{"id":3341,"date":"2007-11-30T11:41:00","date_gmt":"2007-11-30T11:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/hes-on-the-money-this-explains-why.html"},"modified":"2007-11-30T11:41:00","modified_gmt":"2007-11-30T11:41:00","slug":"hes-on-the-money-this-explains-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/hes-on-the-money-this-explains-why.html","title":{"rendered":"He’s on the money. This explains why."},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone curious about how God wound up on our currency should check out this intriguing nugget<\/a> in today’s Wall Street Journal, which explains everything. It began with a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase by a Rev. Watkinson: <\/p>\n

“Dear Sir, One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins. You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were now shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What follows is the story of how that letter led to a bill that eventualy placed “In God We Trust” on American coins. Signing that bill became one of President Lincoln’s final acts, just weeks before he was assassinated. <\/p>\n

Check out the WSJ piece<\/a> for a valuable, and increasingly meaningful, history lesson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anyone curious about how God wound up on our currency should check out this intriguing nugget in today’s Wall Street Journal, which explains everything. It began with a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase by a Rev. Watkinson: “Dear Sir, One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":204,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-and-that"],"yoast_head":"\nHe's on the money. This explains why. - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2007\/11\/hes-on-the-money-this-explains-why.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"He's on the money. This explains why. - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Anyone curious about how God wound up on our currency should check out this intriguing nugget in today’s Wall Street Journal, which explains everything. It began with a letter sent to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase by a Rev. Watkinson: “Dear Sir, One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. 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Prior to that, Deacon Greg worked for 26 years as a writer and producer for CBS News, where he contributed to \"The CBS Evening News with Katie Couric,\" \"60 Minutes II,\" \"48 Hours,\" (Emmy Award, Writers Guild of America Award) and \"Sunday Morning.\" He was co-writer for the acclaimed documentary \"9\/11,\" hosted by Robert DeNiro. (Emmy Award, Christopher Award, Peabody Award, Writers Guild of America Award.) His radio essays were featured in the bestselling book \"Deadlines and Datelines\" by Dan Rather. He's also a two-time winner of the Catholic Press Association Award. Other places you may find him: AMERICA, U.S. CATHOLIC, CATHOLIC DIGEST, REALITY (Redemptorist Communications) and THE BROOKLYN TABLET. He also contributes homiletic reflections to the parish resource CONNECT!, published by Liturgical Publications. In November 2009, he began serving a three-year term as a consultant to the Communications Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Deacon Greg grew up in Maryland (Go Terps!) but he and his wife today live in the beautiful borough of Queens, New York. You can contact Deacon Greg at dcngreg@gmail.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/gkandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/204"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}