Religious Jewelry

Not jewelry that prays regularly but jewelry that proclaims your religious convictions.

The postal worker shoved my mail through the mail slot and it hit the floor with a heavy thud. Ah, I thought, Christmas catalogs. I received several that I haven't seen in the last eight years, not since I wandered off to seminary. (How could it possibly have been so long ago?) I was flipping through Wireless and Signals (catalogs supporting public radio and public television) and saw a number of bracelets sporting religious phrases or scriptural references.

http://www.signals.com/signals/Jewelry_1FA/Bracelets-Watches_1FC/Item_Lords-Prayer-M246bius-Bracelet_HA1592G_ps_ctf-1FA.html
http://www.signals.com/signals/Jewelry_1FA/Bracelets-Watches_1FC/Item_Philippians-413-Cuff-Bracelet_HB1042G_ps_cti-1FC.html

Certainly before I went to seminary, bracelets like these would have been seen only in "Christian" bookstore catalogs beside the Precious Moments figurines.

I don't wear religious jewelry. I had a silver triqueta which I bought in Ireland that I wore for a while until the chain broke. Part of the reason that I don't wear religious jewelry is my WASP upbringing that frowned on such displays as "lower class" (hate to admit this). Another reason is something I heard from a friend after she put a fish symbol on her car: "Now I have to be really careful how I drive." Somehow wearing religious jewelry bears the risk that I will be held to a standard of behavior higher than I am capable of. In other words, I don't want to give Christians a bad name. (I have said more than once that being a Christian doesn't mean that you have to let people take unfair advantage of you. Or Christians can have boundaries.)

So, I wonder why people wear jewelry with Bible verses on it. The only one that caught my fancy was one in Hebrew with the shema written on it.
http://www.signals.com/signals/Jewelry_1FA/Bracelets-Watches_1FC/Item_Shema-Mobius-Bracelet_HE7632_ps_cti-1FC.html