A Day for Protestant Jokes

Tags

95 Theses, Anglican, Anglo-Catholic, Asian American, Chinese, Congregation of Holy Cross, death, denomination, Diet of Worms, ecumenism, Fun, funny, Halloween, humor, John Calvin, joke, Luther, Lutheran, Martin Luther, Michael Servetus, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Protestant, Rachel Held Evans, Reformation Day, Thomas Cranmer, Wittenberg

As CaptainThin pointed out, today is Reformation Day and All Hallows’ Eve.

I think it’s a good day for Protestant jokes.  Here’s one that my dad heard in seminary:

There was an interdenominational Protestant gathering, and a fire started in the sanctuary. The Pentecostals got up and screamed: “Fire!”  The Baptists shouted: “Water!”  And the Presbyterians said: “Order.”

Martin Luther once said that if he farted in Wittenberg, they smell it in Rome.  Recently, excavators found Luther’s famed cloaca, the secret place where he did a ton of writing.  It was a stone toilet.  Could this possibly mean that the 95 Theses originated from 95 feces?

More conservative Christians seem to be scared off by Halloween as a pagan holiday. This year, though, it’s not the Protestants but the Polish Catholic bishops who are decrying Halloween as a pagan holiday.

I think we could use a bit more holy humour on All Hallows Eve, though, and so does Fr. Jim Martin.

In light of this, I have a few suggestions:

1. Nail the 95 theses on somebody’s door.  This seems to be a yearly ritual between Valparaiso University (the Lutherans) and the University of Notre Dame (Catholic, Congregation of Holy Cross).  This year, Nashotah House even had this done in-house.  I guess this is what happens when you’re Anglo-Catholic.  Note, though, that they use Rite I.  Smells like Cranmer.
2. Tell a Protestant joke.  You know, for example, how some Protestants like to remember the Diet of Worms by portraying themselves as totally depraved worms in a fit of utter humility? Here’s Happy Reformation Day to them from Pope Benedict XVI.
3. Go buy Rachel Held Evans’s book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood.  Why? you ask.  For the simple fact that it came out yesterday.
   It also brings to mind Nadia Bolz-Weber being portrayed as a comic book “pastrix” in a pic worthy of both Reformation Day and Halloween.

1. Dress up as a morbid Reformation martyr.  For example, somebody could do Michael Servetus.

In the spirit of Chinglicanism, I’ll leave it at 4 things.  “4,” after all, is the Chinese superstitious number for death.

And that’s funny only if your hermeneutic for both Reformation Day and All Hallows’ Eve is the resurrection.