American money a reminder that God cares about you ... seriously

Patriotism was on a lot of our minds over the July 4 weekend.

Freedom is the most treasured possession in our American vocabulary. One of the most interesting features of our sense of freedom is the intersection among freedom, religion and money. It is a fascinating history to discover just how, from the beginning of our nation, our forefathers used paper money to send a clear message that God was watching over us.

What specific symbols on our paper money reflect religious values and connect us to being American citizens? Congress issued its first legal tender during the Civil War in 1862. It was not George Washington on the front side of the dollar bill as it is today. Instead it was Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. Yet, it is the back of the legal tender where we see the beginnings of how the nation’s leaders adapted religious symbols from the Bible itself to exemplify the historic and religious underpinnings of this new nation.

The Continental Congress, right before its adjournment on July 4, 1776, appointed a committee consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, the three architects of the Declaration of Independence, to design the national seal.

Clearly they saw a connection to Bible and ancient Egypt. According to historians, Franklin and Jefferson wanted the Great Seal to include the Egyptian Pharaoh. Franklin is said to have advocated for a Turkey instead of the eagle. Their idea was to have a depiction of Pharaoh sitting in an open chariot with a crown on his head and a sword in his hand, passing through the divided waters pursuing the Israelites. The seal would say, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

Even though it did not happen, Jefferson is said to have used that phrase on his own personal seal. As if anything has changed when it comes to getting something through Congress, it took six committees and six years until a final national seal was approved on June 13, 1782, by Charles Thomson who was secretary of the Continental Congress.

Inside the final rendition of the seal are the Pyramid and the Eagle, which now appears on the one dollar bill.

From 1801 to 1807, the eagles on the backs of our silver coins were shown with the arrow in the right talon instead of the left. Foreign journalists used it as a means of attacking the United States for warlike intentions. They ultimately changed the symbol in 1807, to include an olive branch for peace to subdue the accusations that the US was a warlike nation.

The eagle holds in its beak a banner that says, “E Plurbus Unum,” “Out of many, One.” The fascinating depiction of an unfinished pyramid on the back of the dollar bill means “strength and duration.” The 13 layers of the pyramid have the Latin inscription “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” translated to mean a “New Order of the Ages.” The eye above the pyramid says “Annuit Coeptis” or “Providence has favored our undertakings.”

Thompson clearly believed that God had favored the American nation and protected it with his watchful eye.

Then in 1934 Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace who would later become Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president reinterpreted the meaning of the phrase “Novus Ordo Seclorum” from “A New Order of the Ages” to “The New Deal of the Ages.”

Politics again comes into play.

Historians claim that because Roosevelt and Wallace were both Free Masons they saw the pyramid as meaning the “all-seeing eye referring to the Masonic symbol of the Great Architect of the Universe.”

That is when Roosevelt decided to replace the design on the reverse of our one dollar bill with The Great Seal of the United States. The new design was first issued on the series of the 1935 dollar bill that we use today.

Our story is not yet complete. The phrase “In God We Trust,” first appeared on U.S. money during the Civil War to reflect our nation’s religious feeling and reverence for God. It first appeared on copper two-cent pieces in 1864, but it was not until 1956 when Congress passed a law declaring “In God We Trust,” as the national motto of the United States. It appeared on our paper money for the first time 1957.

It is now clear that our nation used its legal tender not only as a matter of financial transaction but also for communicating our core values as a God-fearing nation. Our forefathers saw the connection between the ancient Israelites and the new American nation.

As they started a new nation in the Bible, so too would America follow in the footsteps of ancient Israel by breaking free of servitude to England and with the guidance and inspiration of God watching over us set forth to a new era of democracy and freedom for all its citizens.

Let’s not forget that lesson in times like now, when we need to remember that God does care about what we do and how we conduct ourselves publicly and privately.

This story was originally published July 7, 2016 at 11:14 AM with the headline "American money a reminder that God cares about you ... seriously."