“And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on
all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the
boundaries of their dwelling place”
--Acts 17:26
Men are made for their times and those times shape the
destiny of the man. As Matthew Henry the
great English Bible commentator says of this verse, from our perspective the
times are changeable, from God’s perspective they are set because they are
based on the eternal counsels of his will.
I believe there is a reason George Washington came on the
scene when he did and led our nation as its first president. It wasn’t just good timing and blind
circumstance, it was the hand of Providence guiding a man and a nation to His
specific destiny.
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| Crossing the Delaware (without lifejackets!) |
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| Washington portrayed as Roman Senator |
Of course Washington had help. He was surrounded by a well-known fraternity
historians call our “Founding Fathers.”
These men were brilliant and some were arguably far smarter than
Washington himself. But keen
intelligence is not always linked with great leadership in the same
person. In fact, one study done at U.C.
Davis suggests that some of our smartest presidents, with a few exceptions,
were actually quite ineffectual leaders (to see article go to : http://www.businessinsider.com/the-15-smartest-us-presidents-of-all-time-2015-3). The greater strength of Washington was his
integrity, fortitude, and inner resolve to make the best decision possible as
opposed to what is politically expedient and will build his personal legacy.
But greatness aside, there is another measure of George
Washington that I would like to discuss in this article; that is, what is known
about the spiritual life and orientation of our first president? Some have suggested that Washington was a
deist much like Franklin or Jefferson and that certainly would be in keeping
with the times and fashion of his social class and the company he kept. Others have conflated references to morals
and religion Washington made in his letters and speeches and have equated him
with a Bible-toting evangelical. I think
there reason to believe that George Washington had a true Christian commitment
and this was a long standing fact in his life.
However, he was sensitive to his position as a leader in both the
military and new government and spoke of religion in such a way as to be
positive but inclusive and respectful of all people and their right to hold
their own religious commitments.
According to a historic timeline, when George Washington was
born, the earliest sparks of the First Great Awakening were happening in New
England. By the time Washington was 15
years old, the evangelist George Whitefield was the most well-known man in
America and revival in all 13 colonies was in full-flower. It is said that George Whitefield recognized
America’s destiny before the American people did and his evangelical movement
sowed the seeds of democratic thought that later germinated into the
Declaration of 1776.
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| George Whitefield |
I wonder if the Washington family, aristocratic plantation
owners in Virginia and members of the Church of England, were touched by this
revival as so many other Americans were at the time. They had to be aware of it, as a young man in
his mid-thirties named Benjamin Franklin (who would later be a colleague of
their famous son in the Revolution), was Whitefield’s publicist and made it his
mission to keep him in the news as much as possible. In any case, George Washington was affected
because the Great Awakening set in motion among the colonists a movement
towards independence that would dominate the majority of his adult life.
Many of the stories later generations (including my own)
learned about Washington came from an Episcopal clergyman named Mason Locke
Weems. Weems published an immensely
popular biography of Washington
just 3 years after his death that attributed every virtue in great measure to Washington. Washington
was extraordinarily honest, brave, wise, and had incredible physical
prowess. It is in a later printing of
this book that the story of the chopping down the cherry tree appeared with
young George unable to tell a lie to his parents. Even though little was based on more than
fiction, Washington was considered a demigod within a couple of decades of his
passing. However, if Washington really could
not tell a lie, he was the first and last president in American history
to possess that extraordinary skill!
Parson Weems was not intent on deceiving people through lies
about Washington but cashing in on a hot publishing trend of his day. Very popular (in terms of sales anyway) were
books for young people that focused on instilling virtue by telling stories of
great people (much like the Roman author Plutarch did in his famous Lives).
Washington was a great person in life and a cherished hero of the
founding generation and so the perfect subject for such a book. There is no evidence of the cherry tree story
or Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac actually happened,
but their inclusion is to point us to the fact the George Washington was a
honest and strong person who could be trusted.
In his early twenties Washington lived an exciting life
doing various military exploits with a measure of success. He also was learned the work of land
surveying and did this with his brother a number of years. But eventually he married and married well
which increased his wealth and landholdings.
He married a woman named Martha Custis who was a widow aged 27. George was 26 years old at the time and she
nicknamed him the “old man”.
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| Martha Custis Washington |
It is also well-known that Washington loved another woman
named Sally Fairfax all of his adult life.
This love was never consummated and was kept very secret, but there are
love letters from him to her that span his life to the end. This is an inconvenient fact when writing
about the spiritual measure of a man as loving someone who isn’t your wife is
truly a violation of God’s 7th commandment.
On balance, it should be acknowledged that all people are sinners even
if they are Christians which is why we need a Savior in the first place.
George Washington was not so much an intellectual, but was
knowledgeable in many ways mainly in practical things. He was a man of action more than a man of
ideas. This is not to say he didn’t
grasp philosophical ideas. He most
certainly did and lived by them.
Washington just wasn’t the “ivory tower” intellectual type.
