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(OPINION) For decades, religion-beat journalists in the mainstream press knew how to produce stories that would land on the front page.

The formula was stated in jest, but there was truth in it. I heard this version in 1982: “Three local anecdotes, some national poll numbers and a quote from Martin Marty.”

At the peak of his career, Time magazine said Marty was “generally acknowledged to be the most influential living interpreter of religion in the U.S.”

The church historian wrote more than 60 books and influenced hundreds more. For 50 years he was an editor and columnist at The Christian Century and, for 41 years, wrote his own biweekly Context newsletter, followed by Sightings essays online.

“It is clear that we religion journalists needed Martin Marty and he needed us,” said writer and editor Kenneth Woodward, who spent decades at Newsweek. “We read his Context, his Sightings, his MEMO column, his books, his annual New Theology paperback ... and we called him for quotes. In today's terms, he influenced the influencers.”

Marty died on Feb. 25 at the age of 97, a quarter of a century after retiring from teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School. The research center he launched in 1979 was then rebranded as the Martin Marty Center for the Public Understanding of Religion. He received numerous other awards, including more than 80 honorary degrees, the 1972 National Book Award and the 1997 National Medal for the Humanities.

It mattered that, before becoming a superstar scholar, he spent a decade caring for Lutherans in pews, said Richard Ostling, known for his work at Time and The Associated Press. One reason Marty could offer analysis that connected with readers was because he was “a successful pastor and could talk to God's people without talking down to them.”

Academic leaders would note that Marty's legacy includes legions of professors and scholars. He advised 115 doctoral dissertations and helped countless other graduate students. In my own case, he gave me multiple interviews — spaced over two days in his office — covering material crucial to my church-state studies thesis at Baylor University.

Our paths crossed several times, including at a 2002 University of Nebraska journalism school conference about religion-news trends. The topic was blunt: "Is There Any Non-Religious News After 9/11?"

Marty's address to students, clergy and journalists mixed scholarship and daily life. As always, he rose at 4:44 a.m. for coffee and prayer, followed by the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He brought those newspapers with him to Nebraska, where he covered the podium with torn pages annotated with a marker.

“When I read newspapers, I see religion all over the place,” he said.

I was at the event as a journalism professor asked to speak in response to Marty's remarks. In an “On Religion” column the next week, I jammed his trip through one day's worth of newsprint into this collage:

“A former WorldCom CEO kept teaching his Sunday school class. A researcher sought the lost tribe of Israel. Believers clashed in Sudan. Mormon and evangelical statistics were up — again. A Zambian bishop said he got married to shock the Vatican. U.S. bishops kept wrestling with clergy sexual abuse. Pakistani police continued to study the death of journalist Daniel Pearl.”

Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Canterbury “feared an Anglican schism. Public school students prayed at flagpoles. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explored the border between church and state. And there were dozens of stories linked to Sept. 11, 2001.”

The bottom line: It should be obvious that religion is soaking into events from “Washington to Islamabad, from Wall Street to Hollywood.”

But there is, Marty added, more to this story than politics. Often it is impossible to make sense out of headlines in the business pages without understanding the power of religion, morality and culture.

But many public leaders still think the global power of religious faith is fading.

“One idea was that every time you looked out your window, there was going to be less religion around than there was before,” said Marty.

“The other idea was that whatever leftover religion you would find, it was going to be tolerant, concessive, mushy and so on. Instead, there has been an increase in religion and the prospering religions are all extremely intense.”

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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.