Have you seen the new nickel? It’s kinda weird looking :

The thing I really don’t like about it is the creepy engraving of Thomas Jefferson casting his awe-struck gaze on the word “God”. Considering that we’re in the middle of a divisive presidential campaign, let me point you to the campaign of 1800 to show you why this coin is so ludicrous :

During the election of 1800, Jefferson had his own encounter with the religious right. According to Eugene Sheridan, in his classic introduction to Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels, “The Federalist party and their ministerial allies arraigned Jefferson before the bar of public opinion as an unbeliever who was unworthy to serve as chief magistrate of a Christian nation.”

Pastor Timothy Dwight, president of Yale University, was a prime example. During the campaign, Dwight took advantage of his pulpit by raining fire and brimstone down on Jefferson’s reputation, accusing him of ungodliness, cowardice, and adultery. He said, “Can serious and reflecting men look about them and doubt that, if Jefferson is elected, those morals which protect our lives from the knife of the assassin, which guard the chastity of our wives and daughters from seduction and violence, defend our property from plunder and devastation and shield our religion from contempt and profanation, will not be trampled upon? For what end? That our churches may become temples of reason, the Bible cast into a bonfire, and that we may see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution?”

The written attacks were just as vicious. For example, the Gazette of the United States, the flagship paper of the Federalist party, urged voters to lay their hands on their hearts and ask themselves: “Shall I continue in allegiance to God, and a Religious President, or impiously declare for Jefferson and No God!”

Interestingly, John Adams, who was the incumbent president, castigated the idea of Christ?s divinity as an “awful blasphemy.” Yet, out of preference for Adams?the favorite son of Massachusetts?it was Jefferson who was accused of being an infidel unworthy of the office. To vote for Jefferson was to sin against God and be forever lost! Using the “God” card, along with rumor and innuendo, was justified if it kept Jefferson out of office.

As Jefferson historian Willard Randall puts it, no presidential campaign “has more brutally combined these tactics than the 1800 campaign, which left Jefferson stunned and the country deeply divided for years.”

In short, the man who was decried as an “infidel” and “scoundrel” by the religious leaders of the time (and who coined the term “wall of separation between church and state”) has been cast in a reverent stare toward a message that he would have likely opposed.

If anything, the motto on the coin should be “E Pluribus Unum”, which was the choice of Jefferson, John Adams, and Ben Franklin. When translated (“Out of Many, One”) I think it’s a much more positive and unifying message than the current one. Not only is an explicitly religious message divisive, but it’s not exactly the strongest message our country could unify behind. In God We Trust? We might as well change it to “Cross You Fingers & Hope For The Best”.

UPDATE : It looks like the AP’s image is wrong. Here’s the correct version from the site of the US Mint :

At least, as The Critic says in the comments, this version doesn’t make Jefferson look like “he might cry for baby Jesus”.