Giving God Currency: The American Story

In 1978 Madalyn Murray O'Hair, then President of American Atheists, sued the federal government (O'Hair v. Blumenthal, Treasury Secretary et al) to have the phrase In God We Trust removed from American currency. She lost the case, and her appeal was turned down. Interestingly, the Court ruled that 'the primary purpose of the slogan was secular; it served as secular ceremonial purpose in the obviously secular function of providing a medium of exchange. As such it is equally clear that the use of the motto on the currency or otherwise does not have a 'primary' effect of advancing religion'.

In 1988, Jon Murray, then President of American Atheists confirmed that his organisation's goals include removing "under God" from the pledge of allegiance, removing "In God We Trust" from currency, and changing the national motto from "In God We Trust" to E Pluribus Unum (One Unity composed of Many Parts). The E Pluribus Unum is found in In Moreturn, a poem dwelling on habits and customs ascribed to a Virgil: It manus in gyrum; Paullatin singula vires. Depedunt proplas; color est E pluribus unum.

In 1988, Jon Murray also made a Written Statement to the Congressional Sub-Committee, seeking to 'modernize United States circulating coin designs of which one reverse will have a theme of the Bicentennial of the Constitution'. In his statement Jon Murray gave information about how God came to attain an official status in the United States of America mainly through the machinations of a few.

Originally, the New Jersey cent of 1786 as well as the 1795 coins struck at the United States Mint bore the motto E Pluribus Unum, which was first proposed in a design for the Great Seal of the United States that Thomas Jefferson first presented unsuccessfully to the US Congress in 1776. But the post-civil war religious fanaticism saw the ascendance of President Lincoln's hand picked appointee James Pollock who became Director of the US Mint. Pollock believed that the United States must become an official theocracy, and was crucial in the attempt to christianize American coins. In God We Trust was first used on the bronze two-cent piece which was issued from 1864 to 1873.

In 1908, under Theodore Roosevelt, Congress passed a Bill which ensured that the motto In God We Trust was now present on all Gold and Silver coins. With Lyndon B. Johnson's 1955 Bill which became law without much discussion, the motto was used on paper currency as well. And in the midst of the McCarthy era in 1956, a law was passed by Congress which made In God We Trust the National Motto as well.