{"id":46008,"date":"2012-05-16T11:40:35","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T16:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=46008"},"modified":"2013-11-08T04:29:25","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T09:29:25","slug":"communism-atheism-and-placing-in-god-we-trust-on-the-u-s-dollar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/05\/16\/communism-atheism-and-placing-in-god-we-trust-on-the-u-s-dollar\/","title":{"rendered":"“In God We Trust”: Communism, Atheism, & the U.S. Dollar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Americans are familiar with seeing the phrase “In God We Trust” on our paper money. \u00a0The motto is, indeed<\/a>, the official United States motto. \u00a0It wasn’t always that way, however. \u00a0While efforts to have the phrase inscribed on U.S. currency began during the Civil War, it wasn’t until 1957 that it appeared on our paper money, thanks to a law signed by President Eisenhower.<\/p>\n

1956<\/a>:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1957<\/a>:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The motto wasn’t simply added in order to please God-fearing Americans, but instead had a political motivation. \u00a0The mid- to late-1950s marked an escalation in the Cold War between the U.S., the Soviet Union, and their respective allies. \u00a0In an effort to claim moral superiority and demonize the communist Soviet Union, the U.S. drew on the association of communism with atheism. \u00a0Placing “In God We Trust” on the U.S. dollar was a way to establish the United States as a Christian nation and differentiate them from their enemy (source<\/a>).<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans are familiar with seeing the phrase “In God We Trust” on our paper money. \u00a0The motto is, indeed, the official United States motto. \u00a0It wasn’t always that way, however. \u00a0While efforts to have the phrase inscribed on U.S. currency began during the Civil War, it wasn’t until 1957 that it appeared on our paper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23384,98,2126,253,304,42,23622,309],"class_list":["post-46008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-capitalism","tag-communismsocialism","tag-history","tag-the-state","tag-religion","tag-social-construction-symbols","tag-warmilitary"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46008"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46008\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58369,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46008\/revisions\/58369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}