{"id":299901,"date":"2010-02-09T12:48:06","date_gmt":"2010-02-09T17:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.rj.org,2010:\/rac\/\/2.2435"},"modified":"2010-02-09T14:19:39","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T19:19:39","slug":"post-office-proselytizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/299901","title":{"rendered":"Post Office Proselytizing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Elizabeth Tenety over at <a href=\"http:\/\/newsweek.washingtonpost.com\/onfaith\/\"><i>Washington Post<\/i> &amp; <i>Newsweek<\/i>&#8216;s On Faith blog<\/a> asks after the <a href=\"http:\/\/newsweek.washingtonpost.com\/onfaith\/undergod\/2010\/02\/mother_teresa_and_faith_the_size_of_a_postage_stamp.html\">propriety of the United States Postal Service&#8217;s release of a Mother Teresa stamp<\/a>. She points to a raging debate mostly in the conservative hate-o-sphere of ultra-extreme pundits who believe Mother Teresa is under attack by atheists and non-believers. For some, the Mother Teresa stamp means you&#8217;re either with us or against us.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Of course, the separation of religion and state is not only constitutionally mandated, but the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usps.com\/communications\/organization\/csac.htm\">USPS also has its own guidelines<\/a>, pointed to by Ms. Tenety, that state:<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div>Stamps or stationery items shall not be issued to honor religious institutions or individuals whose principal achievements are associated with religious undertakings or beliefs.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div>\n<div>So this got me thinking. If, no matter how widely loved a body might be, they are a religious figure or institution, they can&#8217;t be on the stamps or stationary items. This led me to search some popular &#8220;religious&#8221; terms over at&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/shop.usps.com\/\" style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">shop.usps.com<\/a>&nbsp;to see what I got.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Jesus: 0 items<\/div>\n<div>Christ: 13 items<\/div>\n<div>Jew: 1 item<\/div>\n<div>Santa: 4 items<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Hardly a scientific study, particularly since not everything in the USPS store is subject to the above regulation. What other keywords would be good for this? Tell us in the comments!<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elizabeth Tenety over at Washington Post &amp; Newsweek&#8216;s On Faith blog asks after the propriety of the United States Postal Service&#8217;s release of a Mother Teresa stamp. She points to a raging debate mostly in the conservative hate-o-sphere of ultra-extreme pundits who believe Mother Teresa is under attack by atheists and non-believers. For some, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4316,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-299901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}