“Today even ardent separationists seem to agree with retired Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, who wrote in 1983 that slogans such as ‘In God We Trust’ have ‘lost any true religious significance. But as TIME wrote in that ’91 story, the banality of the phrases may not be worth the fight as a symbol of separating church from state. This specific design was made by a woman named Laura Gardin Fraser in 30s and was actually used one time on a 1999 commemorative coin.
The motto appeared on paper currency beginning in 1957, and in the subsequent decades, numerous legal actions have sought to remove it from currency and strike “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance. Its the design chosen for the next five years of honoring American Women. By the mid-1950s, the concern with piety in Washington had apparently deepened in 1955 Congress ordered the same phrase to appear on all paper currency. A public outcry forced Congress to backtrack. But as TIME wrote in a 1991 cover story on the separation of church and state, opposition lay ahead.īy the turn of the century, however, the war’s memory had faded President Teddy Roosevelt considered the mingling of God and Mammon to be vulgar, and he ordered the phrase removed from newly designed gold coins in 1907.