David Martin (sociologist)

David Martin, 1980s

David Martin (born 1929), PhD, FBA.[1] has studied and written extensively about the sociology of religion.[2]

Early life and education

David Martin was born in 1929, the son of a "between-maid" from Dorset and a groom from Hertfordshire who became a chauffeur and then a black cab driver in London and preached regularly at Hyde Park. David Martin was brought up in a Revivalist family and attended Barnes Methodist Church. He won a scholarship to East Sheen Grammar School (1940–47), and after national service as a conscientious objector in the Non-Combatant Corps (1948–50) he trained as a primary school teacher at Westminster Teacher Training College. He taught in primary schools in London and Somerset (1952-9) and while teaching, from 1956-9 he studied by correspondence course, with Wolsey Hall, Oxford [3] for a London External degree in Sociology. He won the University Postgraduate Scholarship after gaining a First Class degree in 1959. This enabled him to study for a Ph.D at the London School of Economics (LSE) with Professor Donald MacRae. He was awarded his Ph.D. in 1964 and it was published as Pacifism: a Historical and Sociological Study in 1965. He spent 1961-2 as Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Sociological Studies in Sheffield University. In 1962 he was appointed to the Department of Sociology at the LSE, becoming Reader in 1967 and Professor in 1971.[4]

Career

Martin devised the first critique of secularisation in an essay, "Towards eliminating the Concept of Secularisation", in J. Gould ed. The Penguin Survey of the Social Sciences1965, and the first comparative empirical theory of secularisation in "Notes for a General Theory of Secularisation" Archiv Europ. Sociol. X 1969, 192-201 extended and published in book form asA General Theory of Secularisation, 1978. He was a major pioneer of the comparative study of Pentecostalism, beginning with a path-breaking study of Latin America (See: Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America1990) and extending globally (See:Pentecostalism:The World their Parish,2002). He has also worked on violence and religion, for example in Does Christianity Cause War (1997), the relations of sociology and theology, for example in Reflections on Sociology and Theology(1997), on secularism in the modern world, most recently in Religion and Power: No Logos without Mythos (2014), and on music and religion, as inChristian Language and its Mutations, part 3 2002). He also published widely on the condition of the contemporary university, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s (See 'Trends and Standards in British Higher Education' in The Western University on Trial edited by John W Chapman, University of California Press, 1983, 167-83). He was Professor of Sociology at the LSE between 1971 and his retirement in 1989. He was Scurlock Professor of Human Values in Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, USA, 1986-1990. He spent research semesters at the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture (now the Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs [CURA]) with Peter Berger at Boston University in 1990 and 1999. After returning to the UK he became Visiting Professor at King's College London, Lancaster University and Liverpool Hope University. He received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Helsinki in 2000. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2007 (See: "Professor David Alfred Martin", in Who's Who 2014). In summer 2015 an American (Baylor) and a Chinese (Renmin University Press) version of A David Martin Reader will be published in English and Chinese. (Information from David martin) David Martin was a Methodist Local Preacher from 1953 to 1977 when he was confirmed in the Anglican Church. In 1983 he attended Wescott House Theological College in Cambridge and became Deacon in that year and priest in 1984, serving as Honorary Assistant Priest at Guildford Cathedral until the present. (See: "Professor David Alfred Martin" in Who's Who 2014) In 1953 he married Daphne Sylvia Treherne. The marriage was dissolved in 1957. In 1962 he married Bernice Thompson, a sociologist at London University, (Bedford College).

Major publications

References

  1. ↑ Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd (16 June 1977). ThirdWay. Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd. pp. 10–.
  2. ↑ John Stenhouse; Brett Knowles; Anthony Wood (2004). The Future of Christianity: Historical, Sociological, Political and Theological Perspectives from New Zealand. ATF Press. pp. 8–. ISBN 978-1-920691-23-3.
  3. ↑ The Education of David Martin: The making of an unlikely sociologist by David Martin https://books.google.com/books?id=602pAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT114&lpg=PT114&dq=wolsey+hall+correspondence&source=bl&ots=ylppIwP2f2&sig=HjLVKHNERdkot0YVO3RCFUhkEgw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8vuy0-obKAhVJaxQKHZnvBzQ4HhDoAQgzMAU#v=onepage&q=wolsey%20hall%20correspondence&f=false
  4. ↑ 1

Further reading

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