A Stitch in Haste

"It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
--George Washington, 1790

To review: Most of the Framers were Deists, not "Christians" in the modern sense. They were skeptical of many Judaic and Christian concepts, including the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity in general, Hell, Biblical accounts of miracles and other religious conundrums that perplex rational people with functioning minds. They certainly were not what today we would call "Evangelicals."

The one Framer who has probably been the most slandered in this respect is George Washington.

First we have the flat-out lie that Washington added "So help me God..." to the presidential oath of office. Never happened! Not a mistake or a legend — a willful lie propagated by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a Baptist clergyman, in 1856.

Second we have the flat-out lie that Washington was an extremely devout Anglican. He was nominally an Anglican, indeed (probably to accommodate Martha's piety), but he was hardly "devout" —

He was a casual observer of the Sabbath and a semi-regular attendee of church — a little more than once a month, according to [Paul] Boller's review of Washington's diaries. For instance, Washington attended church four times in the first five months of 1760 and 15 times in the year 1768. Sometimes bad weather prevented him from making the lengthy trip but there's also evidence that Washington visited friends, traveled or went foxhunting instead of to church. One has the sense that were he alive today, he'd absolutely head to church, unless friends were gathering to watch an important football game.
...
While at church, Washington was "always serious and attentive," reported William White, the minister at Christ Church in Philadelphia during and after the revolution — but he never kneeled. More significant, Washington did not generally take communion, perhaps the most deeply spiritual act in the Anglican Church. In fact, he would generally leave services before his wife Martha, who often did take the sacrament.
...
Washington rarely referred to Jesus Christ or Christianity in his writings. He often spoke of God, Providence, the Great Architect and other formulations for the deity but only referred to Christ in a handful of instances[.]

The piece emphasizes that Washington was not a Deist — he apparently believed in the power of prayer and that God actively intervenes in human affairs.

But the Eighteenth Century equivalent of a radical Evangelical?

But for those who define being a Christian as requiring the acceptance of Christ as personal savior and the Bible as God's revelation, Washington, based on what we know, probably was not "Christian."

A good talking point to file away the next time you clash with an Evangelical: Since he was never "saved," is George Washington therefore burning in Hell?


H. Weishaupt after Samuel Moore
Apotheosis of George Washington, ca. 1860
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(Via Fark.)

...but you are not entitled to your own Jefferson:

Newdow's argument, despite the 9th Circuit's previous acceptance, is logically flawed. It is based on a phrase — separation of church and state — that appears nowhere in the Constitution and whose meaning is a far cry from "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It ignores that God — the Creator and source of our inalienable rights — is in the Declaration of Independence. And it ignores a vast array of our founders' words and actions, during the Revolutionary period and in governing under the Constitution, that reveal they did not share Newdow's objections.

Of course, this dim-bulb theocrat ignores the pesky fact that the Declaration of Independence is not a binding legal document in the constitutional or statutory sense, and neither does "endowed by their Creator" in any way dictate or even hint that a Christian or even a vaguely religious government is either mandatory or even wise.

More:

Jefferson quoted the Establishment Clause immediately before writing "thus building a wall of separation between Church & State." Since it restricted only Congress and not any religious group, Jefferson's wall was necessarily a "one way" wall. It kept Congress from intruding into religious matters but did nothing to prohibit religion's influence on government or the public.

What kind of intellectual gobbledygook is a "one-way wall"? Congress must stay secular — unless theocrats take it over? "We promise never to do X — until we vote to do X?" The First Amendment exists not to protect the religious minority but rather to protect the religious majority — from a majoritarian legislature?

Welcome to faith-based constitutional interpretation (not to mention faith-based logic). Simultaneously scary and laughable.

Here, by contrast, is the reality-based version:

Thomas Jefferson was a thoroughgoing skeptic who valued reason above faith. He subjected every religious tradition, including his own, to careful scrutiny. He had no patience for talk of miracles, revelation, and resurrection. Like Franklin, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral philosopher, but insisted that Jesus' teachings had been distorted beyond all recognition by a succession of "corruptors," such as Paul, Augustine, and Calvin. He regarded such doctrines as predestination, trinitarianism, and original sin as "nonsense," "abracadabra" and "a deliria of crazy imaginations." He referred to Christianity as "our peculiar superstition" and maintained that "ridicule" was the only rational response to the "unintelligible propositions" of traditional Christianity.

If it is possible to "defame history," then there are few more egregious examples than suggesting that Mike Huckabee or Mitt Romney are the heirs to Thomas Jefferson's intellectual or political legacy.

---

Meanwhile:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has introduced a resolution (H.Res. 847) saying, and I am not making this up, that Christmas and Christians are important.

Who would dare suggest that Thomas Jefferson would be proud of this?

(First posted 19 February 2007.)

"It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support."
--George Washington, 1790

To review: Most of the Framers were Deists, not "Christians" in the modern sense. They were skeptical of many Judaic and Christian concepts, including the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity in general, Hell, Biblical accounts of miracles and other religious conundrums that perplex rational people with functioning minds. They certainly were not what today we would call "Evangelicals."

The one Framer who has probably been the most slandered in this respect is George Washington.

First we have the flat-out lie that Washington added "So help me God..." to the presidential oath of office. Never happened! Not a mistake or a legend — a willful lie propagated by Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a Baptist clergyman, in 1856.

Second we have the flat-out lie that Washington was an extremely devout Anglican. He was nominally an Anglican, indeed (probably to accommodate Martha's piety), but he was hardly "devout" —

He was a casual observer of the Sabbath and a semi-regular attendee of church — a little more than once a month, according to [Paul] Boller's review of Washington's diaries. For instance, Washington attended church four times in the first five months of 1760 and 15 times in the year 1768. Sometimes bad weather prevented him from making the lengthy trip but there's also evidence that Washington visited friends, traveled or went foxhunting instead of to church. One has the sense that were he alive today, he'd absolutely head to church, unless friends were gathering to watch an important football game.
...
While at church, Washington was "always serious and attentive," reported William White, the minister at Christ Church in Philadelphia during and after the revolution — but he never kneeled. More significant, Washington did not generally take communion, perhaps the most deeply spiritual act in the Anglican Church. In fact, he would generally leave services before his wife Martha, who often did take the sacrament.
...
Washington rarely referred to Jesus Christ or Christianity in his writings. He often spoke of God, Providence, the Great Architect and other formulations for the deity but only referred to Christ in a handful of instances[.]

The piece emphasizes that Washington was not a Deist — he apparently believed in the power of prayer and that God actively intervenes in human affairs.

But the Eighteenth Century equivalent of a radical Evangelical?

But for those who define being a Christian as requiring the acceptance of Christ as personal savior and the Bible as God's revelation, Washington, based on what we know, probably was not "Christian."

A good talking point to file away the next time you clash with an Evangelical: Since he was never "saved," is George Washington therefore burning in Hell?


H. Weishaupt after Samuel Moore
Apotheosis of George Washington, ca. 1860
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York