On ideas crystallized

With a deadline less than two months away, serious tricksters are already scheming, and specialty shops have geared up for the annual event. There is usually “this year’s favorite” costume, based on a recent hit movie or major current event. I wouldn’t be surprised on Oct. 31 to see lots of little Wonder Women scouring the city for candy. It would surprise me to see lots of little somber-robed clerics wielding hammers. It would be totally appropriate, but still surprising.

This Halloween will mark the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church. His act did not “create” Protestantism out of nothing, in the moment, any more than, say, the march on Selma created a civil rights movement in that moment. Both events were crystallizations, so to speak, of processes that had never really “started” nor ever stop. They are convenient pegs upon which we hang historical ideas.

In the case of Protestantism, I think it is fair to say it fractured Christianity, leaving wounds that have never been properly dressed, and certainly have not healed. But of course before the Reformation there was the Inquisition. Plenty of “blame on both sides.” I’d say 21st century Christians are at best what I would call functioning schizophrenics, spiritually speaking.

Maybe today’s Lutherans know why they aren’t Catholics. How many Baptists know why they aren’t Episcopalians? What makes any of them think they have a “Christian” model for addressing Sunni versus Shiite Islamic conflicts?

People want to go on about how America was founded on Christian principles. It’s true enough, as far as it goes. But so was the KKK. Where is the exemplary Christian conduct on any side of that sorry mess? STANLEY G. JOHNSON

Little Rock