There are
plenty of misguided conservatives in the United States who believe that their
confederation is the most outstanding example of Christianity in world
history. One must have a highly selective
reading of history to come to that conclusion.
We have discussed some aspects of paganism in the States in past essays,
but there is more that could, and should, be said in that regard.
In
particular, we would like to focus on the symbols on the coinage of the US over
the centuries. But before looking at
them, we quote a short section from a previous
essay to provide the proper context for what follows:
‘After 1770,
writes Albanese, “songs began to appear which celebrated the Goddess [of
Liberty]” and “preachers took up the cause of the Goddess in their turn.” For example, Jacob Duché, the Chaplain to the
Continental Congress who delivered its opening prayer, gave a sermon explaining
how Liberty “true to her divine source, is of heavenly abstraction” and that
both Liberty and the “divine virtue” which is her “illustrious parent” come to
dwell “in the hearts of all intelligent beings” where “they ought jointly to
be worshipped.”
‘The sign
and sacrament of this veritable cult of the Goddess Liberty was the Liberty
Tree in Boston . . . . As Oliver’s
brother wrote, Liberty Tree had been “consecrated as an idol for the mob to
worship” and was the place for imposing the discipline of the “Tree of Ordeal
[on those] whom the Rioters pitched upon as State delinquents.” In addition to being both a totem and locus
of the power of Liberty, Liberty Tree was a place of worship where
revolutionary liturgies were enacted. In
Providence, Rhode Island a Liberty Tree was dedicated during a ceremony in
which the participants laid their hands on the sacred object as a local
minister invoked the worldwide unity of a kind of mystical body of Liberty . .
. .
‘The “sacred
elm,” writes Albanese, became “a kind of transcendent cosmo-historical tree
around which the other Liberty Trees and liberty signs of the colonies took
root . . . Like the sacrament it was, Liberty Tree was the reality which
oriented the patriots, yet it pointed beyond itself to another source of
power”—the power invoked by Paine with his talk of remaking the world and
regenerating man in a disquieting analogy to the working of divine grace’ (Christopher
Ferrara, Liberty: The God That Failed, Tacoma, Wash., Angelico Press,
2012, pgs. 150-1).
In this
atmosphere, legislation was passed by the US Congress for the design of
coined money to be used in the States:
‘The
Coinage Act of 1792 specified that all coins have an “impression emblematic of
liberty,” the inscription “LIBERTY,” and the year of coinage on the obverse
side. The Act required that the reverse of gold and silver coins have a
representation of an eagle and the inscription, “UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.” . .
.
‘The
face of Lady Liberty appeared on our circulating coins for more than 150 years.
When considering options for our first coins, Congress debated over whether to
feature George Washington and later presidents. Many believed that putting the
current president on a coin was too similar to Great Britain’s practice of
featuring their monarchs. Instead, Congress chose to personify the concept of
liberty rather than a real person.
‘The
figure of Liberty, often with a cap
and pole, had been a symbol used during the American Revolution. Because of
Liberty’s origins as a Greco-Roman goddess, early coin designs portrayed her
with classical style clothes, facial features, and symbols.’
It is quite
inexplicable that the MOST CHRISTIAN COUNTRY would pass legislation that would
place a pagan symbol on the confederation’s currency rather than a Christian
symbol of some kind: the Cross, the
Bible, an image of Christ or a saint, etc.
And note well that there was no outcry over this amongst the peoples of
the States: The pagan goddess of Liberty
remained on US money for decades, including through the great Protestant
‘revivals’ of the 19th century.
And when the goddess was eventually removed in the 20th
century, it was replaced by the divinized/apotheosized presidents of the US
(like the pagan Roman emperors before them), who were nominally Christian yet
in reality quite un-Christian in their beliefs and affiliations – Washington
and Franklin
Roosevelt the Freemasons, Jefferson the rewriter of the Holy Gospels, the
creator of a new Christianity, Lincoln the demagogue and opportunist, the
Puritan Gnostic. M. E. Bradford goes so
far as to call Lincoln a blasphemer, and
adds:
‘ . . . we
should take seriously the reports of members of his cabinet and leaders of the
Republican Party in Congress that he saw in the Union victory at Antietam a
direct communication from on high.[74] Prior to that event, his language echoes
Cromwell’s in the period leading up to the execution of Charles I. As did his
prototype, the Emancipator declares that he has “preconsulted nothing” and that
“whatever shall appear to be God’s will, I will do.”[75] And again, after the
decision has been made, he sounds the Cromwellian note, echoing Old Noll’s
disclaimer, “I have not sought these things; truly, I have been called
unto them by the Lord.”[76] Long before Lincoln in his Second Inaugural
discusses the providential meaning of the chapter of history completed at
Appomattox and sets himself as the “godded man,” beyond most of the radical
Republicans in his understanding of these events as part of “universal
history,” the direction of the United States toward whatever is meant by
“finish the work” has fallen into the hands of “God’s new Messiah,” the
“homemade Jesus” of the Lincoln myth.[77] Lincoln’s apotheosis through
martyrdom served only to put a divine seal of approval on his understanding of
himself. Or so we should be persuaded by what his fellow Americans made of the
assassination and funeral, coming as they did at the end of a civil war[78] and
surrounded as they were in a language promising salvation through social and
political change.[79]’
Thus, the
symbols and icons of ‘Christian America’.
However,
actual Christians who have not departed from the unbroken tradition of the Holy
Apostles have a different view of such things.
They see the restoration of paganism as being of the spirit of
Antichrist. A priest of the Orthodox
Church, Fr Athanasius Mitilianaios, commenting on St
John the Apostle’s Revelation 17:8-12, says of Gnosticism/Freemasonry:
. . .
The rest may
be read here:
https://www.geopolitika.ru/en/article/lingering-paganism-us
Or here:
https://katehon.com/en/article/lingering-paganism-us
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us
sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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