What was the reason behind that? i’ve done searches, and found only the facts regarding the time of the legend “In God We Trust” added to US currency in 1957, but no reason why. What’s up with that? And who’s responsible?
In 1957, the motto had been on our coins for nearly a century. See http://www.treas.gov/opc/opc0011.html
It was the first link that came up with Google, BTW. Try using that for your searching (http://www.google.com).
You need to watch more “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” They asked what the first coin to see In God We Trust on it. Thanks to RealityChuck’s x3 post, we can find out that it was the 2-cent coin.
i am sure this is what you recall seeing:
who’s responsible?
wow. thanx. yeah, i was really only thinking of paper currency, forgot about the coins. :rolleyes:
kind of makes you wonder about the church and state thing that just becuase of the religious sentiment among the troops during the civil war they would request the motto be stamped on the coins.
FWIW, Teddy Roosevelt tried to have “In God We Trust” removed from U.S. coins,(it was first added in 1864)claiming it was both unconstitutional and sacrilegious, but was rebuffed. I guess the early 1900s was not the time to do attempt this. My guess is that had he succeded, Woodrow Wilson would have restored it. Wilson was a hard core bible thumper all his life, and felt his every deed was ordained by God :rolleyes:
The OP wonders why the motto was added to currency in 1957. It is eplained, IMHO, here
The URL indicates that church membership in America grew from 49% in the 1940’s to 69% by the late '50’s. America certainly underwent a religious revival in the '50’s. It was probably due to those nasty commies. So the religious conservative right should probably thank the Russians for their help. God works in mysterious ways.
Perhaps you were thinking of “one nation, under God, indivisible,” which was added to the Pledge of Allegiance at roughly the same time. Ike and his contemporaries were playing up the “Godless communist” angle pretty hard back in those days.
[Moment of reflection: back then, if you were “Godless” you were likely to be impoverished and communist. Now, if you are “Godless,” you’re more likely to be gainfully employed as a techie and laughing at preachers telling the world that hard drives can be possessed by demonic spirits.]
I’d just like to add that having to put quotes around a url is lame.
President Theodore Roosevelt did in fact have the motto removed from the $20 gold piece.
His reasoning was money is used for a myriad of purposes, some noble, some… not. (Prostitution, for example) Since money can be used in bad ways, he felt it extremely bad to have the Deity engraved on our coinage. It makes a kind of sense, in a way.