The harmony of the crowd

I have been thinking about this episode from the Reformation in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, when the Collégialle, a tall, beautiful church with golden hinges on wooden doors and a painted starry blue ceiling, was eviscerated on a Thursday in 1530 by the town’s inhabitants, who stormed the church and tore down its statues.¹ Only a few days later, a town vote would convert Neuchâtel to protestantism, and over time, into a haven for those fleeing from persecution.²

The parallels with current times are like looking through a kaleidoscope: there is little variation in nature, only in content. The shards today are these: Summer waves break record highs and all elections become crucial; talks erode East and West and we barter over planets that we’ll colonize. While some have trampled statues, some have abstained from voting or watching the news, and have moved to other countries in search of being left alone.

I find myself longing for the harmony of those people on that Thursday, inflamed by a fierce, psychotic belief in the right. It wouldn’t do me much good. It is a natural reaction, though. The mob mentality is born out of a desperate search for a pattern to which it can respond. The trampling is an attempt to impose order in chaos. Think of the mood in Neuchâtel in those weeks: in a town of 1600 people,³ the protestant vote would win by the slimmest margin of 18.²

Maybe we are sensing the same quaking that brought about the Reformation: the shaking and swaying, the falling, the blaring, the kaleidoscopic shift in our foundations, the ideological transition. We see destruction, but not yet the statues we will build, no meaning or forming pattern, not yet a unifying hope that snaps the narrative into place.