FaithLife

Revisiting Washington

Last Updated on February 6, 2022

I did John Scalzi’s Weekend Assignment, which asked which of our Founding Fathers we’d like to have a beer with. I said I’d like to have a conversation with George Washington to set the record straight about his views of religion and its place in our society.

Many who argue that our Founding Fathers were anti-religious are basing their arguments on logic that doesn’t quite hold true, I said. I cited the hot-button topic of the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance as an example of a controversy that is being fought with speculation over what the Founding Fathers had in mind.

A few people left comments to that…good comments that continue the debate. Whether our Founding Fathers were religious or not, the fact that they decided to break away from England to form their own country certainly suggests that they supported the concept of differing opinions. Sometimes a series of lucid arguments within the comments of a post add considerably to the discussion; unfortunately, there are many who simply don’t read the comments at all. That’s why I wanted to briefly resurrect this topic to discuss two of the comments in particular.

One of the comments said:

“What (the Founding Fathers) ‘simply didn’t want’ was a government that encouraged a religion, any religion, that would constitute interference with the freely held opinions of the American people.”

To this, I suggested that the phrase “Under God” doesn’t encourage any specific religion. There are agnostics that believe there is a God somewhere out there, yet they prefer to have proof up front prior to defining themselves specifically as belonging to any religion in particular. (Not that they need to feel compelled to label themselves at all…it’s their right to be who they want to be.) There are formal religions of many different kinds and of many different cultures that believe in the concept of “God,” whether they choose to call their deity “God” or not.

In fact, there are plenty of people who will, if asked to specify, claim that they do not belong to any particular religion at all. They may disapprove of the way organized religion itself operates, or at least their individual view of how organized religion operates is less than kind. They may agree with a mixture of the teachings of several different kinds of religions as if their own spiritual philosophy is itself a “melting pot” of sorts. But even these people, who choose not to be outwardly religious at all, believe in some concept of God.

There is a misconception in this country that any mention of “God” must be some form of “preaching.” I suggest that there are instances in which this is not true. The most obvious example that comes to mind is the person who uses a colloquialism such as, “For God’s sake.” He’s not preaching a lesson of morality to anyone by the use of such a popular phrase, nor is he trying to convert you to whatever religion he happens to be a part of, if there is one. It is not possible for people to mention “God” without the speaker becoming vilified as a minister of some kind?

I know what you’re thinking: “Hey, wait a second: that’s not the intent of those who installed the phrase into the Pledge.” And that’s a valid point. But the intent argument goes many ways.

But how about this: The Declaration of Independence states the following:

“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Written by our Founding Fathers, these words support the belief of a Creator. The Declaration’s very first paragraph states:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Again, the concept of “Nature’s God” implies a Creationist or Deist religious view. The writers of the document are not preaching that God’s role in the universe is only as the One who created it and that once the Creation occurred, nature unfolds unassisted. But the language apparently of the specific religion that does believe that is present.

Should the Declaration of Independence be rewritten to cleanse it of the evils of a mention of “a religion, any religion” that could be considered as “interference with the freely held opinions of the American people” who choose to believe that God is more of the point of origin in the universe, and rather is One who sees all and controls all?

If the Pledge had included the words “Under God” from the beginning, would this controversy be going on now, or is the fact that the two words were added after the fact that seems to change the intent of the finished product? Even if you would still object if “Under God” had been included in the original version, the majority of those who object to those words must admit that the fact that those two words were added after the fact makes the “problem” worse because it’s an issue of clear intent, right?

After all, had the words been included from the beginning, they would have been simply like those in the Declaration of Independence: a matter-of-fact reference to a higher power that neither endorses any specific religion nor implies that those who do not share that image of a Creator should pack up and move out.

But the intent issue brings up another point:

Another comment:

“‘Does the phrase “Under God” encourage any specific religion?’ No. But what is does do is encourage religion itself. … There are also (atheists) who, oddly enough, consider themselves to be patriotic Americans and equal citizens of this country who feel that any pledge to the country should not also include a pledge to a god or gods of any kind. … And that is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Freedom. To believe. In what. Or not.”

