JESUS NATION SEX REBEL, mini-chapter 5

5. WAITING FOR THE FIEND

From the second row of the VIP section, Adam turned and looked behind him. He saw a sea of expectant faces under a bewildering explosion of fancy hats.

If the Reformation had a fashion statement, it was the hat. A woman was her hat: the crown of her existence, the apogee of her creativity, the sun of her being, her celebration of being chosen by the Lord above. No woman went out in public without a hat. It was as strict a Dress Law as the Scarlet A for single mothers and red lipstick for V-dolls.

The Hat Awards Season was upon them. Last season hats had gone small and intricate. This season they promised to be big and spectacular. Fronds, tendrils and tentacles signaled a major new trend. Every city had its competition, culminating in the Hat Finals on TV, when judges chose their winner, and viewers called in for the popular choice.

Adam got invited to special public events such as this one since he had founded the first chair of Creationism at Columbia University. As an academic pioneer of the Reformation, his days of brightest celebrity were over – oh, those heady days of the first inroads of the Reformation -- but his name was still known.

A man in an orange robe mounted the stage.

The crowd grew silent. This man was the Official Hiss Master. Next, an effigy of the fiend –- the Transgressor -- was carried on to the stage by four youths. They were going to have a rehearsal hiss in anticipation of the appearance of the actual Transgressor. The Department of Reformation Events Planning was leaving nothing to chance. They saw this audience as a company of actors in a great television drama: their disciplined actions, smooth performance, and unified spirit would be an example to the world of the transformative unity of the Beloveds of America’s new Republic of Christ. The world was watching, and they would be rewarded with the proper pageantry and heightened wow factor of a great American show.