope to be in the last 20 years of your life?” “Well, I hope to become, a better writer,” she said, “to become a better human. I hope to become a Christian.” Well, she was all of those things, but she wanted to become better.
Uh, the other thing I would say is it happened somewhat serendipitously in my case, this, this transition to journalism, I served on the board of The Christian Century magazine, which was very formative, a journal in my shaping as a pastor. I just, I can’t say enough about how much it’s had to do with constituting my mind and my heart. And it’s from that board that a national search went, and they identified me to be editor-publisher, and then I stepped up my game in terms of commitment to all things, reading and writing with respect to journalism.
Todd Ream: As you stepped up your game, as you just mentioned it were there individuals to whom you looked who embraced a comparable calling or who offered their insights in writing that also nurtured it?
Peter W. Marty: Yeah. Well, there’s so many people, again, who influenced me, and I, I would say it’s not like I went and took a course on editing. I didn’t do that, actually. Um, but I have had plenty of good editors in my life of my work beginning with a history prof in, in college—she had two rubber stamps in her top desk drawer. And I went to a place where we had an essay due every other day. It was a block system, one course at a time, three and a half weeks. And so we had a, a, a, a history essay due every other day. We had to read a book a day. It was crazy.
But she had two rubber stamps. One said, “Who cares?” And the other said, “So what?” And she’d just go down the margins of our paper, and you, you have this fluff paragraph. Back then there wasn’t word count, so you’d go by pages, and a whole paragraph would be fluff. And she’s, “Who cares?” And the next paragraph, you, you try to state something that you think is, you know, marginally intelligent, and it, “So what?” You know. I had mentors like that throughout my life some really gifted people who critically worked on your writing style, and I give thanks for that constantly.
Todd Ream: Yeah. In what ways does your commitment and calling to the ministry then also intersect with your calling to journalism? And where do they complement each other? Maybe where do they also compete with each other?
Peter W. Marty: I think most especially they compare rather than compete. I think as I’m trying to, as I’m trying to allude to, I think the ways we express ourselves has to do with our communication. And, and that’s not just speaking. Um, there’s a pulpit tone that anybody can fake, and I hate it. There’s a stained glass voice that a lot of pastors accommodate, and I can’t stand it.
Um, but in writing too I, I just think we have to bring to the pulpit something other than a 15-minute exposition of Luke 13:1-12, you know. People are looking for where the rubber hits the road, and where’s the traction in my life from this particular sermon? They don’t go home in the car and say, “Oh man, I now know Luke 13. I’m so happy. I couldn’t wait to learn about Luke 13, and now I’ve got it down pat because of that sermon.” No. They’re looking for insight on life and relationship and commitment and decision-making. And so not only in the oral piece of ministry, but in the written piece, that has to happen.
The pastors that are least interesting or least motivating, at least in my experience, are those who don’t read anything, who don’t read widely. And my goodness, this is a great big world, and as Howard Thurman says in one of his works “If our, if, if our minds are only as, is contained the, the smallness of what they are, we are a people most of all to be pitied.” We, we, we simply need more than we can grasp ourselves, and journalism feeds that.
In my heyday of, of, of ministry, I’d subscribe to, I remember I counted one time it was 39 different journals.
Todd Ream: Oh, wow.
Peter W. Marty: And I would take these things and I would tear out and I’d file and I’d, I’d think, Wow, I couldn’t have gotten this anywhere, not from my wife, for sure, not from my kids, not from a biblical commentary, but it’s from journalism. So see great interplay between these two disciplines, if we want to call them that, ministry and journalism. I get excited. Uh, I mean, I’m especially excited by religious journalism, but journalism writ large is really important to the shaping of the mind.
Todd Ream: Yeah. The Christian Century has played a longstanding role in this intersection between journalism and ministry in our culture. It was founded in 1884 as The Christian Oracle. And then with the dawn of the new century, 16 years later, it changed its name to The Christian Century, a name that it still bears today. When you look back over the course of the 1900s, in what ways was that reference to the Christian century apt? And what hopes or opportunities existed that have sustained that vision?
