The Religion of George Washington
What is Known About the Faith of the First President?
Aug 20, 2009
George Washington was well known during his lifetime for his reluctance to speak publicly about personal matters. The British ambassador to the United States during Washington’s presidency is said to have remarked that Washington was “the only person he had ever known … who made no reply of any kind to a question that he did not choose to answer.” This reticence extended especially to matters of religion. When Washington was asked directly by a group of clergymen whether or not he was a Christian, he answered all their other questions but simply ignored that one.
Washington’s Public Practice of Religion
Like other Virginia planters of his time, Washington attended the Anglican church with moderate regularity. Also like most gentlemen, he served as a vestryman for his parish. Neither of these activities signified any real devotion to the Christian religion in colonial America. Since church and state were not separate, any man of influence was by definition involved in both. Washington was, and intended to remain, a man of influence. He was what today might be called “conventionally” religious.
Washington’s Public Non-Practice of Religion
With regard to religious matters, what Washington did publicly is not nearly as significant as what he did not do publicly. He did not attend services frequently – only about a dozen times a year, even during his presidency. He surprised many dinner guests at Mount Vernon by not saying grace before the meal. According to his various rectors, he never knelt for prayers and, even more notably, never took communion. When he was gently chastised in a sermon for being among those who “turned their back on the Lord’s supper” by leaving the church before communion was served, he acknowledged that such behavior could be setting a bad example – and thereafter simply didn’t attend services on communion Sundays. In both his public and his private correspondence, Washington avoids the word “God,” using instead more abstract terms like “Grand Architect of the Universe,” “First Cause,” and (most often) “Providence.” The name “Jesus Christ” never appears, not even in his will.
The Invention of Washington the Pious
In 1800, scarcely a year after Washington died, Mason Locke (“Parson”) Weems, an itinerant preacher and bookseller, published a slim pamphlet called The Life of Washington. By his own admission, Weems’s book consisted of anecdotes he had gathered, reflecting what people wanted to believe about “the father of his country.” In succeeding editions, the legend grew, as Weems added incidents made up out of whole cloth – Washington chopping down a cherry tree and forthrightly admitting his guilt to his father; Washington kneeling in solitary prayer in the snow at Valley Forge. Weems was not the only one who created a fictional George Washington, of course. Many followed the trail he blazed; and many are still at it today.
What is really known about George Washington’s religion? Primarily, that it was concerned more with morality than with faith – more with how people act than with what they believe. Beyond that, historians know that Washington had little interest in religion as an abstract object of study; he did not have the intellectual curiosity of his two successors as president, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. He believed that as long as people met their obligations to society, they should be free to serve their own consciences in matters of faith and worship.
Sources:
Allen, Brooke. Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006.
Holmes, David L. The Religion of the Founding Fathers. Charlottesville: Ash Lawn-Highland and Ann Arbor: The Clements Library, University of Michigan, 2003.
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