In keeping with his proclivity for the practical, as a young
man he copied long passages from a book written by Jesuit priests called Rules for Civility. These aided him as he moved upward in Virginia society. Some of the maxims found in his personal
notebook included: it is bad manners to clean your teeth with the tablecloth
following a meal and keep a proper distance from people to whom you are
speaking so you don’t shower them with your spit. Some very good wisdom indeed!
Washington was raised Anglican, and then migrated to the
Episcopal church after the revolution.
He was baptized and served on the board of trustees of his church in
Virginia. He was also known to attend
religious services once a month which was considered quite regular for the
times. More often than not, it was weather making the roads impassable or
illness preventing one from leaving their bed that caused an absence from
church. Washington possessed devotional
books of sermons in his library and would read them to his family on Sundays. When Washington was at church he did not
participate in communion like his wife Martha did but rather slipped outside
the service and got the carriage ready to take his family home.
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| Washington Attending Church |
Jared Sparks, a well-known American historian who compiled
and read nearly every extant document of Washington believed it was impossible
to accurately give the measure of the man without considering him a Christian
believer. Sparks also corresponded with
Washington’s granddaughter Nellie Custis-Lewis who was raised by George and
Martha when her mother and father died suddenly during her childhood. Custis-Lewis gave unequivocal testimony of
her Grandfather’s faith and religious exercises which she witnessed a great
deal during her formative years. Her
presence in George and Martha’s lives was before and during his presidency
which adds weight to its value in giving the measure of this man.
When Washington was general he was quick to attend religious
services with the Continental Army. He
was also known to pray privately in his officer’s tent. The kneeling Washington at Valley Forge is
likely to be an inaccurate painting that takes an accurate measure of the
man. Washington very much sought the
guidance and favor of God in prayer during the Revolutionary war. He also would have prayed in private as to
not make a public show of his religion.
He probably didn’t kneel in prayer as that was neither the custom of his
day or something a person of his social standing would do. Prayer was usually done standing up with the
head uncovered (more in the Jewish tradition).
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| Washington at Valley Forge |
Interestingly, Washington issued orders which forbade all
cursing and swearing in his army. He did
this because he wanted divine favor on his undertaking and felt it might be
withheld if his troops were blaspheming God in the heat of battle. That might seem quaint or even a bit superstitious
today, but it reveals that Washington possessed reverence for God based on his
inner faith.
Later when the congress was deliberating on the presidency
and what it should be, it made it a stronger office in part because they had
their eyes on Washington to occupy it and they knew they could trust him with
power. I think it is very telling about
Washington that when monarchy was suggested to him after winning the war, he
rejected it immediately and completely.
Equally so, his example of laying his power down at the end of two
terms, a tradition that only later became law, shows that in him was the heart
of a public servant and not someone with an inner hunger for power over others.
When Washington took the Presidential oath of office, he did
so with his hand on the Bible and then bowed down and kissed the Bible
according to recorded accounts of the event.
He also is the one who added “so help me God” to the oath of the
Presidency.
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| "..so help me God." |
Washington did read the Bible and often quoted from it in
his personal and public correspondence.
In his high office he also often referred to Christian virtues as the
backbone of our freedom. It was Washington who wrote: reason and experience forbid us to expect
that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. What a shame that today there can be no
discussion of a national morality with regards to our liberty. True liberty has classically been defined as
the freedom to choose to do the right thing without coercion. American liberty today is largely what the
Bible would call licentiousness or ‘doing what is right in our own eyes’
without regard for the moral law of God.
American presidents (and most public officials) get queasy about the
subject of morality because the only objective standard of it is based in
religious belief and practice. George
Washington had clarity on this because he knew and practiced his religion.
Something else I believe speaks to the spiritual core of
Washington was his view on slavery. It
must be remembered that African slavery was legal and commonly practiced in all
the colonies and states in this time. If
you could afford them (and most people couldn’t) then you owned them. Although Washington was a slave-owner
himself, from 1770 onwards he slowly committed himself to the abolition of
slavery.
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| Mt. Vernon was kept by slave labor |
Something Washington did which set a tone for the next
generations was to free his slaves upon his death. It was actually his desire they be set free
earlier, but it would be to their hurt and to his wife’s in her old age. But he knew and believed that slavery was
inconsistent with the Constitution and did by example something the nation
would not do until they were forced to by the tragedy of the Civil War.
If Washington was merely a warm deist who saw the utilitarian
value of religion in promoting civic virtue, it is still hard to ignore the
Christian spirit that seemed to be present within him. However, it would be even harder to believe a
man who sought to live with great integrity would feign Christian faith when in
fact, he didn’t have any.
Washington was simply a devout man who just didn’t make a
lot of public statements about his own religious beliefs.
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| Washington with family on Sunday afternoon |
Personally, I would rather see a President live out his
faith in his personal and public life through his actions rather than his words
than to be very vocal about his faith and yet live and govern as if he were an
atheist. America could use another
George Washington.
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