Martin Marty

Martin Marty

Award-winning author and professor emeritus, University of Chicago

Martin E. Marty is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he taught religious history, chiefly in the Divinity School, for 35 years, and where the Martin Marty Center has been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. For a decade prior to entering academia, the “On Faith” panelist served parishes in the west and northwest suburbs of Chicago as an ordained Lutheran pastor. Marty is the author of more than 50 books including Righteous Empire: The Protestant Experience in America (1970), for which he won the National Book Award. His additional honors include the National Humanities Medal, 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). Marty has served as president of the American Academy of Religion, the American Society of Church History, and the American Catholic Historical Association. He also has served on two U.S. Presidential Commissions and was director of the Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Public Religion Project at the University of Chicago. He is Senior Regent of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Close.

Martin Marty

Award-winning author and professor emeritus, University of Chicago

Martin E. Marty is Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he taught religious history, chiefly in the Divinity School, for 35 years, and where the Martin Marty Center has been founded to promote “public religion” endeavors. more »

Main Page | Martin Marty Archives | On Faith Archives


Tense Holidays
Most holidays have some sort of religious cast--even "civil" holidays tend to. Those rooted in particular religious traditions are most likely to induce tension.

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Jihadist:

Prof. Martin E Marty,

You stated : "Mixed marriages: people bring highest expectations to holidays, and so they make greatest demands on each other."

Yes. A brother-in-law is married to a Chinese lady. Every year, for Chinese New Year, they went to her family's Chinese New Year gathering, including all sitting together for the Big Family Dinner Feast.

Roast suckling pig is a traditional centrepiece dinner dish as turkey is to Thanksgiving. My brother-in-law tried not to flich and ate all the other halal dishes they thoughfully prepared for him, his wife and children - all seafood and plenty of tofu/soya and vegetable dishes.

Another Chinese tradition is to gamble after dinner as the winner is said will have a very prosperous year ahead. Being a good Muslim, my brother-in-law don't gamble. His Chinese-in-laws teased him of wimping out on finding out on his luck for the Year of the Pig, or Rat, or Monkey or Snake or Hare or Dragon.

Other than that, they're fine and have fun with all the usual stresses related to family gatherings thrown in - too little time, too many people in one space and such.

And who said non-mixed couples don't have some problems for family gatherings? One has to negotiate beforehand, with one's spouse, whose parents' home the family is to go for traditional religious celebrations' family gatherings. This year in Jakarta, next year in Kuala Lumpur.

If in the same country, to your parents' house first for lunch, then to his parents' for dinner or vice-versa. Or, on day one there, and day two here and such if your parents and his parents are in different towns and states. More traffic accidents happened, and more are people killed in such accidents during the festive seasons. And I don't want to get into air travel. And then, there is your own home's family dinner and lunch and open houses for friends and colleagues.

After years of such, it is ingrained in one to not fight it, to accept it, and go with the flow. That certainly helps one to enjoy the gatherings as it should be.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Thank you and best regards

"J"



November 21, 2007 6:44 PM | Report Offensive Comments

Posted on November 21, 2007 18:44

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