Friday, July 23, 2010

Number 5 - They adopted a Roman as their Saint and blamed past misdeeds on a giant lizard

It is true that England has Saint George as its patron Saint (Scotland has Saint Andrew, Wales has Saint David and Ireland has Saint Patrick), but then so do plenty of other places including Aragon, Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal and Russia, as well as the cities of Amersfoort, Beirut, Fakiha, Bteghrine, Cáceres, Ferrara, Freiburg, Ljubljana, Pomorie, Preston, Qormi, Rio de Janeiro, Lod, Barcelona, Moscow, Tamworth and the Maltese island of Gozo, so are all these places the same as England?

So does America have a patron Saint? Well, no, not really, this is because the entire country has never had an official religion, although some states did originally have one. The Catholic church has never been prominent enough in American history to give the entire country a patron saint. Protestants don't give as much importance to saints as Catholics, so the religious community would not be unified on the idea. Or in other words America has too many separate religions to be unified in the idea of a patron Saint. It has been suggested in a few places that the Virgin Mary is the patron Saint of America, if this is the case then that means a woman who told everyone she never had sex yet strangely became pregnant with and indeed gave birth to Jesus, how's that for a fairy tale?

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