2. A rejection of the Latitudinarian or Broad Church spirit of ecumenical fellowship and communion
3. The elevation of the episcopacy over the governance by laymen.
4. An implicit rebuke of Virginian Episcopalianism, as practiced by Washington for all of his life before the war.
5. A rejection of the views of his friends John Jay and Bishop Samuel Provoost of New York.
6. A negative light was cast on Washington’s closeness with Presbyterian and Reformed churches and his acts of communing with them.
7. An honoring of the Tory clergy, such as the Reverends Ogden, Seabury, Duché, Inglis, placing them on par with the pro-Revolutionary clergy, such as Bishop Provoost and Bishop White himself.
8. The loss of Washington’s ecumenical fellowship meals under his presidency in Philadelphia, as had been previously held in New York with Reverend Linn, Chief Justice Jay, and Bishop Provoost.
9. The rejection of the American Proposed Book of Common Prayer.
10. The loss of the July 4th service, which would have been a natural American commerative service to replace the historic British November 5th celebration of Guy Fawkes Day.
11. The possible creation of tension between Washington’s presidential leadership and personal church membership, due to the elevation of the exclusive apostolic succession view.42 This naturally created ongoing worries for non-Anglican churches that feared possible religious pressures or persecutions from the new government.43
12. The addition of a sacerdotal or priestly element by the inclusion of the word “priest” for “minister” in the new prayer book. George Washington never used the word “priest” for any Protestant clergyman, even though he carefully honored Roman Catholic leaders, while not embracing their theology.44
Due to Washington’s reserved dignity, he would never have disclosed such critical and personal views to Bishop White for the very same reasons he chose not to correspond with Bishop White’s Episcopal partner, Bishop Seabury. We believe this explanation of why Bishop White would not know George Washington’s faith views is consistent with all of the known and relevant facts.
WHY DID PRESIDENT WASHINGTON NOT COMMUNE WHILE IN PHILADELPHIA?
So finally, then, why did Washington not commune as president in Philadelphia? We reiterate that we have no explicit writing from Washington’s hand as to why he did not commune in Philadelphia. Since he never said so directly, we cannot be dogmatic. But this we can say with confidence, that there is no need, nor evidence, that points to the Deist explanation of professor Boller and others. The explanation offered here is consistent with Washington’s Christian faith, his Christian church, and numerous explicit statements in his writings.
Washington, while in Philadelphia, was under the ministry of Bishop White, whose compromise forfeited the Low Church’s position in the Church by his reconciliation with the High Church leader, Bishop Seabury—at the expense of Washington’s friend, Bishop Samuel Provoost of New York. Thus, his non-communing under Bishop White, who allowed Seabury to subjugate the patriotic Low Church, could have been an expression of his strong conscience.
Perhaps, the absence of any record of personal or inter-denominational and ecumenical fellowship under Bishop White is also a clue. Perhaps, the strong apostolic succession views of Bishop Seabury, openly accommodated by Bishop White, left Washington concerned that as president, he might be too committed to the Episcopal Church, creating fears of an established church in America.
However these matters may be interpreted, it is also clear that Washington’s relationship with the Philadelphia Episcopal churches was only complicated by Abercrombie’s indirect but intentional criticism of Washington in his sermon.45
Finally, given Washington’s Low Churchmanship, he was not a frequent communicant by principle and by habit. He had not taken Communion often to begin with. For good or for ill, this was the Virginian Low Church tradition. By personal temperament, Washington would not have discussed this with Bishop White.46
Because of Washington’s methodical nature, when he would have decided to commune, given that he had no scruple about the frequency of Communion, as a Virginia Low Churchman, it would have been according to his own plan and at what he conceived to be the most appropriate time. As president, he had immense duties, and limited time. As a land owner and citizen he had farm, financial, and family duties.
Given his non-intimacy with Bishop White, his burdens of responsibility that demanded his time, his sense of disappointment that he would be communing under a bishop who took away lay leadership, the Episcopal celebration of of July 4th, and gave a Tory bishop the dominant voice in his childhood church, it is not surprising that Washington chose not to commune in Philadelphia.
Lastly, but not unimportantly, Washington did not commune because of his strict conscience. When the Reverend James Abercrombie issued his sermonic rebuke to the congregation, and specifically to President Washington, he was speaking with the theology of Bishop Seabury. Washington heard it with the spirit of a Low Churchman and respectfully disagreed. Non-communing in this instance comported with his character and personality as well as his conscience.
These same reasons probably governed his Communion practices in New York as well, but clearly to a lesser degree, since the evidence argues he communed on various occasions in New York under Bishop Provoost. His communing on Inauguration Day would be a perfect example of a time when Washington’s spiritual and civic duties coincided, and he thus openly communed.
CONCLUSION
The important point to understand here is that George Washington’s non-communing did not make him a Deist. Perhaps Washington should have communed more. But then, if we had Washington’s strong conscience and extraordinarily busy schedule, and understood his mind, perhaps we would think differently. The point is that the explanation offered here is consistent with Washington himself, honors all the known facts, and in no way requires the incongruent claim that Washington was a Deist.
