(Image source: Architect of the Capitol)
The following excerpt comes from the book Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism. Although many people associate Christian nationalism with evangelicals, the book explores the role mainline Protestants have played in promoting the idea of America as a Christian country.
The following excerpt comes from the book’s sixth chapter, “In God We Trust?”
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An Uncivil Move
The preamble to the Constitution of the Confederate States of America framed the new breakaway country as a Christian nation. It noted the people of the Confederacy were “invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God” to “ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.” It marked a substantive shift away from what some people called the “godless” Constitution of the U.S., which referred to religion in its original version only by prohibiting religious tests for public office. So as the Civil War started, some Christians in the North worried that God might favor the Confederates. This line of thinking suggested that they needed to do something to invoke—and perhaps even demand—God’s blessing on the side of the Union.
In the early months of the war, Rev. Mark Watkinson sent a letter dated November 13, 1861, to the U.S. secretary of the treasury with one such solution: put God on Mammon. And who was Watkinson? The pastor of First Particular Baptist Church (now known as Prospect Hill Baptist Church) in Prospect Park, Pennsylvania. The congregation is affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA (who back then were known as Northern Baptists).
“One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins,” Watkinson wrote to the Treasury secretary. “You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation?”
Thus, Watkinson suggested a redesign that would include “God, Liberty, Law” stamped on the money. The minister even suggested it could help with the war effort.
“This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object,” he added in his letter. “This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my heart I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.”
Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase agreed with the general argument. A lifelong Episcopalian, Chase was raised in his teen years by his uncle, who was an Episcopal bishop. Chase wrote a November 20, 1861, memo to James Pollock, the director of the U.S. Mint, to find a suitable way to invoke God on the coins of the Union.
“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,” Chase wrote. “You will cause a device to be prepared without unnecessary delay with a motto expressing in the fewest and tersest words possible this national recognition.”
Pollock was of a similar mind as Watkinson the Baptist pastor and Chase the lay Episcopalian. The former governor of Pennsylvania, Pollock was a lifelong Presbyterian who served as an elder in his local church and while leading the Mint was vice president of the American Sunday School Union that promoted the creation of Sunday School programs in churches. Drawing from the last stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Pollock suggested the motto “In God Is Our Trust.” That song, of course, had also been penned during wartime as Francis Scott Key, an Episcopalian, composed it while witnessing the shelling of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
“We claim to be a Christian nation,” Pollock wrote in an 1863 report suggesting a conversion of the coin design to add his God motto. “Why should we not vindicate our character, by honoring the God of nations, in the exercise of our political sovereignty as a nation? Our national coinage should do this. Its legends and devices should declare our trust in God; in him who is the ‘King of kings and Lord of lords.’”
Like Watkinson and Chase, Pollock also tied the need to put God on the coins to the hope of winning the Civil War.
“The time for the introduction of this or a similar motto is propitious and appropriate,” he argued. “’Tis an hour of national peril and danger, an hour when man’s strength is weakness, when our strength and our nation’s strength and salvation must be in the God of battles and of nations. Let us reverently acknowledge his sovereignty, and let our coinage declare our trust in God.”
Chase liked the idea, but he crossed out the “is our” in Pollock’s motto and wrote “we.” The next year, 1864, Congress approved the new design, and “In God We Trust” showed up on two-cent coins as the war with Confederate forces continued. The slogan didn’t initially appear on all money, just on coins. And not everyone approved. A New York Times editorial in 1865 criticized “the enactment of this new form of national worship” as “improper.”17 The piece added, “Let us try to carry our religion—such as it is—in our hearts, and not in our pockets.” Others joked about trusting in God but demanding cash.
(Image source: Numismatic News)
President Theodore Roosevelt removed the phrase from coins in 1907 as part of an attempt to beautify the coins, but public outrage led to the slogan returning the next year. An Episcopal layman in Pennsylvania spearheaded the campaign to return God to the coins, and pastors across the country preached against Roosevelt’s redesign. Prominent critics of Roosevelt’s move included banker and Episcopalian J.P. Morgan, Democratic U.S. Rep. Morris Sheppard (a Methodist who later became known as “the father of Prohibition” for authoring the Eighteenth Amendment), and the vestry of the Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia (where Patrick Henry gave his famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech). Additionally, denominational groups passed resolutions calling on the return of God on U.S. coins, including the Episcopal Diocese of New York and the Presbyterian Brotherhood of America.
