Lutheran Hats

Lutherans have some of the richest self-deprecating church humor in America, and this collection wears it. There are about 2.59 million baptized members in the ELCA across 8,208 congregations, and almost 1.7 million in the LCMS, and plenty of them can recite the in-jokes: Jell-O served only in the liturgical color of the season, a coffee pot that never runs dry in the church basement, and a pastor who skips the last hymn so the service lasts exactly 60 minutes. Garrison Keillor summed up the temperament as a calm, stoical, modest people haunted by guilt. The theology supplies the best lines. Martin Luther posted his 95 theses in 1517, and a 1521 letter to Melanchthon gave the world "Sin boldly. But believe even more boldly in Christ." Hammer and nail jokes about the Reformation are already staples on print-on-demand sites, and Here I Stand is the flag everybody recognizes. Reformation Day falls on Saturday, October 31 this year, so the peg is right now, and confirmation and Christmas gifts keep it going the rest of the year. LUTHERAN and HAPPY REFORMATION DAY are the plain badges, with eight sentence designs around them. The two strongest get a second colorway. Every design is custom embroidered on an unstructured dad hat. Wear one to the church basement coffee hour, or give one to the person who has never once made eye contact in a hallway.