Social Science and the Public Interest

Excerpt

The present issue (57:2) of Society pays special tribute to the work of David Martin who passed away on March 8, 2019 at the age of 89. Many thanks go to Adam Seligman and Robert Weller for their generous efforts in reaching out to the contributors to this symposium. Martin published several times in the pages of Society, including “The Essence of an Accidental Sociologist: An Appreciation of Peter Berger” (49–2, March/April 2012); “Secularization: An International Debate from a British Perspective” (51–5, September/October, 2014); and “Music and the Aesthetic in Worship and Collective Singing: England since 1840” (53–6, November/December 2016). John Shelton Reed reviewed David Martin: The Education of David Martin: The Making of an Unlikely Sociologist (52–5, September/October 2015). On a short personal note: I studied with David Martin at the London School of Economics in 1972–73. Years later when we met again through the auspices of Peter Berger, he still remembered that we had read Max Scheler together. A remarkable constellation of sociologists of religion, including Eileen Barker, Susan Budd, Michael Hill, and Betty Scharf, assembled there during those years, and I am honored to have known them and David Martin (RIP). …