We believe that Washington believed in eternal life or immortality. Since we will discuss this in a subsequent chapter, we simply offer this single quotation that shows his belief in life after death. He wrote this letter to a family member when his stepdaughter died in an epileptic seizure,
Dear Sir: It is an easier matter to conceive, than to describe the distress of this Family; especially that of the unhappy Parent of our Dear Patsy Custis, when I inform you that yesterday removed [sic] the Sweet Innocent Girl Entered into a more happy and peaceful abode than any she has met with in the afflicted Path she hither to has trod.63
The phrase “a more happy and peaceful abode” cannot refer to the tomb. When Washington speaks of the tomb he calls it “the dreary mansions of my fathers.” The more happy and peaceful abode was heaven. Washington referred to heaven over one hundred times in his writings.
d. Eternal life
Washington’s use of eternal includes, “eternal life,” “eternal glory,” “eternal happiness,” “eternal rules ordained by Heaven,” and the “eternal and awful monument” that the Christian religion gives to the abuse of power by the best of institutions. All of these ideas are consistent with Christianity and inconsistent with Deism.
CONCLUSION
A fully developed Christian worldview emerges from Washington’s words and his lifelong worship with the prayer book that he regularly used and shared with his family. In light of this evidence, it cannot any longer be legitimately argued that George Washington believed in the remote absentee God of the Deists. A Christian worldview and a Deist perspective are unable to be harmonized. Washington’s expressed beliefs and his worldview are Christian, and thus, undercut the claim that Washington held to a Deist perspective.
THIRTY ONE
The Gospel According to George Washington
“And above all ... he hath diffused the glorious light of the gospel, whereby, through the merits of our gracious Redeemer, we may become the heirs of his eternal glory.”
General Orders of Washington,
November 27, 1779, quoting a Congressional Proclamation
1
The question of George Washington’s Christianity is at the heart of the controversy over his religion. As we assemble the evidence of Washington’s belief in the Christian Gospel, we wish to highlight a few important considerations.
First, for the sake of argument, we will set aside the authority of the classic anecdotes and oral histories that have traditionally been used to substantiate Washington’s Christianity. These are simply rejected as untrue or unproven by those who doubt his Christianity. For example, modern author, Joseph J. Ellis, in his book His Excellency: George Washington, says that the cherry tree incident (first popularized by Parson Mason Weems) is “a complete fabrication.”2
Second, since we have consciously adopted a “minimalist facts” approach, we will not base our arguments on disputed evidence, such as the explicitly Christian Daily Sacrifice prayers that were in the manuscript book found in Washington’s effects about a hundred years after his death. Since it cannot be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wrote them or that he read them or used them, but only that he possessed them, we will not appeal to them to establish our claim of Washington’s Christianity.3
Third, we will engage the opponents of Washington’s Christianity, who refuse to accept his own personal approach of “works not words.” As we do, we reiterate that if this canon of Washington’s self-interpretation were followed, the overwhelming evidence already cited would end the debate. But since the skeptics require written proof of his Christian faith, we will proceed to provide it.
Fourth, given Washington’s personality and principles, we must recognize that he never intended to provide a personal creed. His daily priorities and profoundly busy life did not give him the leisure or the impetus to compose a personal creed. So we will seek to demonstrate his Christianity through his occasional self-revealing statements, wherein he identifies himself as a Christian or gives us insights into his faith in the Gospel. In the previous chapter, we saw his commitment to the essential elements of a Christian worldview.
A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE OF WASHINGTON’S CHRISTIANITY SO FAR
What we have learned about Washington’s Christianity thus far can be summarized as follows:
• He was from a British Christian culture, from a colony that had an established Christian church and from a family that had for several generations been explicitly Christian and active in the Anglican tradition.
• His home training was clearly Christian in orientation, in terms of the tutors and texts, as evidenced by extant schoolbooks and school papers. His childhood education was conducted under a Christian father, until Augustine Washington died when George was eleven, and then under his devout Christian mother.
• He pursued a career in the military that brought him into a highly structured environment that regularly had morning and evening prayers in accordance with the liturgical Christian “divine service” of the Book of Common Prayer. The military vocabulary of his era was marked by a direct use of Christian theological terms: pardon, redemption, the atonement, grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation, justification, imputation of guilt, appeal to heaven.
• He married a devout Christian woman and raised his adopted children under the tutorship of Anglican clergy, buying for his children not only explicitly Christian text books, but also prayer books and Bibles, with their names personally gilded upon them.
