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:

...Brothers: I am glad you have brought three of the Children of your principal Chiefs to be educated with us. I am sure Congress will open the Arms of love to them, and will look upon them as their own Children, and will have them educated accordingly. This is a great mark of your confidence and of your desire to preserve the friendship between the Two Nations to the end of time, and to become One people with your Brethren of the United States. My ears hear with pleasure the other matters you mention. Congress will be glad to hear them too. You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.⁶

Similarly, he wrote to Reverend John Ettwein from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to the Heathen from Mount Vernon on May 2, 1788:

...So far as I am capable of judging, the principles upon which the society is founded and the rules laid down for its government, appear to be well calculated to promote so laudable and arduous an undertaking, and you will permit me to add that if an event so long and so earnestly desired as that of converting the Indians to Christianity and consequently to civilization, can be effected, the Society of Bethlehem bids fair to bear a very considerable part in it....⁷

3.   The records of the Country Court of Fairfax has under the date of February 15, 1763, “George Washington, Esqr., took the oaths according to Law repeated and subscribed the Test and subscribed to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England in order to qualify him to act as a Vestryman of Truro Parish.”⁸ This doctrine included the following teaching from the eleventh article of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion:

We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings; Wherefore, that we be justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort....⁹

As a committed Anglican, Washington regularly prayed the General Confession of the Morning Prayer as he worshiped with the Book of Common Prayer throughout his military career and in his lifelong worship in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition:

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God, who confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.¹⁰

4.   On perhaps as many as eight different occasions, Washington said the following in a public worship setting as he stood as a sponsor for a child who was being baptized and answered this question:

DOST thou believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth? And in Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son our Lord? And that he was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; that he went down into hell, and also did rise again the third day; that he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; and from thence shall come again at the end of the world, to judge the quick and the dead?

And dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholick Church; the Communion of Saints; the Remission of sins; the Resurrection of the flesh; and everlasting life after death?”

These are all affirmations of the Apostles’ Creed. To this question at each of these eight baptisms he publicly declared, “All this I steadfastly believe.”¹¹ Again, Thomas Jefferson could not bring himself to say these words publicly because he did not believe them.¹²

5.   Washington in private settings identified himself as a Christian: He wrote to comfort Major General Israel Putman on October 19, 1777, saying,

...I hope you will bear the misfortune with that fortitude and complacency of mind, that become a Man and a Christian....¹³

Washington wrote to John Christian Ehler on December 23, 1793, calling on him to be more of a Christian,

...Don’t let this be your case. Show yourself more of a man, and a Christian, than to yield to so intolerable a vice...¹⁴

In September 1775 he spoke as a Christian to Col. Benedict Arnold:

...I also give it in Charge to you to avoid all Disrespect to or Contempt of the Religion [Roman Catholicism] of the Country [Canada] and its Ceremonies. Prudence, Policy, and a true Christian Spirit, will lead us to look with Compassion upon their Errors without insulting them....God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men....¹⁵

6.   Washington in public settings openly identified himself as a Christian:

In his General Orders from Head Quarters in New York on July 9, 1776, he called on his entire army to be Christian soldiers:

...The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger—The General hopes and trusts, that every officer and man, will endeavor so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country.¹⁶