Again, the facts are that Washington never criticized Christ or Christianity. He did criticize Deism. He also maintained his distance from Bishop Seabury and was uncomfortable with an Episcopacy operated by the High Church principle of apostolic succession. Thus, we conclude that Washington had personal, theological, and ecclesiastical reasons not to commune in Philadelphia. But none of them required him to have been a Deist.
TWENTY THREE
George Washington and the Enlightenment
“We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart.
“In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.”
George Washington 1793
1
George Washington came of age during the Age of Reason and thus was influenced by the Enlightenment. But it is a critical point, often missed today, that the Enlightenment was not only an expression of Deistic thought, but it had a Christian expression as well. Scholar and author Michael Novak points out that if the founding fathers were influenced by the Enlightenment, it wasn’t the skeptical branch of the same: “The Founders’ Enlightenment was not the Enlightenment of Voltaire; it was the Enlightenment of John Locke, a man ever at pains not to tread heavily on Christian sensibilities.”2
It is disingenuous on the part of some scholars today to present America’s founders, including our first president, as men of the Enlightenment, without pointing out the diversity of that umbrella term, “Enlightenment.” The views of Enlightenment thinker David Hume, for example, were poles apart from the thinking of Enlightenment thinker Sir William Blackstone, the British jurist who had great influence on America’s founders and was a strong advocate of the Holy Bible.
Throughout his long public career, George Washington consciously and consistently spoke and acted as an enlightened leader, advancing reason and eschewing superstition. But that does not mean he did not believe in orthodox Christianity, as some modern writers assert. The purpose of this chapter is to look at George Washington and the Enlightenment.
WASHINGTON AND SUPERSTITION
The confrontation between reason and superstition was part of the Washington family’s heritage. The fear of witchcraft that actually prompted a work on the topic by King James himself, was prevalent in Europe, and that fear crossed the ocean with the colonists.
When John Washington, son of Reverend Lawrence Washington, Vicar of Purleigh, came to Virginia in 1657, along with his wife Amphillis and his brother Lawrence, it was feared that a witch had come along on the perilous journey across the high seas to the New World. Captain Prescott immediately determined that he needed no additional risks, and condemned the alleged witch with the fiat: “Hustle this woman into Eternity and save our souls!” So, they tossed the helpless lady into the stormy Atlantic.
Upon their safe arrival in Virginia minus the jettisoned female, John Washington spoke immediately to the authorities, demanding that Captain Prescott be punished for the heartless murder of a helpless woman on the high seas.3
Religious persecution had also come to the New World with England’s established church, since Anglicanism was enforced by the sword of the crown. James Hutson, chief of the manuscript division for the Library of Congress, describes the painful consequences for those who violated the laws protecting the Church:
Puritan ministers who refused to conform were fired from their pulpits and threatened with “extirpation from the earth” unless they and their followers toed the line. Exemplary punishments were inflicted on the Puritan stalwarts; one zealot, for example, who called Anglican bishops “Knobs, wens and bunchy popish flesh,” was sentenced in 1630, to life imprisonment, had his property confiscated, his nose split, an ear cut off, and his forehead branded S.S. (sower of sedition).4
These were practices that the Washington family neither participated in, nor sanctioned. They had a more humane and just perspective. Lawrence, George’s older half-brother and surrogate father, understood the wisdom of religious liberty.
It has ever been my opinion and I hope it ever will be, that restraints on conscience are cruel in regard to those on whom they are imposed, and injurious to the country imposing them. England, Holland, and Prussia, I may quote as examples, and much more Pennsylvania, which has flourished under that delightful liberty, so as to become the admiration of every man who considers the short time it has been settled. . . .This colony (Virginia) was greatly settled in the latter part of Charles the First’s time, and during the usurpation, by the zealous church-men; and that spirit, which was then brought in, has ever since continued; so that, except a few Quakers, we have no dissenters. But what has been the consequence? We have increased by slow degrees, whilst our neighboring colonies, whose natural advantages are greatly inferior to ours, have become populous.5
Lawrence mentions Pennsylvania in a positive light (in contrast with Anglican Virginia). You will recall that the northern colony was founded by William Penn (1644-1718), a devout Quaker minister, with the express purpose of providing religious liberty. No one there was to be punished for religious views. Penn called this the “holy experiment,” and it succeeded. It attracted many settlers and its capital, Philadelphia, eventually became the capital of the fledgling, new country.6
George Washington reflected his forbearers’ perspective as he expressed his own views. As General Washington was retiring from his military command, he wrote a circular to each of the thirteen governors of the finally independent states. Writing from “Head Quarters” on June 8, 1783, the enlightened commander of the victorious American army described the “auspicious period” in which “the United States came into existence as a nation.”
The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all, the pure and benign light of Revelation, have had a meliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society. At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be intirely their own.7 (emphasis added)