Peter W. Marty: Well, the name of The Christian Century did indeed arrive with the year 1900. And I have to say, part of it’s embarrassing to this day. You know, I wish it were different and I’ll say why. But it is what it is, and it has a certain cachet in the field, and it’s well-known, and to change it would just probably create another couple generations of controversy. Why did they change their name? Uh, but it comes from this incredible optimism at the turn of the 20th century. I mean, just think of the industrial era. This was pre-World War I. This was the sense that America was going to be that exceptional nation in this world that would shape all things for the Christian good, among other things. This was going to be the Christianizing of not just America, but of the world.
So I say embarrassing because that triumphalistic tone, it doesn’t have anything to do with who we became in the, not only the decades after that, but the century after that. And so we quickly became the ecumenical journal that Time magazine and all the legacy media places would quote because of our dependable position. It was obviously anchored in the mainline churches, those seven sister churches that are often considered mainline Protestantism. But it kept branching out ecumenically, and nobody else was doing that through much of the mid-20th century.
Um, there’s a couple of dark spots in our history. I think our editor publisher in the 40s had an anti-Catholic tone. That’s totally been erased. Uh, you can read that in some of the editorials. But I think The Christian Century has been an absolutely bright light through suffrage and labor union and trying to make sense of war. And we were the first uh, magazine in America of note to publish King’s Birmingham letter. Uh, the letter from Birmingham Jail, I still have in my office drawer edited manuscript that our editor he died five, six years ago now, he edited King’s writing. And that became sort of the document that quickly over the summer of ’63 then fanned out and became picked up by Harper’s and Atlantic and everybody.
Um, King was once a contributing editor to The Christian Century. And so thus began a legacy of, of commitment to justice and progressive issues. And I think personally, I think we were slow on civil rights, but King actually got us moving and showed the impatience that he showed with white clergy in The Letter from Birmingham Jail. And to this day now, we’ve got we try to really be a voice for all things faith, politics, culture, and their intersection.
Todd Ream: Yeah. As you look back over The Christian Century’s 142-year history, what other moments besides, say, publishing the Letter From the Birmingham Jail proved disproportionately formative in terms of the magazine’s current identity as thoughtful, independent, and progressive?
Peter W. Marty: You know, that’s a little hard to answer because we were a weekly for much of the 20th century, then we became a, a, of scattershot 36 issues a year. I don’t know why we took off a lot of issues in the summertime. Then we became a bi-weekly, and today we’re a monthly journal. It’s a big, thick, 100-plus page journal that’s like a coffee table sort of piece that you, I love it because you can, it’s now color copy. You can carry it with you on an airplane and come back to it when you don’t finish it.
And it used to arrive more like a, a, a sort of oversized newsletter. Because of that, that, that change of frequency in publication, it’s really hard to chart significant one-time moments, you know, that change things. We are doing in the next year or two, we’re going to do, look back historically at some of the, some of the people that were, you know, influential to our history.
I have in my files, for example, 1962, we wrote to senators, we wrote to, you know, everybody from John Updike to secretaries of state “What, what’s your favorite books? What have formed you religiously?” And we have all their letters and signatures, and they were all reading The Christian Century or open to it. Um, but we don’t, I don’t know if there’s a deeply decisive moment, whether it’s the Israel War of ’67 and/or contemporary Palestinian-Israel issues, or whether it’s liberation theology. I don’t know if there’s anything that I would note that, it’s been an evolution, that is to say, of trying to be a voice of reason and common sense for kinds of things religious. We don’t do a lot of interreligious uh, Muslim and Jewish and so forth, but we certainly, they do write for us, and we’re not afraid of those issues.
And I, I would also add, if it’s helpful, Todd, that we try to anchor ourselves in the Church. This is an important commitment. You’ll still find, you’ll still find columns in every issue about the lectionary, for example. We want a commitment to those in ministry, of whatever kind of ministry they’re in, chaplaincy or whatever, to be helpful, and we want to be a voice for their own mind and heart.
So, I couldn’t point to specific milestones that have shifted our focus, but I will say, in this day and age, we are much more pluralistic than we ever were. Our writers are of all backgrounds and ethnicities and sometimes languages. And I think editors of the ’50s and ’60s would be stunned at the panoply of people who now write for The Century, which is not just white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males. Um, it’s very, very diverse.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. As the magazine then approaches its 150th anniversary, what opportunities, if any, do you and your colleagues identify as most pronounced? And then what challenges as you look toward its future, would you also identify?
