“On my honor and the faith of a Christian…”
George Washington, 1763
2
George Washington has been described by recent authors as “a lukewarm Episcopalian,”3 a “warm Deist,”4 “not a deeply religious man,”5 “not particularly ardent in his faith,”6 “one who avoided as was the Deist custom, the word ‘God.’”7 No wonder Professor Paul Boller wrote, “Broadly speaking, of course, Washington can be classified as a Deist.” Yet paradoxically, this was the man who stood trembling before his new nation to give his First Inaugural Address8 and spoke of “the sacred fire of liberty.”9 This was not a secular fire. It was a flame fueled by the holy.
Surprising perhaps, but as we will see, Washington’s description of himself repeatedly used the words “ardent,” “fervent,” “pious,” and “devout.” There are over one hundred different prayers composed and written by Washington in his own hand, with his own words, in his writings. His passions flared in a letter, when his church vestry considered not honoring his purchase of a family pew in his local church. He described himself as one of the deepest men of faith of his day when he confessed to a clergyman, “No Man has a more perfect Reliance on the alwise, and powerful dispensations of the Supreme Being than I have nor thinks his aid more necessary.”10
Rather than avoid the word “God,” on the very first national Thanksgiving under the U.S. Constitution, he said, “It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor.”11 Although he never once used the word “Deist” in his voluminous writings, he often mentioned religion, Christianity, and the Gospel. He spoke of Christ as “the divine Author of our blessed religion.” He encouraged missionaries who were seeking to “Christianize” the “aboriginals.” He took an oath in a private letter, “on my honor and the faith of a Christian.” He wrote of “the blessed religion revealed in the Word of God.” He encouraged seekers to learn “the religion of Jesus Christ.” He even said to his soldiers, “To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian.” Not bad for a “lukewarm” Episcopalian!
George Washington is known by Americans as the founding father of our nation. However, there has been great confusion and debate about his faith. The historic view was that he was a Christian. The consensus of scholars that has developed since the bicentennial of Washington’s birth in 1932 is that he was a Deist, that is, one who believes in a very remote and impersonal God. (We will define this term more fully in the following chapter.)
Who is correct in their assessment of Washington—the recent historians of Washington or Washington himself? We believe this is a fair question. Our purpose is to address the question of Washington’s religion and to answer it in a definitive way, using Washington’s own words. Was he a Christian or a Deist?12 We believe that when all the evidence is considered, it is clear that George Washington was a Christian and not a Deist, as most scholars since the latter half of the twentieth century have claimed.
One of the interesting proofs of the significance of George Washington in American history is that we read into him what we want to see. To a secularist, Washington was a secularist. To a Christian, Washington was a church-going believer. It is natural that people want to make Washington in their own image. This is even true to a humorous degree. For example, George Washington wearing a baseball cap recently graced the front page of the USA Today in reference to Washington, D.C., getting its own baseball team.
Everybody wants to claim Washington for their own. The Christians want to make him a devout evangelical. The skeptics want to make him a skeptic. We believe the truth, however, is that he was an 18th century Anglican. He was an orthodox, Trinity-affirming believer in Jesus Christ, who also affirmed the historic Christian Gospel of a Savior who died for sinners and was raised to life. But then again, we also believe it would not be accurate to call him an “evangelical” (by modern standards of the word).
What are the facts of history? And do they matter? The importance of this study is more than historical. Establishing that George Washington was a Christian helps to substantiate the critical role that Christians and Christian principles played in the founding of our nation. This, in turn, encourages a careful reappraisal of our history and founding documents. A nation that forgets its past does not know where it is or where it is headed. We believe such a study would also empower, enable, and defend the presence of a strong Judeo-Christian worldview in the ongoing development of our state and national governments and courts. We set out to provide the necessary foundation for an honest assessment of the faith and values of our founders and the government they instituted.
NO LONGER A HERO?
Can a historic national hero become irrelevant? This seems to have happened to George Washington and many other “politically incorrect” founding fathers, at least in the minds of some leading educators. In fact, many of our founders—despite all their sacrifices to establish our great country with unparalleled freedoms—have been denigrated to the category of the irrelevant history of “dead white guys.” In fact, the Washington Times reported: “George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin are not included in the revised version of the New Jersey Department of Education history standards, a move some critics view as political correctness at its worst.”13
The impact of this approach to history can perhaps be seen in a recent Washington College Poll. It found that more Americans had a higher respect for Bill Clinton’s job performance as the nation’s forty second president than they did George Washington’s.14 Thus, George Washington is no longer considered to be the hero he once was.
NO LONGER A CHRISTIAN?
Pick up most books and articles on Washington from 1932 or earlier, and generally, with a few exceptions, you will read about George Washington the Christian. That began to change with the iconoclastic scholarship of the mid-twentieth century that sought to tear down the traditional understanding of our nation and its origins.
