To understand the bigger picture, including Washington’s reference to the burning of effigies of the pope, we will back up for a few moments and explain the significance of Guy Fawkes Day to the American colonists, who were for the most part Protestant Britishers transplanted to a new continent.
America’s celebration of her birth on July Fourth has no equivalent celebration in Great Britain. The closest British parallel historically, perhaps, is Guy Fawkes Day. This commemorates the November 5th, 1605 foiling of an attempt to assassinate not only King James the First, but the entire House of Lords along with him. Guy Fawkes was arrested and hung for his plot to ignite several barrels of gunpowder that had been stored under the Parliament Building.
The perpetual dubious honor afforded to Guido Fawkes, the pro-Catholic and anti-Royal leader of the plan, was to be annually burned in effigy. The custom began exactly one year later on November 5, 1606, when his effigy was burned all over the country, since November Fifth already happened to have been a traditional English night for building bonfires. Guy Fawkes had chosen that same day to have a royal bonfire. Guy Fawkes has been part of the British psyche from childhood poems, to a Beatles’ song, to a form of worship in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
A traditional English poem preserves the story of the failed plot and God’s providential intervention.
Remember, remember, the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, Treason and Plot;
I see no reason why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes
‘Twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow
By God’s providence he was catched
With a dark lantern and burning match.
Penny for the Guy, Hit him in the eye,
Stick him up a lamp-post [or chimney] and there let him die.
The connection between George Washington and religious liberty appears in that Washington played a pivotal role in his November 5, 1775, orders in helping to end anti-Catholic bigotry in the new nation.
The Guy Fawkes custom had come to America with the historic English anti-Catholic sentiment. As we saw in an earlier chapter, anti-Catholic oaths were required of an Anglican vestryman (or public surveyor) like Washington in colonial Virginia—whereby one swore allegiance to the Protestant King and against the Roman Catholic heir to the throne, as well as the doctrine of transubstantiation. The effigy burned on Guy Fawkes Day in the colonies was not always Guy, sometimes it was the pope himself.
But this historic custom did not continue once America began her pursuit of liberty and ultimately independence. The reason for this can be traced directly to the leadership of George Washington. In the context of the invasion of Roman Catholic Quebec, General Washington prohibited all mockery of the enemy’s religion. It is not surprising, however, that at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, King George III or his political advisors began to be burned in effigy. But under Washington’s leadership, the pope was no longer symbolically burned at the stake.
FREEDOM FOR CATHOLICS REITERATED BY PRESIDENT WASHINGTON
As president, George Washington affirmed religious freedom for all in America, including Catholics. (Keep in mind that America was a largely Protestant country— 98.4% Protestant Christian and 1.4% Catholic at the beginning of the war.)11
On March 15, 1790, according to the Maryland Journal and Baltimore Advertiser, a committee of Roman Catholics waited upon the president with a congratulatory address, to which the president replied. Washington said, in part:
I feel, that my conduct in war and in peace has met with more general approbation than could reasonably have been expected: and I find myself disposed to consider that fortunate circumstance, in a great degree, resulting from the able support and extraordinary candor of my fellow-citizens of all denominations....
...As mankind become more liberal [charitable], they will be more apt to allow, that all those, who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government. I ever [long] to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality. And I presume, that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part, which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution and the establishment of their government; or the important assistance, which they received from a nation in which the roman catholic religion is professed...may the members of your Society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity.12
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM FOR ALL
Washington believed there should be religious freedom for all. This was a point he especially emphasized in his letter to the Hebrew congregation in America. He wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, a now-famous letter (dated August 17, 1790), declaring:
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support....13
Washington’s respect for religious liberty and freedom of conscience comes into focus in a letter that he wrote to his surrogate son, Marquis de Lafayette, from Philadelphia on August 15, 1787, while the Constitutional Convention was in session:
...I am not less ardent in my wish that you may succeed in your plan of toleration in religious matters. Being no bigot myself to any mode of worship, I am disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church, that road to Heaven, which to them shall seem the most direct plainest easiest and least liable to exception.....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. (emphasis added)14
After centuries of persecution within Christendom against dissenting Christians of other denominations, the United States, under the leadership of George Washington, chose a path of liberty of conscience for dissident believers. Religious freedom did not grow out of secularism. It grew out of the unique experience of America, where a nation was settled by Christians seeking to worship Christ in the purity of the Gospel according to their consciences—but in different ways than the state churches they left behind, and in different ways from each other.15 George Washington respected these differences and charted a path of Christian forbearing for religious disagreements. This can be seen in his letters to Quakers and the Baptists, both of which had experienced significant religious persecution in England and in the American colonies.
