Quotes about Washington

The inescapable conclusion is that Washington was a Christian.

Pick up most books and articles on Washington from 1932 or earlier, and generally, with a few exceptions, you will read about George Washington the Christian. That began to change with the iconoclastic scholarship of the mid-twentieth century that sought to tear down the traditional understanding of our nation and its origins.

Our purpose is to address the question of Washington's religion and to answer it in a definitive way, using Washington's own words. Was he a Christian or a Deist? 12 We believe that when all the evidence is considered, it is clear that George Washington was a Christian and not a Deist, as most scholars since the latter half of the twentieth century have claimed.

But Washington's long and faithful service stands in marked distinction from Jefferson's mere election. Washington actually served with great fidelity. We do not want to read anything into this other than what the facts tell us, and the facts are that George Washington's service as a vestryman is commensurate with the highest commitment to the Christianity proposed by the Anglican Church.

It was only many decades after his death that some historians began to interpret Washington's values and beliefs, more from their own frame of reference, rather than by the extensive writings and utterances of Washington during his lifetime.

The idea of morning and evening prayer led by a military officer was part of the Virginia in which Washington was raised.40

To say Washington was a Deist—even a "soft Deist"—would imply that he did not have a problem violating his conscience each time he worshiped in his church. It is difficult to imagine how Washington, with his expressed concern for his character and his open commitment to honesty and candor, along with his sensitive conscience, could repeatedly and consistently make a public reaffirmation of a faith that he really did not believe.

As we contemplate Washington's words and place them in his historical circumstances, it occurs to us that a man so concerned for righteousness in his army, and for military chaplains to lead his men in seeking the blessings of heaven, just might have been a praying man himself.

Is the Judeo-Christian heritage of America a reality or an interloper aimed at suppressing the secularism of the founders? Or, is it the other way around? Are today's secularists trying to recreate the faith of our founding father into the unbelief of a Deist in order to rid our nation of Washington's holy flame of faith?

Apparently Washington's adage of "deeds not words" was utilized to convey to his grandson the importance of the Sabbath, the significance of regular worship, and the value of the reading of the scriptures. Conway's charges are eviscerated in light of the testimony of the one who was allegedly not evangelized by Washington!

Indeed, given the facts, the burden of proof is not to prove that Washington was a Christian; the burden of proof is to prove that he was a skeptic who nevertheless sought to act like a Christian believer!

If there ever was a time when character mattered, it was in Washington's role in the birth of America. If he had operated with a different set of moral values and a different personal character, America would have had a king or dictator instead of a federal Constitution and representative government.