In particular, the leading modern study of George Washington the Deist, George Washington & Religion, was authored by historian Paul F. Boller, Jr.15 Boller’s conclusion can be summarized in a single sentence: To the “unbiased observer” George Washington appears as a Deist, not a devout Christian.16
While there have been studies before Boller’s that argued that Washington was a Deist and not a Christian, Boller’s book is clearly now considered the definitive standard book on the subject.17 After his book, very few scholars asserted that George Washington was a Christian. Consequently, it has become the accepted “fact” of history that Washington was a Deist. The interesting thing about Boller’s book is that, to our knowledge, it has never been fully rebutted. Using historical scholarship, we want to address and answer Boller’s arguments and go beyond them in a way that is accessible to all serious readers.
Even Boller admits that religion was important to Washington as a leader. For instance, Boller writes, “…he saw to it that divine services were performed by the chaplains as regularly as possible on the Sabbath for the soldiers under his command.”18 But shouldn’t this lead us to ask why chaplains would be important to a Deist? Boller even admits there are testimonials of Washington’s consistency in attending church: “John C. Fitzpatrick’s summation of Washington’s church-going habits (which he examined carefully) seems fair enough: ‘Washington…was a consistent, if not always regular churchgoer.”’19
This is an important admission on Boller’s part because later writers have gone far beyond Boller’s argument and asserted that Washington did not even attend church as a mature adult.20
The erosion of accurate historicity is disconcerting: One scholar casts Washington in a Deistic mold. The next goes further and states—without citing evidence—that he didn’t even go to church. What will the next generation of scholars claim? This ignorance of the facts is what requires us to pursue our question concerning Washington’s religion by constant interaction with his own written words and the unquestionable records of his actions.
As we have said, many recent writers don’t see Washington as a Christian. A “tongue-in-cheek” book on him claims to be based on nothing but the facts, but listen to the unsubstantiated extent it goes concerning Washington and religion. Marvin Kitman in his, The Making of the President 1789 (Harper & Row, New York, 1989) describes a busy few days where Washington attended various churches. Without the least regard to Washington’s vast writings, Kitman inaccurately and falsely states:
And here was a man who didn’t even believe in God, some of his political enemies said, paraphrasing his own minister, who had been complaining about the way Washington never mentioned the word God—he did use Providence regularly—didn’t come to take sacrament, or do this or that. He was big with the Deist vote, however.21
Kitman is incorrect on many fronts, as we will see throughout the book. For starters, Washington believed in God; referred to God (by many names intended to honor Him) hundreds of times; did, indeed, speak of Providence some 270 times; and, in fact, there are written records that Washington partook of Christian communion both before and after the War. Furthermore, the alleged “Deist vote” would have been quite marginal at best. Benjamin Hart notes that at the beginning of the American Revolution, 98.4% of the Americans claimed to be Protestant; 1.4% claimed to be Roman Catholic——thus, 99.8% were professing Christians. This certainly corroborates Benjamin Franklin’s telling observation published in 1794 on the faith of his contemporary fellow Americans in the midst of Washington’s presidency:
The almost general mediocrity of fortune that prevails in America obliging its people to follow some business for subsistence, those vices that arise usually from idleness are in great measure prevented. Industry and constant employment are great preservatives of the morals and virtue of a nation. Hence bad examples to youth are more rare in America; which must be a comfortable consideration to parents. To this may be truly added, that serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there, infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great age in that country without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an atheist or an infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his approbation of the mutual forbearance and kindness with which the different sects treat each other, by the remarkable prosperity with which He has been pleased to favour the whole country.22
A DEVOUT EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ANGLICAN
We believe that an honest look at the facts of history show that George Washington was a devout eighteenth century Anglican. This means he believed the basics of that orthodox Trinitarian faith that proclaimed the substitutionary saving death of Jesus Christ for sinners. Some have declared that Washington stopped attending Communion during the War. Should this be correct—and let’s assume so for the sake of argument—does this prove he was not a believing Christian?
Could other reasons better explain the question? Could it have been because he had broken Communion with the head of the Anglican Church (King George III)? Perhaps during the stresses of the War, he got out of the habit of receiving the Lord’s Table on a regular basis. And what should we make of the historical testimonies that he did attend Communion after the War from time to time?
As we analyze the written evidence from Washington himself, we will find that he had an exemplary private prayer life. His biblical literacy suggests the he read the Scriptures regularly, and we can also show that he used the 1662 Book of Common Prayer from the Church of England, which was a very orthodox guide for Christian worship of the Trinity. In fact, the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is more theologically sound than the average book available in a Christian bookstore today.
In this present book, we are taking what Christian philosopher Gary Habermas, in another context, calls “the minimalist facts approach.” We are only going to say what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. We are not going to present a hagiography of George Washington, i.e., we will not make him into an ecclesiastical saint. But we do believe that his own words and actions show that he was a Christian and not an unbelieving Deist.
George Washington was not a perfect man. He occasionally lost his temper; he drank wine—maybe even too much when he was a young man.23 He was involved with activities that some would find fault with: he had a revenue producing distillery on his Mount Vernon Estate;24 he loved to fox hunt; he went to the theatre, and occasionally to the horse races. And, sadly, he owned slaves, something all Americans today would find immoral, but which was not uncommon for a Southern gentleman of his day.