• He served in the leadership of the Anglican Church, taking vows not only to the worship and doctrines of the Christianity expressed by the Anglican Church, but his attendance, contributions, and involvement in issues concerning the church in terms of church government and the House of Burgesses were exemplary. His ecclesiastical vocabulary is extensive.
• He served in the role of sponsor of eight children in the sacrament of Christian baptism, something that Thomas Jefferson would not do, because his Unitarianism prevented him from taking the required public vows to the historic Christian faith. Washington had no scruples in this regard and performed this duty willingly, which is particularly significant, given Washington’s consistent emphasis upon his personal candor and constant concern for strict personal integrity.
• He openly encouraged the work of the clergy and chaplains in his roles as military, ecclesiastical, and civil leader. When such were not available to do their work, he performed their functions, both leading in prayers, and, even conducting a Christian funeral in the case of General Braddock in 1755.
• His vocabulary is replete with theological concerns. He speaks of God some 140 times, the divine 95 times, heaven 133 times, Providence 270 times, and uses various honorific titles for God some 95 times. He alludes to approximately 200 different biblical texts, some of them scores of times, and does so in a way that shows that he was remarkably biblically literate.
• He was explicitly a praying man, as evidenced by a custom-sized prayer book that he ordered to fit comfortably in his pocket. More than 100 different prayers (or references to prayer) in his own hand were found throughout his private and public letters.
• His views of religion are discoverable in some measure, even though as a military and government official, as well as a manager of a vast plantation, his extensive duties and writings would normally not be expected to turn in a direction of theology. These views include an overt affirmation of revelation, the reality of both natural and revealed religion, a concern that his Protestant soldiers not ridicule Roman Catholics for their beliefs, and an equal concern that Protestant and Jewish minorities not be fearful of persecution or bigotry from the new federal government he helped to fashion and to initiate.
• Indeed, Washington was keenly aware of the spiritual component of human life, referring again and again to the human spirit, as well as acknowledging the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work. He frequently reveals his own spiritual concern for prayer, dependence on Providence, and faith and trust in God.
• He was also consciously influenced by the emphasis upon reason emanating from the Enlightenment. But this expressed itself not in hostility to faith, but hostility to superstition. Thus, Washington’s writings explicitly criticize the deistic thought of his day. This is seen in phrases like, “worse than an infidel,” “that man must be bad who does not believe,” and his strong warning in his Farewell Address to those of the deistic mindset who would discountenance the necessary supports of “religion and morality” for political prosperity. His broken relationship with Thomas Paine is illustrative of this as well. Thomas Paine, the highly esteemed best-selling patriotic writer of Common Sense, was Washington’s friend. But Thomas Paine, the critic of revealed religion, as manifested in the Age of Reason, was carefully addressed by Washington’s distance and silence. Instead of pursuing reason over revealed religion, Washington’s letters manifest a commitment to revelation coupled with a “rational ground for belief,” “moral certainty,” and a self-description of “no sceptic on normal occasions.” In a previous chapter entitled “Washington vs. Deism,” we offered a comparison of his views with those of the Deists, and found Washington’s beliefs inherently and consistently incompatible with the teachings and ethics advocated by the Deists.
• In fact, it is remarkable that so much of Washington’s faith can be discovered at all, given that by habit and principle he was a man who did not talk about himself. This is universally confirmed by the testimonies of those who personally knew him. His personal faith was thus, not easily or often put into words, but rather was expressed in actions according to his motto: “deeds not words”4 which was also consistent with the motto on the Washington family’s Coat of Arms: Exitus Acta Probat, meaning, “the end proves the deed.” As his granddaughter said, “His mottoes were, “Deeds, Not Words”; and “For God and My Country.”
Thus, George Washington’s own rule for interpreting himself or anyone else was the necessity of looking at a person’s conduct, not primarily reading or hearing one’s words. On this basis, the evidence is unimpeachably clear—Washington was a Christian. But given the fact that those who have denied his Christianity have erected a standard of evidence that Washington explicitly did not intend—that is, a verbal, written, self-disclosing personal declaration of his heartfelt beliefs—before they will accept the claim that he was self-consciously a Christian, we will seek to address their concerns.
WASHINGTON’S STATEMENTS THAT IDENTIFY HIM AS A CHRISTIAN
Consider these declarations of George Washington as a Christian. (Many of these have been previously mentioned, but now we here assemble them together for the reader to experience the full impact.):
1. Washington called himself a Christian as part of a faith declaration he made to acknowledge the truth of a personal claim he made in a letter. He freely wrote of his own accord, “On my honor and the faith of a Christian....”5
2. As a military commander he said to the Delaware Indian chiefs that they do well to learn about the Christian religion. He said in May 1779:
