George Washington
George Washington was a deist. At least this is what I was taught and what I believed. It was not too far-fetched. The enlightenment had influenced many people to depart from orthodox Christianity.
But many years ago I read Washington’s Farewell Address. It contains statements like this: “Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.” While this is not an assertion of Christianity it certainly is not a statement a deist would make.
Then a couple years ago I came across a book called Washington’s God by Michael and Jana Novak. Michael Novak is a respected Catholic scholar and Jana is his daughter. Glancing at the dust jacket and through the book I was surprised that the Novaks were making a case for George Washington being a Christian. Hmmm.
Now, in the current issue of World Magazine, I see that Westminster Seminary President Peter Lillback did a ten year study of Washington, including surveying the 37 volumes of letters that Washington wrote, and he concluded that Washington was a devout Christian. His book, George Washington’s Sacred Fire, should put the question to rest. It is over 1200 pages and contains massive footnotes and documentation. It responds to arguments like the false assertion that Washington quit taking communion. (Even prominent twentieth century liberal Norman Cousins, in his book “In God we Trust,” notes that Washington’s temporary cessation from taking communion was “more political than religious.”
Washington was a Christian pure and simple. That does not mean that all founding fathers were. It does not mean that the enlightenment did chip away at the faith of some of them. Christians should not be led to believe that the founders were monolithically Christian. After bitter wrangling at the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin proposed that the sessions be opened with prayer. His proposal did not pass. (Nor did it fail, it just was not voted upon.) If the entire assembly had been all Christian, this would have passed virtually without discussion. Gregg Singer, strongly conservative and one of the founders of the PCA denomination, says in A Theological Interpretation of American History that deism was a necessary motivator for the American Revolution.
But on the other hand those who started the United States were not as diverse as modern liberals would have us believe. They were largely Christian and most of them believed that democracy, free enterprise, and the United States would not prevail without a foundation of morality, and most of them believed that morality would derive from the Christian faith. Many who want to rewrite American history do so because they want to minimize the influence of Christianity both in history and the present.
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