Deep History, Secular Theory

Foreword

I am delighted to see these incisive, seminal articles now brought together in one place—and so revealingly contextualized by Martin’s own account of the intellectual journey that forged them. The volume shows one possible trajectory and outcome among those of us who have experienced close-hand the last half-century of the study of religion. Few individual scholars have worked their way through so many of its paths, stages, and critical issues as the author of these selected essays.

For Martin, as he tells us, all this was set in motion in the 1960s by the idea of a secular approach to the study of religion in a public university. As his departmental colleague at the University of Vermont from that time forward, I have witnessed most ...