In Semi-Official State Religiosity We Trust, at Least When We're Scared

For me, one of the most interesting parts of history is to find the threads of interconnection.


14 September 1814 - Francis Scott Key begins writing his poem, "The Star Spangled Banner," the fourth stanza of which contains the words "And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust,'" after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. This war was the first real test of the fledgling nation's ability to withstand foreign invasion.


12 April 1861 - The First Battle of Fort Sumter begins. This will come to be considered the official beginning of the Civil War.


June-July 1863 - The costly military victory for the Union in the Gettysburg Campaign hands the Confederacy a psychological victory.


22 April 1864 - Congress passes a law authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to include "In God We Trust" on one-cent and two-cent coins, in part to assert that God was on the side of the Union in the Civil War. This is the first time these words, inspired in part by Key's poem, appear on US currency.


1937-1938 - Though by 1937 the US economy had regained 1929 levels, there was another sharp downturn in 1937-1938 that prolonged what we now call The Great Depression.


15 November 1938 - The Jefferson Nickel enters circulation. Since this time the motto "In God We Trust" has appeared without interruption on all US coins.


27 July 1953 - Representatives of the North Korean and Chinese forces and the United Nations forces sign the Korean Armistice Agreement. The US military gets its first major black eye in the fight against Communist expansion.


March 1954 - The Presidium of The Supreme Soviet reorganizes internal and external espionage agencies to form the KGB.


14 June 1954 - President Dwight Eisenhower signs into law the amendment to the Flag Code inserting "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance.


21 July 1954 - Eight countries sign the Geneva Agreements, which (among other things) divide Vietnam along the 17th parallel. The United States refuses to sign.


14 May 1955 - The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Hungary, Poland, and Romania form the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation, and Mutual Assistance, known in the West as the Warsaw Pact.


22 November 1955 - The Soviet Union tests its first true thermonuclear weapon.


30 July 1956 - President Dwight Eisenhower signs into law the national motto as "In God we trust."


4 November 1956 - Soviet forces enter Budapest to begin crushing the Hungarian Revolution.


18 November 1956 - First recorded incidence of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev's uttering the words "We will bury you!"


1957-1966 - The "In God We Trust" motto was added to paper money. 


2012 - Lots of people seem to think God has always been on our money and in our pledge.


The War of 1812. The Civil War. The Great Depression. The Cold War. American semi-official state religiosity hasn't always been around. It has crept in over our history, and there seems to be a correlation between increases in this religiosity and times of great, nation-testing crisis. This correlation suggests that the American populace--and therefore by extension the American government--has long been willing to turn to semi-official religiosity when it has been afraid, whether of foreign conquerors, internal sundering, economic collapse, or the "Red Menace."


The picture is right--we aren't a nation founded on fear. We're a nation founded on courage, principle, and self-determination. It does seem, though, that we may be a nation that isn't above rejecting those founding pillars and turning to the hope of help from on high when we're frightened by events around us. We may as well be pitching virgins into volcanoes.