{"id":640,"date":"2006-09-01T19:46:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-01T19:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2006\/09\/patriots-protest-the-patriot-act.html"},"modified":"2006-09-01T19:46:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-01T19:46:00","slug":"patriots-protest-the-patriot-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/09\/patriots-protest-the-patriot-act.html","title":{"rendered":"Patriot&#8217;s Protest the Patriot Act"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Oh those New England Patriots.  No, not the football team,  I mean the one&#8217;s who run the gift shop next to the Old North Church in Boston. Seems they are a little ticked off at the Patriot Act which nullified various parts of a slightly earlier and more righteous document&#8212; the Bill of Rights, all in the name of that phantom called &#8216;national security&#8217;.  <\/p>\n<p>Well while I was doing a shoot for a series called Deeper Connections for Zondervan this week, I paid a visit to the gift shop next to the Old North Church, but only after climbing to the top of the steeple where  Sexton Newman hung the lanterns (no it was not Paul Revere who hung the lanterns) signaling one if by land and two if by sea&#8211; the Red Coats are coming (next stop Lexington Green and Concord Green). I wanted to do my patriotic duty, and besides my founding fathers would have been pleased&#8211; Old North Church is also a church where the Rev. Charles Wesley preached in 1736 and 1737.<\/p>\n<p>Sitting there in the gift shop was a wide assortment of coffee mugs and other sorts of the usual brickabrack and trinkets.  But one thing stood out&#8211; it was the coffee mug which had the complete Bill of Rights engraved all around its outside edge&#8212; in disappearing  ink!  You see, when you pour hot coffee in this cup, the various numbered  rights begin to disappear from sight one by one.  <\/p>\n<p>Its a little parable you see&#8211; thank&#8217;s to the Patriot Act, when things get hot around here, we can watch our rights disappear one after another.   So you can see now why I say&#8211; Oh those Boston Patriots!  What&#8217;ll they think of next to protest infringements on their rights and freedoms?  I&#8217;m thinking maybe use another potent potable in some sort of protest in Boston&#8212;  tea anyone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oh those New England Patriots. No, not the football team, I mean the one&#8217;s who run the gift shop next to the Old North Church in Boston. Seems they are a little ticked off at the Patriot Act which nullified various parts of a slightly earlier and more righteous document&#8212; the Bill of Rights, all&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Patriot&#039;s Protest the Patriot Act - The Bible and Culture<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2006\/09\/patriots-protest-the-patriot-act.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Patriot&#039;s Protest the Patriot Act - The Bible and Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Oh those New England Patriots. No, not the football team, I mean the one&#8217;s who run the gift shop next to the Old North Church in Boston. 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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&amp;E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}