THE AUTHOR

Gary Martinez, who writes under the name Herbert Laffey trained for four years with the Maryknoll Fathers in preparation for missionary priesthood. During those formative years, he had opportunities for personal conversation with leading figures of Latin American liberation theology, including Gustavo Gutiérrez, Juan Luis Segundo, José Porfirio Miranda, and José Marins. He later spent three years in revolutionary Nicaragua with Witness for Peace, documenting the effects of the U.S.-backed low-intensity conflict.

He went on to spend thirty years in public education in communities as diverse as Syracuse, New York; Fayette County, West Virginia; and South Central Los Angeles. He earned a Master of Science in Educational Administration from National University in San Diego, instructed teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District’s teacher intern program, achieved certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and served on visiting accreditation teams for the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.

Those experiences helped shape the approach of Cutting Through the Babble. Writing as storyteller, educator, and cultural critic, Laffey draws upon the work of historians, biblical scholars, and social scientists to make complex ideas accessible without making them simplistic. The book is deliberately conversational, highly visual, and at times irreverent, recovering the people behind biblical texts, the worlds in which they lived, and the purposes their writing served.

Now living in Miami Beach, Gary continues to write while remaining active in civic life and pursuing interests in travel, diving, and the natural world. His concern with the Bible does not end in antiquity. Cutting Through the Babble follows ancient struggles over liberation, authority, belief, and power into the present, asking what they can reveal about the forces still shaping our relationships and our world.