Fanatical Protestants Co-opt MLK Day to Honor ‘Martin Luther: King’
FREDERICK, MD — Members of one of the largest Protestant sects gathered Monday at a downtown church in observance not of the federal holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but of a fictional holiday for a religious thinker in 16th century Germany.
The genesis of the idea was a book 53-year-old Tom McDougall had been reading in which a page break occurred between the late civil rights leader’s middle and last name.
“I immediately felt that I was on the cusp of something grand,” McDougall remembered thinking. “But I was also a bit annoyed that this hadn’t occurred to me sooner.”
McDougall and a handful of his acquaintances, all of whom are devout Lutherans, reached out to others who they thought would be interested in attending a gathering to honor the namesake of their faith. It didn’t take long for things to take off.
“It was not an ostentatious event,” McDougall said of what took place inside Zion Lutheran Church from noon to 3 P.M. “The most important thing was that each of us was able to become more attuned to our inner spirituality, and hopefully the environment helped facilitate that.”
McDougall dismissed some in the community who felt that he and others were being tone-deaf by honoring a German theologian instead of MLK, Jr., insisting that the day was about both figures equally, even though the latter was a Baptist.
“Luther absolutely deserves his own special day of recognition, but this is the closest we’re going to get,” McDougall said. “Plus, we’re less than a month removed from Christmas, so it’s still a good time to distinguish ourselves from Catholics by being faithful without having to purchase something or walk in a parade.”
