“Keep, ancient lands, your storied Pomp!” cries she
With Silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Set afire by Washington’s character, “Liberty” holds her lamp aloft to shine the eternal flame of America’s sacred fire into the night of the world’s despair. Having received the “approbation of Angells and men,” Washington’s Constitution with its Bill of Rights keeps the lamp ablaze as she awaits the midnight cry. Thankfully, Washington, “Warm’d by Religion’s sacred, genuine ray,”24 has bequeathed his “sacred fire” to the world.25
CONCLUSION
Secularists claim that it was secularism (of which Deism was a nascent eighteenth century form) that gave us religious freedom, but this is not so. It was what Washington called “the pure spirit of christianity.” Author Bill Federer, compiler of America’s God and Country, spoke of Christianity and religious liberty in the American experience, of which Washington was the father:
Tolerance was an American Christian contribution to the world. Just as you drop a pebble in the pond, the ripples go out, there was tolerance first for Puritans and then Protestants, then Catholics, then liberal Christians, and then it went out completely to Jews. Then in the early 1900s, tolerance went out to anybody of any faith, monotheist or polytheist. Finally, within the last generation, tolerance went out to the atheist, the secular humanist and the anti-religious. And the last ones in the boat decided it was too crowded and decided to push the first ones out. So now we have a unique situation in America, where everybody’s tolerated except the ones that came up with the idea.26
George Washington—the champion of religious freedom—insisted that his “asylum for mankind”27 is a “capacious asylum”28 that is an asylum large enough for all of us to be warmed under the “sacred fire of liberty.”
TWENTY FIVE
George Washington, Member of the Masonic Order
“Being persuaded, that a just application of the principles, on which the Masonic fraternity is founded, must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity.
“I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the society, and be considered by them a deserving brother.”
George Washington, 1790
1
One of the objections some people make to Washington’s Christianity is that he was a Mason. For example, John Warwick Montgomery, in his The Shaping of America, dismisses virtually all the founding fathers as Deists, including our first president:
Washington’s own convictions are revealed by his enthusiastic connection with the Freemasons—a connection to which the architecturally monstrous, but appropriately Babel-like George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria, Virginia, bears witness...Freemasonry, originating not in the mysteries of Solomon’s Temple but in the rationalism of early modern times, is at root Deistic; indeed, the movement may be regarded as a liturgical Deism. It holds to a unitary Supreme Being, the so-called Great Architect of the Universe, denies Christ’s unique saviorship and atonement, and reduces religion to a moralistic observance of allegedly common ethical principles.2
Thus, Washington was not a Christian, argues Montgomery, because he was an active Mason.
GEORGE WASHINGTON WAS A MASON
It’s very clear that Washington was a Mason, as attested by letters in Washington’s correspondence to Masonic groups.3 He participated in the laying of the cornerstone in the United States Capitol Building in the federal city, now Washington, D.C., and he did that as a Mason. Historian Paul Johnson well summarizes Washington’s Masonic life:
Washington became familiar with the externals of Masonry as a boy, and in 1752, when he reached the age of twenty, he was inducted as an Entered Apprentice Mason in the Fredericksburg Lodge. Thereafter, Masonry plays an important, if discreet part in his life, as it did among many of the Founding Fathers. Indeed, it is true to say that Masonry was one of the intellectual building blocks of the Revolution. Washington allowed lodges to flourish in several of his war camps. It was a link with advanced thinking in France: when Lafayette visited him in 1784, he gave him a Masonic apron of white satin, which the marquise had embroidered. Washington swore the oath of office as president on the Masonic Bible and when he laid the cornerstone of the capitol in 1793 he invoked the lodges of Maryland and Virginia. Indeed at his funeral all six pallbearers were Masons and the service followed the Masonic rite.4
Allyn Cox’s painting of Washington laying the cornerstone of the Capitol, September 18, 1793
THE GOD OF WASHINGTON’S MASONIC ORDER: DEIST OR CHRISTIAN?
