The Religious Views of American Presidents and other Political Leaders has always been a point of interest and, sometimes, a point of Contention.

 

The issue of George Washington’s religious views is full of ambiguity and speculation. Washington was baptized into the Anglican Church, a “mild and eclectic Protestantism,” according to historian David Hawke. Although renting pews in a number of Virginia parishes, Washington identified most closely with the Truro parish church. A life-long member of the Anglican and later named Episcopal Church, Washington accepted the teachings and formality of its theology and liturgy.

 

Writer Larry Witham states that, “Though Washington was a churchgoer, owning a pew, he was hardly an orthodox Christian.” A Washington contemporary, Rev. Dr. James Abercrombie of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, flatly said that “…Washington was a Deist.”

 

Anglican Theology in Colonial Virginia

 

Historian Christine Leigh Heyrman at the University of Delaware contrasts Anglicanism with the other major colonial faith expression: “Anglicanism rejected Calvinism and the evangelical ethos often associated with that theology.” Despite the widespread effects of the Great Awakening earlier in that century and the continued revivalism often associated with growing Methodism – itself coming out of Anglicanism, the Church of England in colonial America “rejected evangelical influences.”

 

Anglicanism accepted three sacraments: baptism (more precisely infant baptism), communion, and marriage. Debate continues as to Washington’s participation in Holy Communion, although he was a regular church attendee. In Virginia, membership in the Anglican Church was a prerequisite for political participation. Hence, Washington’s membership qualified him, in part, to sit as a representative in the House of Burgesses.

 

Religious Views through the Prism of Presentism

 

The growing vogue notion that Washington and other Patriot leaders were somehow “born again” Christians seeking to establish a solidly “Christian” nation is not supported by the historical record, despite infrequent quotes mined from diaries, letters, and speeches and often taken out of context. Jack Feerick, writing in the October 22, 2009 Saturday Evening Post, states that, “The traditional idea of the Founding Fathers as conventionally pious Christian gentlemen is a myth…” Journalist Russell Shorto, in an extensive piece detailing proposed changes to Texas high school social studies standards, wrote in the New York Times that, “Washington, in his writings, makes scores of different references to God but not one is biblical.”

 

Contemporary conservative Christians, for the most part inheritors of a Calvinist tradition, commit the sin of historical presentism when it comes to George Washington and other Founding Fathers. Although Washington regularly attended church and even visited Quaker meeting houses and the sanctuaries of other faith traditions, he was also a Freemason and, as Shorto correctly stated, “Steeped in an Enlightenment rationalism…” At best it can be said that Washington was an Enlightenment Christian whose view of the Creator was strong but transcendent. Washington’s primary religious experiences were tied to Anglicanism and the “high church” tradition that developed alongside the more fervent and emotional revivalist approaches of cyclical evangelicalism.

 

Washington belief system was also strongly influenced by the Stoicism of classical Rome. Historian Henry Wiencek notes Washinton’s keen interest in Addison’s 1713 play Cato, which highlighted Cato the Younger’s devotion to republican virtue. Wiencek also notes the influence of Seneca on Washington. “All of this was not veneer,” Wiencek writes, “but the struts and trusses of Washington’s frame of mind.” Washington’s Anglicanism cannot be separated from the impact of these strong challenges that, “Profoundly influenced Washington’s generation.”

 

References:

 

Jack Feerick, “Faith in America,” Saturday Evening Post, October 22, 2009

David Freeman Hawke, Everyday Life in Early America (New York: Harper & Row, 1988)

Christine Leigh Heyrman, “The Church of England in Early America,” National Humanities Center, February 12, 2010

Russell Shorto, “How Christian Were the Founders?” New York Times, February 11, 2010

Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003)

Larry Witham, A City Upon a Hill: How Sermons Changed the Course of American History (New York: Harper/Collins 2007)

Published in Suite101, M.Streich copyright