Peter W. Marty: Well, I hope in some respects we continue to establish ourselves as some kind of conscience for thoughtful religion. And I say this because I always want to think of our magazine as somehow for thinking Christians, and I don’t mean that pejoratively. I just mean people who want to use the gifts of the mind and the intellect creatively to shape a better world. And we’re not just a social justice activistic piece of journalism. Uh, there’s plenty of places to get that. We’re not simply a 365-day a year devotional that has biblical passages at the bottom of each article. We’re not Sunday school curriculum. We want to be a voice for culture and society, that frames that, that continues to frame religion as having a standing place in the public square.
And to do that is hard. It, it really is, because I always have to fight the temptation, and I’m sure editors do too, not to just let this kind of culture of contempt shape your perspectives. Don’t, don’t let just simple outrage at an injustice or the latest news feed shape all of your journalism. You can’t have that. You know, we need, we need a steadiness, we need a calmness, we need a, a rootedness that will allow us to be uh, to be in it for the long haul, and really that dependable resource that people across the political spectrum, if they have any willingness to be open-minded, that they will turn to The Christian Century for that.
Todd Ream: For individuals who are interested in using their gifts and talents to potentially contribute to The Christian Century, what would you want them to know most from an editor and publisher’s perspective?
Peter W. Marty: I think the most important thing I, I say to people who are interested in contributing is become familiar with the magazine. So christiancentury.org, you can read all about it. The archives are extensive. At some point, I don’t know where the paywall is, but you have to subscribe. But you can read a lot. You can see a lot on the home site, homepage, I, I should say. Uh, so that’s the first thing, to get familiar with because, I mean, I hear from people in India and Africa who throw out ideas, and they have no idea who they’re writing to. They just saw the word Christian Century, and so they submit.
But then I would say there is in every issue and there is on the website a, a link you can submit a prospectus, where you can submit a proposal or a pitch. You can submit a sample of writing. “This is what I’d like to write about. I’d like to write about medicine children and the role of faith in medicine and children.” A, a physician recently tossed out that idea. Um, that’s great, but for the editors to assess a place for that in the magazine they need to get a clear pitch, and they need ideally a sample of writing. And that just helps.
Honestly, we have many submissions, many requests, but we’re always open. And uh, people can come from all over the spectrum religiously or even not sometimes, and we’re open to that. We, as an independent journal, we have no allegiance to any church body or, institution. We are very free in that respect
Todd Ream: Yeah. Thank you. Before we close then and our time is now unfortunately beginning to become short, I want to ask you to elaborate a little bit more on your calling to journalism as it’s taken hold during these years. What practices nurture it, and what opportunities, if any, advance it? And then, of course, also in the age in which we live, what forces might threaten it?
Peter W. Marty: Well, I think good journalism relies on good journalists, and that means a certain disposition is important, or dispositions, plural. If you’re a physician, the way you listen to a patient is your disposition. That’s important. But in addition to that, there’s habits. Uh, when I led a church staff, I, I need to be consistent in my encouragement or consistent in my decision-making or collaborative, and those habits that we always have to practice. So I’m of the mind that good journalists are like Maya Angelou said, “I’m trying to become a better writer.” We’re constantly practicing.
It’s the same thing with your faith and mine. I go to, I attend Christian communion on Sundays, I belong to a couple of places right now. My wife and I sometimes go to two churches on a Sunday. Uh, I do that because I’m practicing my faith. I don’t have it figured out, and I don’t believe one can figure it out. In fact, I would encourage those who, who, who are in the company of someone who has it all figured out to kind of keep a little distance there. Uh, it’s worrisome.
So yeah, I think I always ask myself, “Peter, what sort of person do you want to become? What kind of moral structure do you want to be formed by or form within you? And what about a goodness and winsomeness to your way of practicing the faith? And how does integrity factor in so that you don’t just blow with the wind, and you don’t just express outrage, and you don’t use social media just to, just to voice your inner restlessness?” You know? So I do think character is huge especially in this day and age of journalism and AI and fake this and that, and oh my gosh.
We have to figure out ways to tell the truth powerfully. And obviously the lying is out of proportion in this particular day and age that we live in, but the truth is, is always a pursuit. You know, we’re never there. But I, I want journalism to be, my journalism to be authentic, that is to say, my definition of authentic, it’s, it’s to be who God made me to be from the inside out. Whereas to be inauthentic is to be whom others want me to be, you know, from the outside in.