But just what influence did Washington’s participation in the Masonic Order have on his view of the God of Christianity? In Washington historian Willard Sterne Randall’s mind, it meant a decisive departure from Washington’s Christian faith. Randall writes,
It may have been at least in part to further this military ambition that on September 1, 1752, he applied to join a new Masonic lodge being organized in Fredericksburg. Washington was one of the first of the initiates on November 4, paying an initiation fee of £ 2, 3 shillings to become registered as an Entered Apprentice. But Washington was not performing a self-interested connection with the Masons. He would take the Mason’s apron and trowel seriously. Eventually he became the highest ranking Mason in the United States and brought to the order a durable political prestige. While he dutifully attended the church services of the established Church of England, he was bored with its priest craft and from that time forward rarely was seen going to Anglican Communion. He put his own interpretation on Civility Rule No. 108: “When you speak of God or his attributes let it be seriously and with reverence.” He began in his letters to use the word God very seldom, substituting Masonic formulae: The Almighty, the Ruler of the Universe, Providence, the Supreme Being. He used these forms not only in private correspondence but as commander in chief during the Revolution in his General Orders.5
But, before we can accept Montgomery’s and Randall’s claims, we need to notice just how confused scholars are these days on Washington’s religion. Professor Boller claimed that Washington’s names for God were those of the Deists. But author Willard Sterne Randall here claims that they are the names for the God of the Masons. The easy retort suggested by Montgomery that the Deists and the Masons were one and the same does not work. As we will see in a subsequent chapter, Professor Boller argues that Washington was unsure about the reality of immortality or life after death.6 Yet a foundational claim of the Masonic order is eternal life, symbolized in their ritual of burial by a sprig of the acacia tree, a symbol to them of eternal life.7
And what do we do with the Masonic sermons that Washington collected and had bound in his library,8 that were written by the orthodox and evangelical clergymen of the day,9 who preached the Gospel and evangelical sermons to them at the invitation of the Masons themselves?10 And what do we do with the fact that these alleged Masonic titles for Deity have already been shown to be the very names for God used by the orthodox clergy of Washington’s day?11 The fact is, these honorific titles for Deity were neither deistic nor Masonic; they were the vocabulary of the eighteenth century Christian pulpit.
Moreover, we must disagree with Randall, because Washington’s writings show that he never stopped using the word God, and did, in fact, use it throughout his writings. The evidence shows that he used the word God some 140 times. We wonder how Randall established his claim that Washington avoided using of the word God after joining the Masons in 1752. As far as we can tell from our analysis, every known example of his written use of God outside of his school papers occurred after he joined the Masonic Order in 1752, the earliest written example being almost two years after joining the Masonic Order in a letter on June 12, 1754.12 Washington clearly did not avoid the word God nor hide his faith in God when, at his Inauguration, he established the precedent of adding to the constitutional presidential oath the words “So help me God.”
We believe the linkage between the Masonic Order and Deism in Washington’s day is historically false. The evidence for this is clear. The Masons of Washington’s day explicitly rejected Deism. The Masonic Constitution, as presented by the Episcopalian clergyman Reverend Dr. William Smith of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, declared in chapter I, section I, “Concerning God and Religion:”
...A Mason is also obliged to observe the moral law, as a true Noachida (Sons of Noah: the first name for Free Masons); and if he rightly understands the Royal Art, he cannot tread in the irreligious paths of the unhappy Libertine, the Deist, nor stupid Atheist; nor in any case, act against the inward light of his own conscience. He will likewise shun the gross errors of Bigotry and Superstition; making a due use of his own reason according to that liberty wherewith a Mason is made free.13
But it’s not just that the Masons were not to “tread in the irreligious paths of the... Deist nor stupid Atheist.” Before the early eighteen hundreds, Masons in America were by-and-large orthodox, Trinitarian Christians.
CHRISTIAN MASONS
While it may seem strange to many today, the Masons of Washington’s day called themselves “Christian Masons.”14 In an explanatory note added to his sermon for its publication, Presbyterian clergyman Reverend Samuel Miller wrote about the relationship between the Masons of his day and the Christian faith,
The Author [Reverend Miller referring to himself ] has said, that the “principles of Masonry so far as they go, coincide with the Christian religion.” He would here explain himself. Masonry, as such, and according to its original plan, appears to be founded on natural religion. Hence the institution is found among all nations, who believe in one God, and the accountableness of man to him, as a moral Agent, and an immortal being. But none need to be informed that all the genuine principles of natural religion, are adopted in the Christian system, and are inculcated throughout every page of the sacred volume. – But farther; it is to be remembered that this discourse [Miller’s sermon] was addressed to Christian Masons, or in other words, to Masons professing a belief in Christianity. It was addressed to a fraternity, who introduce the sacred scriptures into all their lodges; who frequently inculcate even the peculiar doctrines contained therein; and who profess, as a society, to make revelation their constant guide.15
