This is why America is stuck treading water

[Louis VI the Fat]

Rhy, I understand America has its own traditions. There's no point in projecting a different history on it.

Still America's history is not one of Protestant fundamentalism. Even if one understands that the religious element is a constant in American history, one can still see that religious fundamentalism has encroached upon the state and the public sphere in the past century. America's political and constitutional history are being rewritten by fundamentalist blogs, scientists, lawyers. It is all quite dismaying. Political and legal science are under attack from fundamentalists just as much as biology.

(Whereas in France, which I don't mistake for America, this religious encroachment, the perennial attacks on the third Republic by Catholicism, plus the outcry over the depravity of the religious right during the Dreyfus affair, led to the very twentieth century(!) solution of laïcité.)

Well a quick google tells me that it's been on currency since the 1860's and has been on all currency since the 1930's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust

I've been had!

Nevertheless, even that quick wiki tells the familiar story, that of encroaching religionisation, in this case of America's coin and paper money. When the Romans wished to trap Jesus, they showed him a coin bearing the likeness of Caesar. They hadn't counted on Jesus' modesty: 'Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's!'

No such separation for the American clerics. No such modesty for the American Taleban. Unlike the man they worship, they would not rest until their god was printed on every coin and bill:

The motto IN GOD WE TRUST first appeared on the 1864 two-cent coin, followed in 1866 by the 5 cent nickel (1866–1883), quarter dollar, half dollar, silver dollar and gold dollars.[1][3] It is codified as federal law in the United States Code at 36 U.S.C. § 302, which provides: "'In God we trust' is the national motto."


Use of the motto on circulating coinage is required by law. A March 3, 1865 law allowed the motto to be used on coins.[4] The use of the motto was permitted, but not required, by an 1873 law. While several laws come into play, the act of May 18, 1908,[5] is most often cited as requiring the motto (even though the cent and nickel were excluded from that law, and the nickel did not have the motto added until 1938). Since 1938, all coins have borne the motto. On July 11, 1955 it became required on all coins and currency by Act of Congress.[6] The motto was added to paper money over a period from 1957 to 1966.[1]