The American Council of Learned Societies held at its annual conference in Philadelphia. One of its top speakers was University of Chicago divinity school professor Martin E. Marty, who delivered the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture Friday.

The winner of this prize delivers a lecture on his life and scholarly career. Mr. Marty opened by saying that his talk was what stood between the audience and dinner. He was reminded of the words that Harvard president Derek Bok once told a group: “My business is to speak. Your business is to listen, and the odds are you’ll finish your business before I finish mine.”

Mr. Marty recounted his youth, growing up in West Point, Neb., during a time of the “big Ds,” which he described as “drought, dustbowl, Depression, and despair.” Mr. Marty recalled the odor of the Little Leather Library classics that his parents had in an enclosed bookcase at home. These miniature books included the “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” He recalled Shaw’s “On Going to Church,” which questioned such a practice.

His local high school had an impact on him, and he kept in touch with some people from that part of his life. He was still – 55 years later – receiving gentle reminders from his freshman English teacher, saying “Ms. Rogers did not teach you to dangle a participle, as you did in your most recent article.” He also recalled studying Virgil and Homer in high school as exercises in philology and translation. But he lamented: “I can’t remember a minute discussing the substance of the text.”

During the years before he became a seminarian, he would take a streetcar to the Milwaukee Public Library to read in the poetry room. He started reading through the poets from A to Z and made it as far as T.S. Eliot. Before attending the University of Chicago, he hitchhiked with a friend to see theologian Jacques Martian and T.S. Eliot, who visited the university.

He developed a sideline in religious journalism, which grew out of a penchant for visiting the library periodical room. One biblical professor gave him a B on a paper and added: “You could get an A but you spend too much time reading those periodicals scripturally, but the scriptures only periodically.”

Mr. Marty cited Arthur Schopenhauer who had observed that the first 40 years of one’s life provide the text, and the next few decades provide the commentary. He became a Lutheran parish pastor before joining the University of Chicago faculty.

Mr. Marty said how anomalous and idiosyncratic many professional trajectories are. It was not until age 35 that he had walked into a classroom to teach. He became a modern American religious historian at a secular university rather than pursuing a career in the ministry. Mr. Marty’s has served as president of the American Academy of Religion. Upon his retirement, the University of Chicago divinity school changed its name to the Martin Marty Center from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion.

His wide-ranging career has included guiding dissertations in three faculties: humanities, divinity, and social sciences, where the University of Chicago has its history department. The organizers at the conference were perplexed in classifying him. Whereas others had name badges that read theologian, historian of theology, and so forth, he was amused to read that his badge said, “historical historian.”

He is the author of more than 50 books, and said that editors generally suggested the topics: “I use their assignments as learning devices,” he said. He joked, “I haven’t had an original idea yet.” He recalled talking with a publisher during a snowstorm in Manhattan trying unsuccessfully to hail a cab. The publisher inquired what he believed religion in America was about. Mr. Marty recalled replying: “Pluralism.”

The publisher said, “You couldn’t be more wrong! That is what social scientists think, but religious people themselves have other things beside abstractions on their minds.” Mr. Marty told the audience the pursuit of those “other things” had been a basis for a good deal of his research.