Willard “Mitt” Luther at the Diet of Brenham

On Jan­u­ary 28, 1521, a coun­cil of princes (“Diet”) con­vened in the town of Worms, south of present-​​day Frank­furt, Ger­many. The Holy Roman Empire, and its new Emperor Charles V, were pretty miffed at Mar­tin Luther. He had thumbed his nose at the Pope and the Church. They were going to, in short, make him eat Worms.

This was the impe­r­ial coun­cil (Reich­stag zu Worms) much beloved of school­boys: in Eng­lish, the Diet of Worms.

Luther’s books were placed on the table and he was asked two questions:

1. Are these your books?

2. Do you recant them?

Luther asked for a day to con­sider, and when he returned, he replied (in part, and in German):

I am con­quered by the Holy Scrip­tures quoted by me, and my con­science is bound in the word of God: I can not and will not recant any thing, since it is unsafe and dan­ger­ous to do any thing against the conscience.

(Eng­lish trans­la­tion: “I am not a flip-​​flopper.”)

This week­end, princes call­ing them­selves “move­ment con­ser­v­a­tives” have been invited to a pri­vate meet­ing in Bren­ham, Texas, by the Amer­i­can Fam­ily Asso­ci­a­tion’s leader Don­ald Wild­mon. Among the invi­tees are con­ser­v­a­tive heavy­weights Gary Bauer and James Dob­son. Until this meet­ing, Bren­ham has been most famous for being the home of Blue Bell Ice Cream (line from a for­mer jin­gle, now burned into the brain cells of every Texan: “The Lit­tle Cream­ery in Bren­ham Sure Is Big on Taste”).

Ice cream stores or elec­toral map?

Blue Bell is great ice cream, by the way, and is on the Diet of Bren­ham. (“We eat all we can and we sell the rest.”) Can it be a coin­ci­dence that the map of stores car­ry­ing Blue Bell is almost a per­fect match to the areas of the coun­try that will cer­tainly vote Repub­li­can in the 2012 Pres­i­den­tial election?

The move­ment con­ser­v­a­tives’ stated pur­pose is to unite behind a sin­gle NotRom­ney can­di­date, pre­sum­ably because of Mitt Romney’s (shud­der) mod­er­ate Repub­li­can image and his (hor­rors!) adher­ence to the Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints. Will he recant? Who will be the anointed can­di­date of the Holy Amer­i­can Empire? Will the Protes­tants pick Catholic Newt Gin­grich or Catholic Rick San­to­rum? Oh, how the Worms have turned.

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