Background: Prayer and God Were Everywhere
Growing up in those years, it was easy for school children to see that prayer had always been a visible part of public schools. We said “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance; we heard our trust in God proclaimed in the fourth verse of the National Anthem; we saw that same proclamation on the coins and dollar bills we spent. We sometimes even saw it on the postage stamps we licked.
However, we hadn’t been taught in school that America’s long relationship with God had run hot and cold. The Pledge of Allegiance was in use for more than three decades before President Eisenhower had it altered to incorporate the words “under God.” He did that to encourage American children to be religious as well as patriotic, because he was convinced that to prevail over world Communism someday, the nation would need adults who were steeped in religious belief.
Despite Francis Scott Key’s having recorded use of the phrase “In God is our trust” in 1814, the motto appeared on no U.S. money until a half-century later, when it was added to the two-cent piece, officially for the purpose of boosting the morale of Union troops fighting in the Civil War. One wonders just how that connection was supposed to work.
Variety of two-cent piece that was the first U.S. coin to proclaim “In God We Trust”
Over the subsequent decades, the motto was gradually added to, and at times was removed from, other denominations of coin. Only on the eve of World War II did the motto first find a home on all varieties of U.S. coinage at once. Inexplicably, it did not appear on paper currency – where it would prove to be more noticeable -- until 1957!
A couple of personal thoughts on this topic:
- Increasing the visible use of “In God We Trust” during times of national crisis smacks of desperation, and it also brings to mind the 1950s preoccupation with subliminal messaging. Was the change in your pockets supposed to subconsciously remind you to pray for a country that was in dire need?
- The most sincere Presidential reaction ever to the motto may have been that of President Teddy Roosevelt, when he directed the U.S. Mint to exclude “In God We Trust” from new $20 Gold pieces! Why? At that time, these coins were the de facto standard currency for payments to criminal enterprise, most notably at brothels and casinos. Roosevelt felt that it was hypocritical, and probably contrary to the Bible’s Second Commandment, to cite trust in God when paying criminals for having made one’s sins possible.
