Believe it or not, the quincentennial of the Protestant Reformation is nearly upon us: October 31, 2017. I hadn't given much thought to the history of the Reformation until someone unexpectedly gave me a book on the subject by Diarmaid MacCulloch.
If unaware of the precise date, most people correctly place the Reformation origin's in the middle of the Renaissance, when scientific reasoning began its ascent over the superstitious torpor that characterized medieval Europe- Galileo died shortly after Wittenberg in 1519. Given that the Reformation coincides with the end of the Dark Ages, one can be forgiven for assuming, as I did, that the Reformation was one of the agents of the subsequent enlightenment.
After reading MacCulloch, I realize that the Reformation was actually a reaction against Renaissance thinking and all its manifestations. The current Republican platform seems like a crazy patchwork of anti-science superstition, Dominionism, and Protestant Fundamentalism. Many ascribe it to a coalition of corporation-conservative deregulation fetishists and social-conservatives nostalgic for a pre-civil-rights southern American lifestyle. But I disagree. I believe this Republican platform was conceived in Geneva Switzerland almost 500 years ago and has changed very little since then.
So at least in one odious claim by the Christian Right is accurate: America was founded by theocrats whose values are embodied today by Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. These founders risked their lives to flee Europe, where Renaissance Humanism was evolving into the Age of Enlightenment, and establish a Dominionist colony dedicated to the Glory of God on the shores of Plymouth Harbor. And Europe has been sending its whackjobs here ever since. Europe may have its share of Nazis and other regressive Nationalists, but the experience of Fundamentalist Protestantism is ours alone. Those of us whose forebears were duped by the democratic ideals expressed by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and an entirely different vision for America are mere interlopers.