How did “In God We Trust” get stamped on the currency of a country with a godless Constitution? How did a secular nation get a religious national motto? These are the questions FFRF Director of Strategic Response Andrew L. Seidel set out to answer in a new article for Rewire News, the first in a three-part series. Seidel begins:

How did “In God We Trust” get stamped on the currency of a country with a godless Constitution? How did a secular nation get a religious national motto?

The story is not one of national unity, but of exploitation. It does not begin, as so many claim, with the American founding, but rather four score and seven years later, in 1863. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1 of that year, conscriptions followed, as did some of the war’s bloodiest battles, including Chickamauga and Gettysburg. Brothers were killing brothers—more than 2 percent of the population, or about eight million Americans today, would die. Families and the country were being torn apart.

Read the rest here.

The second article will expose Project Blitz, the Christian nationalist crusade to get the godly motto in our public schools. The third other piece examines the legality of the motto and the Christian hypocrisy courts have inadvertently exposed when upholding the phrase.