‘In God We Trust’ became the official motto of the United States today in 1956. President Dwight Eisenhower, a recently baptized Presbyterian, signed a law requiring that the motto be included on all American currency. Two years earlier, he had added the phrase ‘One nation under God’ to the US Pledge of Allegiance.
It is the feast of Peter Chrysologus (‘Peter of the Golden Word’), who was the Bishop of Ravenna in the 5th century and was famous for his short, inspiring sermons. His sermon for the Day of Pentecost, just 550 words of text, would probably have taken up five minutes of his congregation’s time. He is the patron saint of ‘stand up, speak up, shut up, sit down’.
‘When is a king more glorious? When he is decked out in his purple, adorned with the diadem, covered with gold, high on his throne? Or is he more glorious when wearing ordinary attire for the battlefield, last in honour, first in perils, laden with a sword, heavily equipped with arms, when for the life of all the people he destroys the enemy, despises dangers, thinks little of wounds, and is willing to endure his own death for the safety of his people?’ Peter Chrysologus, ‘Second Sermon on the Lord’s Passion’, translated by William B Palardy
Rudolf Bultmann, the German biblical scholar and champion of demythologising the New Testament, died today in 1976 – or so his disciples claim. Bultmann thought it was not possible (or even desirable) to know anything about the historical Jesus, beyond the fact that he lived and died. For him, the sayings and miracles of Jesus in the Gospels were created by the early Church. His ideas were hugely influential in the mid 20th century, but scholars mostly now treat his radically sceptical ideas with scepticism.
‘We cannot use electric lights and radios and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament. And if we suppose that we can do so ourselves, we must be clear that we can represent this as the attitude of Christian faith only by making the Christian proclamation unintelligible and impossible for our contemporaries’ – Rudolf Bultmann
Thomas Gray, the English poet, died today in 1771. He is celebrated for his poem, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard’, a lyrical meditation on death, obscurity and memory. It is thought he wrote the poem in the churchyard where he now lies buried, St Giles, in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire.
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway’d,
Or wak’d to ecstasy the living lyre.
Thomas Gray, ‘Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard’
Image: Julie Jablonski