And I, I just want to keep pursuing, this is why Howard Thurman means so much to me when he talks about the genuine within yourself. Or Brevard Childs, my one-time Old Testament prof Brevard Childs at, at Yale Divinity. said, “You know, if you people want to become a deeper preacher, then you need to become a deeper person.” And I would say that of pastors and journalists, too. You got to become a deeper person. And that requires a kind of nobody’s objective, but it requires a kind of humility or what, what King, Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve called a dangerous unselfishness. And we need more of that in journalism.
Uh, when you have, you know, talk radio that’s dominated for the last 20, 30 years, and now everybody’s got their own voice and they believe they’re their own media center because they have Substack or they have a Facebook page or, so yeah, I think the, the, the character of who we are living not scattershot lives, not fragmented lives, but centered lives. And for me, it happens to be centered in my faith in God and Christ. Uh, I think that, I think that helps journalists become better at their trade.
Todd Ream: Yeah. In terms of that character, are there any particular intellectual or moral virtues that you believe journalists need to cultivate in order to flourish? And then, you know, perhaps what theological virtues might they need to pray to receive?
Peter W. Marty: Well, I do think coming back to what I said earlier, I do think expansive reading is important for journalists, and it’s through that, I’ve often felt to be a quality human being, you need to experience every day the widest possible range of emotions. I mean, from anger to laughter, to tears, to whatever, impatience. Um, journalism requires all that, but then you have to constrain that. You have to pull that in so that you have a voice that’s worth listening to.
This is why I always hold off on writing about an urgent issue at least 24 hours, if not 24 days because I, I want to, I want to write with a kind of thoughtful restraint, excitement, but restraint. Um, and I think we’re in the business of, you talk about the, the, the moral virtues. I think we’re in the business of, of helping people know particular kinds of language. Um, in religious journalism, I, I think of this sometimes.
Uh, you’ll recall the Trump inaugural prayer service at the National Cathedral and where he was challenged to because there’s so many scared people in ethnic and immigrant and refugee communities or LGBTQ communities, and he was asked by the presiding bishop there of the Washington Diocese to show mercy and, and to try to please, please, Mr. President, show compassion. Uh, Trump lashed out. His administration lashed out, told this bishop she’s not worthy of the office, she’s nasty, et cetera, et cetera.
I really think what it comes down to, though, is an unfamiliarity with religious language. What does mercy really mean? I don’t think Donald Trump’s spent any time studying that. I don’t think he knows that, and I think that’s true of a lot of readers too. We need to use a kind of language in the moral vocabulary and, and find creative ways to expound upon it so that people can develop deeper lives.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In terms of those deeper lives then, for our last question for our conversation today, in what ways do you believe journalists can be of greater service to the Church? And in what ways do you believe the Church can be of greater service to journalists moving forward?
Peter W. Marty: I think journalists can be of service to the Church in making sure they don’t just simply write stories of discouragement and decline and demoralization and diminishment. Uh, yes, there are churches closing weekly. Yes, there are seminaries that are shrinking, downsizing, but there are so many stories of vibrancy and vitality, and journalists need to pick up on that. I mean, this is not just a world of despair. We need to remind ourselves of that.
And as for churches I think they need to I, I think they ought to rather try to build communities that are multi-textured. And it’s the easiest thing in the world to build a homogeneous church, I mean, where homogeneity is prized, and I don’t like that. Not every congregation can be purple, but it requires a kind of artistry of ministry make sure that everybody has, is prized for their love, their dignity, their, their, their grace.
Uh, we, we opened this whole conversation with grace and, you know, I don’t think God loved Jacob because he was a cheat, and I don’t think God loved David because he was an adulterer. I think he loved Jacob because he was Jacob and David because he was David. And the Church needs to practice that a little better.
The Church, especially liberal Protestantism, can often get on its bandwagon of this or that social justice issue and not realize what they’re missing in terms of a beautiful human community of all types. So I think the Church paying attention to thoughtful journalism is a wise move.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Thank you very much. Our guest has been Peter W. Marty, editor and publisher of The Christian Century. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Peter W. Marty: You’re most welcome. Thank you for this time.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
