{"id":503,"date":"2002-06-28T11:24:41","date_gmt":"2002-06-28T18:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2002\/06\/28\/503.html"},"modified":"2002-06-28T11:24:41","modified_gmt":"2002-06-28T18:24:41","slug":"the-ignominy-of-heathenism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2002\/06\/28\/the-ignominy-of-heathenism\/","title":{"rendered":"The ignominy of heathenism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This is remarkable: the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.treas.gov\/education\/fact-sheets\/currency\/in-god-we-trust.html\">history of the \"In God We Trust\" motto<\/a> on American currency.  In 1861, a minister wrote to the secretary of the treasury, saying:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.<\/p>\n<p>This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One thing that I think those of us opposed to putting too much God into public affairs tend to miss is that this isn't just something imposed on us from On High; the reason our leaders support it is that their constituents, by and large, support it.  If 90% of US citizens are opposed to the ignominy of heathenism, us ten-percenters are unlikely to make much headway.  So although I was pleased to hear of the court decision, I never expected any real changes to occur as a result.  The fact is, America <em>is<\/em> a Christian nation in all sorts of ways, despite the presence of many non-Christians among its citizens.  Unfortunate but true.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is remarkable: the history of the &#8220;In God We Trust&#8221; motto on American currency. In 1861, a minister wrote&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}