Currency Exchange

I recently received a forwarded email from a friend. One of those, “If you are upset, pass it on” kind of things. This one had to do with Americans being upset with the fact that “In God We Trust” might not be included on the new dollar coins. It turned out to be a hoax like many of these things. Of course this email resulted in a series of emails back and forth among the addressees on the list. I thought I might add my two cents, from what I have gleaned in my years of reading about the founding of our nation.


As most of us know, our early colonies were settled for a variety of reasons. Early efforts to establish a foothold in the new world were to make money for the home country or the company that was financing the colony. And of course, many colonies were founded as religious havens for colonists who fled Europe to come to America. People like the Pilgrims were trying to set up a place where they could worship freely. Somewhere between 1607 (the founding of Jamestown) and 1776 (the signing of our Declaration of Independence) the melting pot that is our nation began to take on its present form.

Over this span of 169 years, people of many ethnicities, religious backgrounds and cultures settled all throughout the 13 colonies. Admittedly, many of the early colonists were Christians and devout at that. It would be hard not to admit that many of our Founding Fathers were Christians and that their Christianity affected their philosophies but here is where the genius of the Founding Fathers emerged. The Framers of our nation were able to be objective, to see past their own world views and realize that, in America there had to be room for anyone’s world view, especially where religion is concerned. We can see this in the First Amendment, arguably the most important amendment.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

We can see how important the Freedom of Religion is as the Framers listed it first. If the founders are saying that Congress shall make no law establishing a religion, doesn’t it hold true that even if their own Christianity was paramount to them, they had the foresight to realize that America was a polyglot nation and that there was room here for followers of all of the various sects of Christianity as well as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism etc…and even people who don’t believe in a god. That is why it is really not necessary to have “In God We Trust” on our money. Having that printed on our currency implies certain beliefs and as the founders understood, maybe all Americans don’t share those beliefs.

In 1801, a group of Baptist ministers in Danbury, CT wrote a letter to the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. They congratulated the new president and then they had a favor to ask. The Baptists were a minority group and they were nervous. The Baptists could see how powerful the firmly established religions were and the Baptists were being persecuted and made to feel unwelcome. They asked Jefferson, “Our constitution of government is not specific with regard to a guarantee of religious freedom that would protect the Baptists. Might the president offer some thoughts on that, like the radiant beams of the sun, and shed some light on the intent of the framers.”

In his reply Jefferson said it was not the place of the president to involve himself in religion and he expressed his belief that the First Amendment’s clauses-that the government must not establish a state religion (the establishment clause) but also that it must ensure the free exercise of religion (what became known as the free-exercise clause)-meant, as far as Jefferson was concerned, that there was, "a wall of separation between Church and State.”

You can decide what the scribe of the Declaration of Independence meant for yourself. Isn’t it obvious that he is offering the Baptist minority of Danbury, CT the protection of our First Amendment? And isn’t he really offering it to every American, including those who don’t believe in god? It seems obvious to me that something like “In God We Trust” on our currency would break this theoretical wall of separation that Jefferson wrote about. That’s just my two cents on the issue.