Like other human beings, he struggled with personal challenges such as illness, fatigue, pain, deaths of loved ones, loneliness, financial pressures, and step-parenting challenges, to name but a few. Yet, as we can see from his writings, he attempted to walk according to the duties of the Christian faith. We find this in a letter that he wrote to his life-long friend, Reverend Bryan Fairfax (Lord Fairfax), who had been the pastor of Washington’s church in Alexandria, Virginia. Writing from Mount Vernon on January 20, 1799, only months before he died, Washington looked back over his very full life and described his spiritual walk:
The favourable sentiments which others, you say, have been pleased to express respecting me, cannot but be pleasing to a mind who always walked on a straight line, and endeavoured as far as human frailties, and perhaps strong passions, would enable him, to discharge the relative duties to his Maker and fellowmen, without seeking any indirect or left handed attempts to acquire popularity.25
Remember that Washington was a land surveyor by training who specialized in setting long straight boundary lines. He speaks of such “straight lines” in his letters. But here he tells us, as he surveys his remarkable life, that he also had sought to walk a “straight line” in discharging his duties to his “Maker and fellow-men.” Accordingly, he openly spoke of his own “fervent prayer” to his soldiers. Consider this concluding line of a December 5, 1775, private letter that Washington wrote to his then faithful officer, Benedict Arnold:
…give him all the Assistance in your Power, to finish the glorious Work you have begun. That the Almighty may preserve and prosper you in it, is the sincere and fervent Prayer of, Dear Sir, Your Humble & Obedient Servant, George Washington.26
Similarly, he often expresses his own deep faith in God’s Providence with such heartfelt language as the following from his May 13, 1776, letter to his close friend in Boston, Reverend William Gordon. Referring to God’s “…many other signal Interpositions of Providence,” he declares that they “must serve to inspire every reflecting Mind with Confidence.” And then he describes himself with these striking words of spiritual commitment:
No Man has a more perfect Reliance on the all-wise, and powerful dispensations of the Supreme Being than I have nor thinks his aid more necessary.27
DISESTABLISHMENT IN VIRGINIA
It is true that as a young man and for much of Washington’s adult life, Virginia had an established church—the Anglican Church. By law one was required to attend services and pay tithes. That was part of the responsibility of a colonist in Virginia. However, that changed in 1786 with the Act for Establishing Religious Liberty. This great step forward in terms of religious liberty was especially the work of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.
One of the key arguments Jefferson made in this statute was that Almighty God has made the mind free and that any punishments that men mete out against religious opinion deemed to be false are a departure from “the plan of the holy author of our religion, who being lord both of body and mind, yet choose [sic] not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to exalt it by its influence on reason alone…”28
In other words, Jefferson argues, because Jesus Christ could have forced men to believe in Him, but did not, and instead gave us the personal responsibility to believe, then who are we as mere men to punish others for their religious opinions, no matter how wrong these opinions may be? Secularists sometimes interpret Jefferson’s argument here as a plea for unbelief. Not so. He uses the example of Christ to argue for religious freedom. In fact, religious liberty in America especially stems from two great Christian clergymen who prepared the way for America’s religious liberty. They were also two of our nation’s settlers—Roger Williams and William Penn.
After Virginia disestablished the Anglican Church, men and women were no longer required by state law to worship there. But Washington did not stop attending church after disestablishment. He kept attending his church long after that—until he died.
GOD IN THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF WASHINGTON
George Washington’s mention of God in his private letters as well as his public speeches and writings is frequent, especially when we understand the vast variety of terms he employed for the Almighty including, “the great disposer of events,” “the invisible hand,” “Jehovah,” or his favorite term—“Providence.” We cannot escape the alternatives—Washington either truly cared about God or he employed God-talk for mere political or manipulative ends, while he himself didn’t believe the words he was speaking. The latter appears difficult to accept from a man who insisted, “Honesty is the best policy.”
We are all familiar with politicians talking about God in their public speeches—even if their private behavior belies that God-talk. Was George Washington this type of public figure? We don’t think so, nor does the historical evidence support it.
Boller quotes a nineteenth century Anglican minister who laments that Washington allegedly never mentioned Jesus. Anglican minister Bird Wilson said, “I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges himself as a professor of Christianity.”29 Here is a sampling of what Bird Wilson could have perused. Washington said that America will only be happy if we imitate “the divine author of our blessed religion.”30
This is referring to Jesus Christ. This was not an obscure letter; it is the climax of a critical farewell letter the commander in chief wrote to the governors of all the states at the end of the War. Furthermore, it seems that Wilson didn’t know about the letter General Washington wrote to the Delaware Indian chiefs. They asked him for advice on teaching their young ones. He responded that they do well to learn our way of life and arts, “but above all, the religion of Jesus Christ.”31
Furthermore, Washington talks about the need to be a good Christian, using the word “Christian” in several different letters and communiqués. Thus, we find phrases such as the following in Washington’s public and private writings: “A Christian Spirit,” “A True Christian,” “Be more of a man and a Christian,” “Christian soldiers,” “The little Christian,” “To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.”32
