A friend recently forwarded me (and tons of other folks) an email about a campaign to combat a perceived threat to removing In God We Trust (which I don’t take as a serious threat) and suggested plastering stamps and envelopes with this.
The email read:
I am going to do my part and protect our rights…Hope you agree.
Payback is fun!!!!!!!!! WRITE IT ON THE BACK OF
YOUR ENVELOPES or on the front!
WE THINK THIS IS A GREAT IDEA. WE’LL START WRITING IT ON THE FRONT OF OUR ENVELOPES, TOO! ! Including Bills.
You may have heard in the news that a couple of Post Offices in California have been forced to take down small posters that say ‘IN GOD WE TRUST"
The law, they say, is being violated.
Anyway, we heard proposed on a radio station show, that we should all write ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ on the back of all our mail. After all, that’s our National Motto, and it’s on all the money we use to buy those stamps. We think it’s a wonderful idea.
We must take back our nation from all the people who think that anything that offends them should be removed.
If you like this idea, please pass it on and DO IT. The idea of writing or stamping ‘IN GOD WE TRUST’ on our envelopes sounds good to us. WE’RE HAVING A STAMP MADE TOO! Heck, lets use it as our signature on e-mails too!
It’s been reported that 86% of Americans believe in God. Therefore, we have a very hard time understanding why there’s such a mess about having ‘In God We Trust!’ on our money and having God in the pledge of Allegiance.
Could it be that WE just need to take action and tell the 14% to ‘sit down and shut up’?
If you agree, pass this on, if not, delete!!!
BUT REMEMBER IF YOU DELETE THIS, that’s 1 reason why this world is in the mess we’re in now. WE SIT BACK & LET IT HAPPEN!
Sigh. Okay, this pretty much sounds like spam. But I was rather offended by this suggestion that religious minorities should be told to just shut up. So I wrote a response:
Sigh. Let me start off by saying that I have quite a few friends who are Atheists and Agnostics. They are good and decent people. For the most part, they are quite respectful of people with different religious views. As it so happens, although I was technically baptized a Catholic, I have never identified as Christian in my entire life. I have been pretty much an out of the broom closet Pagan for well over 15 years now. My faith is important to me, but I certainly can be supportive of people on different spiritual paths (including both Christians and non-believers, who are both different from me and from each other.)
I am very happy that we have a columnist who writes for Community United Church in Erie Gay News. I just called my mom to wish her a happy birthday today, and expressed how happy I was that my little brother recently went through Koinonea, a Christian retreat weekend thing. (Even dropped him off some cards, since I knew that this was meaningful to him.)
Is affirming one’s spirituality via junk mail really exalting the Divine? (If God is dependent on the US Postal Service, then things are pretty bad.) I must admit to feeling troubled when I read that we need to tell a minority that they "should shut up and sit down." Freedom of religion should include ALL religions, even those who do not believe. Again, I have found that most non-believers are good and decent people who are respectful and not strident at all.
So, maybe for celebrating God, it might be better to start with a church/house of worship, rather than a mailbox. I would feel sad if the deepest testament of someone’s faith was something scribbled or stamped on an envelope.
Truth to tell, this doesn’t sound like an effective way for changing anyone’s opinion.
Sorry to be a downer, but I really felt the need to stand up for my friends who are non-believers. They are just as much entitled to their path as the rest of us.
You are telling us to be tolerant of agnostics and atheists, and I am as long as they’re not trying to force there agenda on me. 80% of American people believe in God. It has nothing to do with the post office or any government agency. It has to do with a very small minority telling the rest of us what should be allowed. They claim to be offended. Oh!!! You poor things. What’s really sad is how a few people let four words ruin their day when they read them. How pathetic is that? If you don’t like them DON”T READ THEM!!! And to make matters worse these few people spend millions of dollars, time, and energy to try and rob the rest of us of the joy or reading those all important four words whether they believe in them or not. Our country was founded on Godly principals. It’s what made this country the most free and powerful country on the planet. And if you’ll notice the more the few suck God out of our country the weaker we become. So you go ahead and keep defending people that have no lagitament gripe, because those words do absolutely nothing to hurt one single person on the planet, including them.
I believe that many people did not comprehend the original story. The issue was NOT was printed on stamps. The issue was that someone in Texas had paid for signs to be posted in a US Post Office. NO signs from private sources can be posted at US Post Offices. It has absolutely nothing to do with the content. If the signs had read “Praise Allah!” “Eat at Joes” “Kittens – free to a good home”, it still would not be allowed. Walk into a post office. Look at the materials posted there. Notice that everything is official US Postal Service or government based stuff.
Literacy. It’s a good thing.