Before the 2024 election, my parents noticed something unusual. Church parking lots in their neighborhood were packed on Sunday morning.

Maybe Americans were rediscovering God. Maybe the political circus had them praying for divine intervention. I can’t tell you which.

But I’ve been thinking about those parking lots all week, because tomorrow is Oct. 31. Halloween, sure.

It’s also the 509th anniversary of the day a German monk nailed a list of grievances to a church door and broke the established order in half.

Martin Luther’s Reformation didn’t just change how Europe worshiped.

It changed how the West thought about work. Luther told a continent that the farmer, the craftsman and the merchant served God as surely as the priest did.

Honest work was a calling. Responsibility was personal. Literacy was for everyone, not just the clergy.

Those ideas built economies. But five centuries later, they’re being challenged by a new orthodoxy.

Your Rundown for Friday, October 30, 2026...

509 Years Later: The Red Reformation

On Tuesday, 131 candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) will appear on ballots in 30 states and Washington, D.C., according to Ballotpedia.

Ten want seats in Congress. Fifty-two are running for state legislatures, and 69 for local offices. Three DSA-backed challengers have already knocked off sitting Democrats in this year’s primaries.

Their program is public ownership of major industries and much higher taxes on the wealthy. In California, DSA chapters are backing Proposition 40, a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ net worth. A tax like that won’t be the last one.

My friend Jim Rickards has been watching the DSA, and he isn’t fooled by the branding.

Some of these self-described socialists, he warns, are “wolves in sheep’s clothing — communists who use the socialist label to hide their real intentions.”

Karl Marx wanted private ownership of the means of production replaced with collective ownership. He also called religion “the opium of the people.” Marx saw religion as a rival to the state, and he wanted it gone.

Luther believed in helping the poor, yes, and he even backed common funds to aid them.

But his rule was simple: If you can work, you work. If you can’t, your neighbors help. That’s a community looking after its own. And it’s the opposite of a government writing a check.

Yet we’re neglecting the community of faith just as the state offers to replace it.

In 1992, 44% of Americans went to church weekly or nearly weekly, according to Gallup. Last year it was 31%. Fifty-seven percent now say they seldom or never go.

The cost isn’t just spiritual.

Economists, in research published in the Journal of the European Economic Association, link falling religious participation to higher rates of suicide, overdoses and alcohol-related deaths among middle-aged white Americans.

They call them “deaths of despair.”

And as more Americans feel forgotten, along comes a movement promising what the congregation used to provide: security, belonging, someone looking out for you.

So here’s my Church Parking Lot Indicator: Watch where anxious Americans go for solace. For centuries, they filled the pews. Now they fill out a ballot.

My advice for this weekend, and you can take it or leave it, is to go to a place of worship. Because the strongest answer to a movement promising the state will take care of you is a neighbor who already does.

And on Tuesday, vote. But vote like your life doesn’t depend on it. The state can count your ballot, but it can’t make your life count.

Market Rundown for Friday, Oct. 30, 2026

S&P 500 futures are 1.10% to 7,665.

Oil is up 2% to $104.10 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold is down 1.40% to $3,975 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s down 4.30% to $77,300.