In March, 1790, the Society of Free Quakers meeting in Philadelphia delivered a complimentary address to Washington. Washington responded:
Having always considered the conscientious scruples of religious belief as resting entirely with the sects that profess, or the individuals who entertain them, I cannot, consistent with this uniform sentiment, otherwise notice the circumstances referred to in your address, than by adding the tribute of my acknowledgment to that of our country, for those services which the members of your particular community rendered to the common cause in the course of our revolution. And by assuring you that, as our present government was instituted with an express view to general happiness, it will be my earnest endeavor, in discharging the duties confided to me with faithful impartiality, to raise the hope of common protection which you expect from the measures of that government.” (emphasis ours)16
On May 10, 1789, in addressing the general committee representing the United Baptist Churches of Virginia, President Washington stated:
If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed by the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical Society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it...17
Thus, Washington is on record in opposition to all religious persecution, whether it comes from religious sources or secular sources. In his Farewell Address he declared that religion and morality are indispensable to our political prosperity.
A SACRED FIRE CREATES ASYLUM FOR THE OPPRESSED OF ALL RELIGIONS
The “sacred fire”18 of Washington’s “true religion”19 blazed with a passion for divine Providence and religious liberty. The “sacred fire of liberty,” lit at his First Inaugural Address, has burned throughout America’s history and still beacons from New York Harbor. Although “Lady Liberty’s” torch has pointed to the heavens for several generations, her elevation of Washington’s “sacred fire of liberty” continues to ignite hope for all who have come to America’s shores to find “asylum.” Washington was sure America would become the “asylum” of the world for those who had been persecuted for their religious beliefs. In passionate and prescient words of encouragement to his victorious troops in 1783, the general explained to his men:
While the General recollects the almost infinite variety of Scenes thro which we have passed, with a mixture of pleasure, astonishment, and gratitude; While he contemplates the prospects before us with rapture; he can not help wishing that all the brave men (of whatever condition they may be) who have shared in the toils and dangers of effecting this glorious revolution, of rescuing Millions from the hand of oppression, and of laying the foundation of a great Empire, might be impressed with a proper idea of the dignified part they have been called to act (under the Smiles of providence) on the stage of human affairs: for, happy, thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who have contributed any thing, who have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabrick of Freedom and Empire on the broad basis of Independency; who have assisted in protecting the rights of humane nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions. The glorious task for which we first flew to Arms being thus accomplished, the liberties of our Country being fully acknowledged, and firmly secured by the smiles of heaven, on the purity of our cause, and the honest exertions of a feeble people (determined to be free) against a powerful Nation (disposed to oppress them) and the Character of those who have persevered, through every extremity of hardship; suffering and danger being immortalized by the illustrious appellation of the patriot Army: Nothing now remains but for the actors of this mighty Scene to preserve a perfect, unvarying, consistency of character through the very last act; to close the Drama with applause; and to retire from the Military Theatre with the same approbation of Angells and men which have crowned all their former virtuous Actions.20
The Fourth of July, for Washington as for all Americans, became synonymous with liberty.21 In fact, “July IV, 1776” are the solitary words on the tablet held by Lady Liberty”22 as she welcomes the world to America, the world’s greatest asylum for religious liberty.23 Proposed and designed by Frederic Auguste Bertholdi, a descendant of a persecuted Huguenot, the Statue of Liberty, appropriately bears the poetry of Emma Lazarus, a descendant of a persecuted Jewish immigrant family. Her poem speaks as if with the flaming tongues of Washington’s “sacred fire of liberty”:
