Future Shock

The cover illustration says it all. A simple monk on a mission. Ninety-five theses, or discussion points, in hand. About to nail them to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Above him hovers the ominous gargoyle threat that so characterized cathedrals and churches of that era five centuries ago.As the poet William Butler Yeats put it in “The Second Coming,” it was “stony sleep . . . vexed to nightmare.” As good a moment to define the Reformation as can be found!