After first showing up during the Civil War (and surviving Roosevelt), the phrase “In God We Trust” eventually soared to national significance well beyond coins jingling in pockets. And another war provided the inspiration. The years just after World War II ushered in a golden age for Christian Nationalism in the United States. After the creation of the National Day of Prayer in 1952, the launch of the National Prayer Breakfast in 1953, and the addition of “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, the revival spread to feature “In God We Trust.” In 1955, Congress and President Dwight D. Eisenhower mandated its presence on all U.S. currency (not just coins). The next year, the leaders in Washington, D.C., adopted the phrase as the national motto.
An Enduring Legacy
When James Pollock, the head of the U.S. Mint during the Civil War, was a congressman in the 1840s, he supported the efforts of Samuel Morse in developing the telegraph. As Morse sent the first message, Pollock was in the room where it happened. From the U.S. Capitol, Morse sent a message to Baltimore: “What hath God wrought?” The phrase came from Numbers 23:23 in one of the messages of Balaam, the diviner with the talking donkey. Had Pollock been in the Capitol 177 years later, he might have seen several people carrying signs declaring “In God We Trust” as they stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. And on the infamous gallows built just outside the Capitol as people chanted “Hang Mike Pence,” people wrote “Hang them for treason,” “God Bless the USA,” and “In God We Trust.”
Yet, even after that, some mainline Protestants continue to celebrate their role in helping establish this motto. Like Prospect Hill Baptist Church in Prospect Park, Pennsylvania, the church where Rev. Mark Watkinson served in 1861 as he started the push to put God on our money. With events being held outdoors during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a sign of nostalgia for Christian Nationalism even as progressive agendas were being advanced. For instance, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in 2022, people stood outside the church and read King’s “I Have a Dream” speech as part of a community emphasis on combating racism. Above the speakers, an old sign hung on the exterior wall of the building: “Historic site. Origin of In God We Trust.” In smaller text beneath an image of two coins, the sign notes that “from this church in 1861 the suggestion was made that recognition to the Almighty God be placed on the coins of our country.”
On a smaller scale, the website of First Presbyterian Church in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, brags on its history page that Pollock worshiped at the church early in his career before he later “originated” the effort to put “the motto, ‘In God We Trust,’ on the United States coins that went into the collection plates.” Aside from the fact that Chase, not Watkinson or Pollock, actually came up with the phrase “In God We Trust,” the sign and website show how the efforts to create a significant Christian Nationalistic symbol are celebrated even today at mainline Protestant congregations. Far from a reckoning, the phrase is still lifted up.
But while these churches were ministering during COVID-19 and celebrating Epiphany, others also heralded “In God We Trust” as they participated in the Capitol insurrection. Once mustered up during the Civil War and Cold War, “In God We Trust” has worked for decades to bolster a Christian Nationalistic worldview among some Americans with its presence on numerous official documents and governmental buildings. Preaching from courtrooms, schools, currency, and presidential remarks, the motto adopted in wars today continues to disciple Americans to view their nation and faith in particular ways.
The phrase has survived multiple legal challenges to maintain its official status, but this has not always been a victory for Christianity. For instance, a 1970 federal appellate decision on a case questioning the phrase on currency found it didn’t violate church-state separation because the phrase was just “of patriotic or ceremonial character” without “any religious significance” and “no theological or ritualistic impact.” And a 2005 appellate ruling rejected a challenge to government buildings posting the motto because the phrase had “a legitimate secular purpose.” Far from keeping God in society, by adopting “In God We Trust” our government managed to kick religion out of “God.”
That’s a key problem that ultimately emerges. In the quest to place “In God We Trust” in various public spaces, those pushing for it will argue it’s a generic, unifying patriotic statement. The attempts to declare that the phrase “In God We Trust” is a religiously neutral statement is offensive. But it is precisely by defining it as secular that courts have backed use of the phrase on coins and public buildings. It’s blasphemous to use that phrase as some broad, inclusive,
unifying, generic American statement. Who is this “god” that the state is telling us to trust? To believe in God is by definition not religiously neutral. To conflate being American with being Christian is to attempt to water down—and even attack—the basic teachings of Christianity. But that’s what Christian Nationalism does.
The phrase chosen during the Civil War to invoke God’s blessings on the Union during the bloody fight against the Confederacy found itself in the crowd along with waving Confederate flags during an attempt to overturn an election. The insurrectionists, like religious and political leaders during the Cold War, held up as their motto a phrase that claimed God was on their side instead of a motto about the many people of the nation coming together as one. What hath God’s people
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