First, anyone who believes that athiests and agnostics are bad people simply because of their religious beliefs — or their choice not to have them — is as prejudicial as those who feel that a black person is bad just because he is black. There are good and bad people in any group, no matter how that group is defined. I hope that sentiment is clear here without me having to spell that out, but I wanted to spell it out anyway.

The point that a pledge to the country should not have to include a pledge to a god or gods of any kind is well taken. But the Pledge of Allegiance isn’t a pledge to God: it is a pledge to a country. God is mentioned there as an afterthought (by virtue of the fact that the reference was added later) and only as a reference to the fact that the country isn’t the highest, ultimate authority of the universe. If the Pledge used this language, “I pledge allegiance to the flag, the country for which it stands, and the God who invented it all,” I think the meaning would be very, very different.

What of the intent of George Washington? Was he religious at all? Did he believe in God? Did he consider God more as a Creator whose sole function was to start the ball rolling? Perhaps.

Yet the next to the last paragraph in his farewell address, dated September 17, 1796, contains the following:

“Though, in reviewing the incidents of my administration, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may have committed many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or mitigate the evils to which they may tend.”

That last sentence, as I read it, seems to indicate that Washington is publicly calling upon a higher power to intercede for the good of the country. To those who complain about today’s Presidential addresses which always end with the phrase, “God Bless America,” and who argue that an expression of any religious sentiment has no place there, I would suggest that one of our more revered Founding Fathers, held on a pedestal because he is blatantly non-religious, proves that such sentiment was present from the Presidency’s earliest days.

Further, the politician within George Washington kept him from alienating anyone by claiming any one religion, yet he also did not approve of religious intolerance. In late 1775, Washington banned “Pope’s Day” celebrations within the Continental Army; the Protestant celebrations traditionally made fun of the Pope, according to the same article by Charles Grymes I cited earlier.

Grymes also has something interesting to say about the intent of Washington to encourage religion among others:

“He was a military commander who struggled to motivate raw troops in the French and Indian War. He recognized that recruiting the militia in the western part of Virginia required accommodating the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Baptists, and Dutch Reformed members in officially-Anglican Virginia. He was aware that religious beliefs were a fundamental part of the lives of his peers and of his soldiers. He knew that a moral basis for the American Revolution and the creation of a new society would motivate Americans to support his initiatives – and he knew that he would receive more support if he avoided discriminating against specific religious beliefs.

In the Revolutionary War, Washington supported troops selecting their own chaplains (such as the Universalist John Murray) while trying to avoid the development of factions within the army. Religion offered him moral leverage to instill discipline, reduce theft, deter desertion, and minimize other rambunctious behaviors that upset local residents. It was logical for Washington to invoke the name of the Divine, but it may have been motivated more by a desire for improving life on earth rather than dealing with life after death.”

The full article can be found here. It is intended to convince anyone who reads it that those who first settled in America (specifically, in Virginia) were not motivated out of a desire for religious freedom for the masses, but rather by the freedom to celebrate their own specific religion and no other.

He makes excellent points, including an obvious one that the facts can be used quite convincingly to paint Washington as either religious or not. I have tried to select facts from his article and others that solely indicate that Washington did exploit religion for the good of society, whether he was personally religious or not. But even if Washington only intended to reap the perceived benefits of moral order he felt religion would provide, it can still be argued that he “encouraged” it among his people, whether he himself took part or not.

The intent issue is an important one. Much of what is and isn’t perceived as being “religious” depends on the intent of the user as well as that of the reader.

It is a shame in our country that the most zealous in the religious community have brainwashed the masses through patterns of unacceptable intolerance that all things religious must somehow be bad. That line of reasoning seems very contrary to the intent of the God I choose to believe in, who says, among many other things, “Love thy neighbor.”

the authorPatrick
Patrick is a Christian with more than 30 years experience in professional writing, producing and marketing. His professional background also includes social media, reporting for broadcast television and the web, directing, videography and photography. He enjoys getting to know people over coffee and spending time with his dog.