Paul Gottfried: Was George Washington a Christian?
[Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and the author of Encounters: My Life With Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers.]
One of the stupidest historical debates I’ve ever tried to follow concerns the personal religious conviction of our founding father George Washington. Presently there seem to be two opposing schools of propagandists. They can be divided more or less into Beckites and Obamaites, and both seem obsessed with Washington’s theological leanings. The generally leftist historian Joseph Ellis is eager to tell us in his relevant work that Washington was not on the evidence a Trinitarian Christian. Although he dutifully attended Anglican-Episcopalian services with his wife Martha, he avoided taking communion after the American Revolution.
This lack of ritual practice, which was clear to Washington’s minister in Philadelphia (and the local Episcopal bishop), William White, supposedly reveals a great deal about the American founding. Like Jefferson and Franklin, Washington was a free-thinker influenced by the European Enlightenment, and to whatever extent Washington and his fellow founders went along with popular religious enthusiasm, they were simply masking their true feelings. If alive today, they would all no doubt be welcoming the removal of Christian religious symbols from the public square, and in all probability they would be cool with gay marriage and with substituting “holiday greetings” for a “blessed Christmas.”
The other side, following Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and other authorized “conservative” voices, insist that Washington was a pious Christian, who spent his time in solemn religious meditation. The reason his gravestone and his last will and testament are full of references to Christ as well as to God the Father is that George was in fact a believing Christian. Presumably if still around, our first president would by now would be rallying to the GOP. He might even be on the Glenn Beck show, seated next to Rabbi Daniel Lapin and Martin Luther King’s niece. Here he would join the other guests in decrying abortion and calling for “family values.”
In point of fact, the depth of Washington’s Christian beliefs is totally irrelevant to his vision of the country he helped found. It is no more relevant than whether or not Leon Trotsky really believed in Marx’s historical materialism when he led the Red Army. It is only our American obsession with personal authenticity that would cause us to worry about whether Washington was inwardly Christian. This is joined to the equally questionable notion that if Washington did not truly accept the Thirty-Nine Articles of his confession, this lack of faith had profound implications for the republic he helped set up.
Such beliefs tell more about the quality of American journalistic debate than they do about the problem of historical impact...
Read entire article at American Conservative
One of the stupidest historical debates I’ve ever tried to follow concerns the personal religious conviction of our founding father George Washington. Presently there seem to be two opposing schools of propagandists. They can be divided more or less into Beckites and Obamaites, and both seem obsessed with Washington’s theological leanings. The generally leftist historian Joseph Ellis is eager to tell us in his relevant work that Washington was not on the evidence a Trinitarian Christian. Although he dutifully attended Anglican-Episcopalian services with his wife Martha, he avoided taking communion after the American Revolution.
This lack of ritual practice, which was clear to Washington’s minister in Philadelphia (and the local Episcopal bishop), William White, supposedly reveals a great deal about the American founding. Like Jefferson and Franklin, Washington was a free-thinker influenced by the European Enlightenment, and to whatever extent Washington and his fellow founders went along with popular religious enthusiasm, they were simply masking their true feelings. If alive today, they would all no doubt be welcoming the removal of Christian religious symbols from the public square, and in all probability they would be cool with gay marriage and with substituting “holiday greetings” for a “blessed Christmas.”
The other side, following Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and other authorized “conservative” voices, insist that Washington was a pious Christian, who spent his time in solemn religious meditation. The reason his gravestone and his last will and testament are full of references to Christ as well as to God the Father is that George was in fact a believing Christian. Presumably if still around, our first president would by now would be rallying to the GOP. He might even be on the Glenn Beck show, seated next to Rabbi Daniel Lapin and Martin Luther King’s niece. Here he would join the other guests in decrying abortion and calling for “family values.”
In point of fact, the depth of Washington’s Christian beliefs is totally irrelevant to his vision of the country he helped found. It is no more relevant than whether or not Leon Trotsky really believed in Marx’s historical materialism when he led the Red Army. It is only our American obsession with personal authenticity that would cause us to worry about whether Washington was inwardly Christian. This is joined to the equally questionable notion that if Washington did not truly accept the Thirty-Nine Articles of his confession, this lack of faith had profound implications for the republic he helped set up.
Such beliefs tell more about the quality of American journalistic debate than they do about the problem of historical impact...