{"id":87617,"date":"2019-06-14T13:01:06","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T17:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=87617"},"modified":"2019-06-05T13:40:57","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T17:40:57","slug":"weekend-open-thread-purging-the-u-s-capitol-of-religious-references","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=87617","title":{"rendered":"Weekend Open Thread-Purging the U.S. Capitol of Religious References?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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US Capitol. (visitthecapitol.gov)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

You’re familiar with the movement to remove Confederate Soldier statues and other related references. Before that, and still ongoing, is the movement to remove religious references from government and public spaces.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s a good thing that many of them aren’t familiar with history.<\/p>\n

Let’s take the U.S. Capitol for example. The word “Capitol” comes from the Latin words “Capitolium” and “capitolinus”. This described the most important temple of the Roman Empire, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. On some occasions, the name extended to include the hill it was on.<\/p>\n

Many folks would dismiss the connection between the U.S. Capitol and the Temple of Jupiter. An understanding of history actually makes a strong argument for the connection.<\/p>\n

The Ancient Romans occasionally used Jupiter’s temple as a place to make law. Most of the times, they used a “Curia”.\u00a0 A curia had rooms for both making law and for worship and religious ceremony.<\/p>\n

The first connection, Jupiter.<\/p>\n

The Old Testament doesn’t provide a detailed description of God. In fact, God goes out of his way to be obscure and anonymous, even when interacting with humans. Yet, people have an image of him sporting white hair and a beard.<\/p>\n

This was a carryover from the time the Romans accepted Christianity. This image is an echo of Jupiter\/Zeus. God sitting on a throne? Echo of Jupiter\/Zeus sitting on a throne.<\/p>\n

The first syllable of “Jupiter” is an echo of an ancient word for “God”. The last two syllables is an echo of an ancient word for “father”. However, used in the format used by the ancients, we don’t get “God Father” but “Father God”. With “Optimus Maximus” added to the name, we have “Father God, best and greatest”. As the “sky god,” that made him “heavenly father”… Ergo, “Heavenly father, best and greatest”.<\/p>\n

Thus, the ancient practice of identifying and “merging” similar gods was easy for the Romans to do when Christianity became their official religion.<\/p>\n

The second connection, building design.<\/p>\n

The US Capitol not only has chambers for making law but a room for prayer. They also have a chaplain. Very similar in design to the “Curia”, the place that Roman senators created law. The Capitol’s entrances are echoes of the entrances of Jupiter’s temple. The Dome is also a religious\/Christian symbol.<\/p>\n

The references to Jupiter, here, are actually references to the Christian God. Our founders were history buffs and saw the connections. Those involved with the design of the Capitol were also familiar with this history.<\/p>\n

The third connection, the philosophy of the founders.<\/p>\n

When reading the arguments of the founders, one would find references to “the laws of God” and to “the laws of nature”. Both of these were linked and were used to justify the argument that our rights came from above, and can’t simply be taken without due process.<\/p>\n

Once those on the left discover this, would they advocate changing the Capitol’s design?<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: the above is an argument from a historical perspective. Not an attempt to convert anybody.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You’re familiar with the movement to remove Confederate Soldier statues and other related references. Before that, … Weekend Open Thread-Purging the U.S. Capitol of Religious References?<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[221,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-87617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-thread","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=87617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87729,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87617\/revisions\/87729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}