{"id":160,"date":"2003-11-14T00:27:29","date_gmt":"2003-11-14T05:27:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/11\/government_missionaries\/"},"modified":"2003-11-14T00:27:29","modified_gmt":"2003-11-14T05:27:29","slug":"government_missionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/11\/government_missionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Government Missionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn’t such a great day for the government missionaries–i.e., those who would use government in to promote their religion.
\nFirst, Justice Moore got axed<\/a> for refusing to obey a federal court and remove his graven image.
\nThen, this evening I saw Greene County, TN Mayor Roger Jones appearing on “O’Reilly Factor<\/a>.” Anyone familiar with the views of Mr. “Looking Out for Us” knows he fully supports government promoting its “Judeo-Christian” heritage. But even he wasn’t far enough out there to go along with Jones’ call for a government proclamations on how our nation believes in the Christian God.
\nAs if Jones didn’t do enough damage during the course of a five-minute interview, he closed with this blast:<\/p>\n

“We don’t want God taken away from us.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Really? Where’s God being taken?
\nJust to put my remarks in context, I’m a Christian who goes to church every week. It rubs me the wrong way when:<\/p>\n

(1) I hear someone complaining about some imagined persecution of American Christians; or
\n(2) A politician uses religion to pander to voters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the unfortunate case of Mayor Jones we have both.
\nAnyone who needs the government to promote their religion doesn’t have a belief system worth promoting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It wasn’t such a great day for the government missionaries–i.e., those who would use government in to promote their religion. First, Justice Moore got axed for refusing to obey a federal court and remove his graven image. Then, this evening I saw Greene County, TN Mayor Roger Jones appearing on “O’Reilly Factor.” Anyone familiar with […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}