Of course, we Lutherans are named after perhaps the most well-known whistleblower in Christendom. While people had complained about corruption in the church for centuries, the church’s thuggery and intimidation made whistleblowing a deadly endeavor. The pre-Reformation era was filled with whistleblower-martyrs, as well as those would-be whistleblowers who backed off rather than be burned at the stake.

Herman Otten was a whistleblower, as was Martin Luther. And we see the same forces at work: politics being employed not to protect the flock but to protect the duplicitous from the one blowing the whistle, operating under the cover of darkness, . And the same complaints that are made against Otten were earlier made against Luther as well: they both used the printing press, they both named names, they both wrote bombastically, and made a lot of powerful enemies.

I’m being hyperbolic and a bit anachronistic in saying that Sesame Street ruined Christian worship. But only a bit. For Sesame Street started in 1969. And this was five years after the Vatican II novus ordo Mass was implemented in English. So Sesame Street was not the cause of liturgical change, but rather a concurrent change reflected in the zeitgeist, and it continued to transform a lot of things that touch upon education.