You can’t ignore the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and it would be insane (and ill-mannered) to try to. All the same, you don’t have to put on your party dress. The Reformation was bad for all of us, not least for Protestants, and its emotional, intellectual and spiritual shortcomings are now to be seen in the United States – the richest and most powerful Protestant country on earth – where the shabbiest, the most oafish, the most embarrassing, the most barbaric presidential election in living memory is drawing to its shameful close.