{"id":29885,"date":"2026-01-03T12:32:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-03T12:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=29885"},"modified":"2026-01-03T12:32:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-03T12:32:45","slug":"letter-from-martin-dines-churchwarden-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/?p=29885","title":{"rendered":"Letter from Martin Dines, Churchwarden"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Among the events taking place in 2026, such as the football World Cup, the Winter Olympics\/Paralympics, and Suzi Quatro playing at the London Palladium, we have a quarter-millennium commemoration to observe.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The United States of America will be celebrating the 250<sup>th<\/sup> anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4<sup>th<\/sup>, 1776. The Declaration articulated the ideals of liberty and self-governance and encompassed many grievances against the British rule, particularly aimed at King George III, justifying their act of rebellion.<\/p>\n<p>You can imagine the colonists discussing the principles and practices under which they wanted to live. Thomas Jefferson said that he hoped his Declaration words would serve as an <em>\u201cexpression of the American mind\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The most compelling sentence in the Declaration, for me, is <em>\u201cthat all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.\u201d. <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Unalienable rights or Human Rights matter!<\/strong> &#8211; \u201c<em>the right to life, freedom from torture, the right to liberty and a fair trial, and the right to private and family life; freedoms like expression, assembly, and religion, as well as protections against discrimination\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I have two new year resolutions; a) to respect these values in everyone I meet. God wants us all to have \u2018abundant life\u2019 and b) to pursue the aspirations of \u201c<em>Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness\u201d<\/em>. We are all <em>\u201ccreated equal\u201d<\/em> and sometimes this needs to be written into a document; lest we forget.<\/p>\n<p>The Declaration ends with a solemn promise <em>\u201cwith a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>All for one and one for all?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So let us wish America a happy birthday as they celebrate 250 years of independence, with a hope and prayer that they too embrace the words of their founding fathers and honour their original principles. <strong>Amen<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among the events taking place in 2026, such as the football World Cup, the Winter Olympics\/Paralympics, and Suzi Quatro playing at the London Palladium, we have a quarter-millennium commemoration to observe.&nbsp;&nbsp; The United States of America will be celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":22573,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","category-news","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29885"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29886,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29885\/revisions\/29886"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ducklingtonchurch.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}