The phrase “In God We Trust” appears on American money. This year, as Americans celebrate 250 years of Independence, it is worth reminding ourselves that this is a fairly modern tradition rooted in the American Civil War. This is the story …
Isaac Watts
The words of the phrase “In God We Trust” go back to Isaac Watts (1674–1748), who was born in Southampton in southern England. He made a metrical translation of the Psalms, which was published in 1719 as "Psalms of David Imitated". His version of Psalm 90, “Our God in Ages Past”, is still sung as a hymn in many churches. His version of Psalm 98, “Joy to the World”, is commonly sung at Christmas.
Psalm 115:9–11 in the King James Version, which was almost the only version in use then, reads: “O Israel, trust thou in the LORD: he is their help and their shield. O house of Aaron, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield. Ye that fear the LORD, trust in the LORD: he is their help and their shield.”
Watts adapted and paraphrased this as: “O Britain, trust the Lord: thy foes in vain
Attempt thy ruin, and oppose his reign.”
Joel Barker
In 1785, the General Association of Connecticut commissioned the publisher Joel Barker to produce a version of Isaac Watts’ Psalter. It was just nine years after Independence, and they wanted all references to Britain and the monarch removed. Joel Barlow changed the paraphrase of Psalm 115:9–11 to: “In God we Trust: our impious foes in vain
Attempt our ruin and oppose his reign.”
The 1785 American edition of the Psalter was published as "Doctor Watts's Imitation of the Psalms of David, Corrected and Enlarged. By Joel Barlow". It became extremely popular, and this is when the phrase “In God We Trust” entered American consciousness.
Francis Scott Key
In 1812, the United States invaded Canada, attacked British forces, and declared war on Great Britain. British forces, often supported by Native Americans and escaped slaves who had more freedom in Canada than in the USA, fought back. In 1814, an American, Francis Scott Key, was so inspired by the American flag still flying over Fort McHenry after a British bombardment that he wrote a poem called “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
Originally it had four verses, although most Americans only know the first verse. The little-known fourth verse references the 1812 war and includes the phrase:
“Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto — ‘In God is our trust’.”
Ironically, the cause was hardly just, and Canada was not conquered. The War of 1812 ended with the Treaty of Ghent, which made no territorial changes. It was a pointless war whose main result was cementing Canadian identity and stopping US expansion northwards. Nevertheless, in 1931, the American Congress made “The Star-Spangled Banner” their national anthem.
Civil War
In 1861, the United States entered another war, except this time it was an internal conflict, now known as the American Civil War. The southern states, dominated by Baptists and Methodists, seemed much more religious, and there were many revivals in the South, with many Confederates claiming the support of God. Meanwhile, the northern states seemed more secular. However, for many, the drive to abolish slavery was rooted in evangelical beliefs, as it had been decades earlier in the United Kingdom.
Rev Mark Watkinson
In 1861, the Rev Mark R Watkinson (1824–1877) was pastor of the First Particular Baptist Church of the Township of Ridley in Pennsylvania, now called Prospect Hill Baptist Church. That year, in the American Civil War, Fort Sumter had fallen, Union forces had been defeated at First Bull Run, and prospects for restoring the Union seemed dim.
Rev Mark Watkinson had the idea to add the words “God, Liberty, Law” to national coinage in the context of the Civil War, when the Confederates were perceived as more religious. He wrote a letter to the Secretary of the US Treasury with the words: “One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.”
He was troubled that the coins depicted a personification of liberty in the form of the pagan Roman goddess Libertas on the obverse (heads) side, but had no Christian motto. He went on to ask how the United States would be remembered if Confederate secession was successful: “Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation?”
Salmon P Chase
Salmon P Chase was born in Cornish, New Hampshire. His father, Philander Chase (1775–1852), was an evangelical Episcopalian bishop. They descended from the Chase family whose roots lay in Puritan immigrants from Buckinghamshire in England.
Salmon P Chase was a lawyer who helped to found the Republican Party and argued from the Bible against slavery. Before joining the government, Chase had defended runaway slaves and the white citizens who helped them, and he denounced laws against runaway slaves. He served as Secretary of the Treasury under President Lincoln from 1862 to 1864. The well-known Chase Bank was posthumously named after him.
He received the letter from Rev Watkinson and liked the idea. Chase then wrote to the director of the US Mint and asked him to put “In God We Trust” on the coins, writing: “No nation can be strong except in the strength of God, or safe except in His defense. The trust of our people in God should be declared on our national coins.”
James Pollock
The director of the US Mint, James Pollock (1810–1890), was also a Christian, a former Congressman and Governor of Pennsylvania. He had also been Vice-President of the American Sunday School Union since 1855. He believed in Christian social action and founded a homeless shelter and soup kitchen in Philadelphia.
He argued for the phrase “In God We Trust” by reference to an allusion to a motto on “The Star-Spangled Banner”. In 1864, the Coinage Act allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to authorise the inclusion of the phrase on one-cent and two-cent coins, and in 1864 it first appeared on American currency on the two-cent coin.
The American Civil War ended in 1865, and Congress passed a bill allowing “In God We Trust” to be placed on all silver and gold coins. In 1873, Congress passed another Coinage Act allowing the phrase to be added to any coins, and from 1874 it was added to the dollar coin.
Controversy
The use of the phrase “In God We Trust” was controversial and not universally popular. Some critics argued that it blurred the line between church and state, which were supposed to be separated by the American Constitution.
Many evangelical Christians were uncomfortable that money should bear the phrase “In God We Trust”, when Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and Mammon” (Matthew 6:24). Jesus also said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21), and putting “In God We Trust” on coins seemed to muddle the two allegiances. Others recalled that St Paul wrote: “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10).
Others joked that it was a misspelling of “In Gold We Trust”, and others said, “In God we trust. All others are expected to pay cash.”
Among those who disagreed with having the phrase on coins was President Roosevelt, who wrote that using the phrase “comes dangerously close to sacrilege”. In 1904, he asked that the phrase be removed from the currency, and it did not appear on the eagle (ten-dollar) and double-eagle (twenty-dollar) coins.
However, by then people had become used to seeing the phrase on coins. Adding the phrase had originally been controversial, but removing it was now considered scandalous, and it returned to the eagle and double-eagle coins in 1908. Since 1938, it has been on all coins.
National motto
The Second World War was followed by the Cold War, which was seen as an ideological conflict between communism, which espoused atheism, and the West, which was underpinned by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Many people wanted to assert the Christian heritage of democracy and law, in contrast to the ideology of Marxism-Leninism.
In the 1950s, the use of the phrase “In God We Trust” was extended. In 1954, the phrase first appeared on the United States eight-cent postage stamp. In 1955, a law was passed stating that the phrase had to be added to all banknotes, and it began to appear on dollar bills. In 1956, the phrase was adopted as the national motto of the USA. In 1962, the motto was carved above the rostrum where the Speaker of the House sits.
A phrase that endures
The phrase “In God We Trust” comes from a paraphrase of Psalm 115:9–11. It first appeared on an American coin in 1863 and was controversial among evangelicals, but nevertheless evolved into a national motto.
The phrase has the advantage that it does not specify a particular denomination or tradition, but instead underlines a monotheistic belief in God, and as such can be embraced by most religious Americans, whether Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, or Muslim.
