obituaries

Kenneth Woodward remembers Martin Marty

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Woodward was the longtime religion editor at Newsweek. Much of his career on the religion beat overlapped with Martin Marty’s career as a scholar and interpreter of American religious life. Here is a taste of Woodward’s piece at Commonweal: In […]

Martin Marty, RIP

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One of the twentieth-century’s greatest and most prolific American church historians has died. Here is Martin Marty’s obituary: Martin E. Marty (February 5, 1928 – February 25, 2025) Martin Emil Marty (97), religious historian and retired University of Chicago Divinity […]

James Kirby Martin, RIP

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I met James Kirby Martin once. We both spoke at the Fort Ticonderoga Seminar on the American Revolution in 2009. I did not know him well, but he was always kind to me following that meeting and I have learned […]

Tony Campolo, RIP

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More to come on this story. Here is some of what I have written about Campolo over the years: August 2019: Some Evangelicals Did Not Like Trump’s Use of Profanity at a Recent Rally (Blog) September 2019: How evangelical leaders […]

Civil War historian Peter Carmichael, RIP

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So sad to his hear this. Peter Carmichael was the Robert C. Fluhrer Professor of Civil War Studies and Director of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College. He was 58. Here is his obituary from The Gettysburg Times: Peter […]

James Lawson, RIP

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Lawson was the non-violent activist who mentored the young men and women involved in the Nashville Student Movement. I had a chance to meet one of his students, Rip Patton, in June 2017. I wrote a little bit about my […]

Jürgen Moltmann: RIP

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I missed this story when I was on the road during the last couple of days. I have learned much from Moltmann’s theology of hope. Here is the end of a 2018 piece on evangelicals and Trump that I wrote […]

Bill Walton: RIP

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This is such sad news. As a young basketball player I tried to model my game after two players: Bill Walton and Kevin McHale. When I was younger I used to stay up late to watch PAC-10 games just to […]

Alexi Navalny dies in a Russian prison. He was 47.

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Here is NBC News: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in prison, the country’s state media reported Friday, ending a yearslong fight against corruption and the Kremlin that saw him survive several poisoning attempts.  He was 47. A prominent critic of […]

J.G.A. Pocock: “the ultimate outsider-insider”

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Last week we called your attention to the death of historian J.G.A. Pocock with a roundup of tweets from historians and other intellectuals reflecting on his legacy. Over at The Critic, Yuan Yi Zhu argues that Pocock’s “Antipodean” (New Zealand) […]

Historians and other intellectuals remember J.G.A. Pocock

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One of the greatest intellectual historians of the post-war area, J.G.A. Pocock, died this week at the age of 99. During graduate school I devoured Pocock’s work. His commitment to reading texts in their historical contexts continues to shape me […]

California Senator Dianne Feinstein has passed away

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Until an official obituary appears, learn about this trailbazing United States Senator here. She was mayor of San Francisco from 1978 to 1988 and was elected to five U.S. Senate terms. In 1984 she was on Walter Mondale’s vice-presidential short […]