Thomas Jefferson received a great deal of
coverage in Parts I and II, and for good reason. The gentleman from Virginia is
the most published of our founders, and his influence on the formation of our
constitutional republic was profound. There is just too much proof of
Jefferson's resistance to any religious influence in our constitution to
be denied.
It is for this reason the Texas State Board
of Education wishes to omit Jefferson from Texas public school curriculum.
Theocrats cannot weave the deception necessary to convince children that our
country is a "Christian nation" so long as the truth about
Jefferson stands in the way.
The assault on religious liberty is
ever-present in this country, and began almost a century before the colonies
split from King George. Jefferson's resistance, and Madison's as well, are
documented fact. So what of the others? Where is truth to be found? In this
missive I shall discuss one of them in depth; General George Washington.
We know that some religious sects fled
persecution in the old world only to construct oppressive religious-based
colonies in America. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by Puritans,
Pennsylvania by Quakers, Maryland by Roman Catholics, while the southern states
were somewhat Episcopalian. Some established severe laws indistinguishable from
those they abhorred in their former homes.
As our founders debated the verbiage of our
constitution, fundamentalists worked to influence the process and hoped to
couch the language of the document in religious terms. Our founders, cognizant
of the history of religious repression, consistently rejected this notion.
The attempts to insert Christianity into our government existed in those times,
and have never ceased. When George Washington died, the response from the
religious crowd was immediate.
The legacy of our first President came under
assault by Christians intent on claiming him as one of their own immediately
upon his 1799 death. Proving Washington to be a religionist would have been a
huge feather in their cap. This effort was based largely on the grounds that
Washington had regularly attended services with his wife at an Episcopal
Church, and had served as a vestryman in the church.
On August 13, 1835, a Christian activist by
the name of “Colonel Mercer” wrote to Bishop William White, who had been
one of the rectors at the church Washington had attended. In the letter, Mercer
asked if "Washington was a communicant of the Protestant Episcopal
Church, or whether he occasionally went to the communion only, or if ever he
did so at all..."[i]
White replied two days later, that, “In
regard to the subject of your inquiry, truth requires me to say that Gen. Washington
never received the communion in the churches of which I am the parochial
minister. Mrs. Washington was an habitual communicant.... I have been written
to by many on that point, and have been obliged to answer them as I now do you.”[ii]
In his Annals of the American Pulpit, The Rev.
William B. Sprague wrote a biographical sketch of James Abercrombie, the other
pastor of the church Washington attended. Sprague quoted Abercrombie as
confirming White's reply to Mercer.
One incident in Dr. Abercrombie's experience
is especially worthy of record; In an 1831 letter by Abercrombie written to a
friend, he pens: "With respect to the inquiry you make I can only state
the following facts; that, as pastor of the Episcopal church, observing that,
on sacramental Sundays, Gen. Washington, immediately after the desk and pulpit
services, went out with the greater part of the congregation--always leaving
Mrs. Washington with the other communicants--she invariably being one--I
considered it my duty in a sermon on Public Worship, to state the unhappy
tendency of example, particularly of those in elevated stations who uniformly
turned their backs upon the celebration of the Lord's Supper. I acknowledge the
remark was intended for the President; and as such he received it."[iii]
Abercrombie further explained that he had
heard through a senator that Washington had discussed this reprimand with
others, and had told them that "as he had never been a communicant,
were he to become one then it would be imputed to an ostentatious display of
religious zeal, arising altogether from his elevated station.”[iv]
Abercrombie then said that Washington "never
afterwards came on the morning of sacramental Sunday."[v]
Reverend Abercrombie's stated pointedly, "Sir, Washington was a Deist."[vi]
Writing in the Episcopal Recorder,
E.D. Neill refuted the Christian revisionists, stating that Washington "was
not a communicant, notwithstanding all the pretty stories to the contrary, and
after the close of the sermon on sacramental Sundays, [he] had fallen
into the habit of retiring from the church while his wife remained and
communed."[vii]
It is apparently true that Washington, for
several years, served as a vestryman, as had his father before him. The
vestry at that time was also the county court, so in order to have certain
political powers, it was necessary for one to be a vestryman.
Thomas Jefferson was a vestryman for a while.
This was no admission of faith. Bishop William Meade wrote in an 1857 letter, “Even
Mr. Jefferson and [Mr.] Wythe, who did not conceal their disbelief in
Christianity, took their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at
Williamsburg, the other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of influence.”[viii]
The Rev. Bird Wilson was only a few years
removed from being a contemporary of our founding fathers. In a sermon to his
flock, Wilson stated that "the founders of our nation were nearly all
Infidels, and that of the presidents who had thus far been elected
[Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and
Jackson] not a one had professed a belief in Christianity."
Wilson continued by saying, “When the war
was over and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness
of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed and God was
neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the
Constitution.” (Emphasis mine).[ix]
Rev. Wilson, in an interview with a gentleman
by the name of Owen, said "I have diligently perused every line that
Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which
he pledges him self as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will
candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and
nothing more."[x]
Finally, in 1987, Washington was profiled by
historian Clinton Rossiter. Mr. Rossiter writes that, “The last and least
skeptical of these rationalists [Washington] loaded his First Inaugural
Address with appeals to the ‘Great Author,’ ‘Almighty Being,’ ‘invisible hand,’
and ‘benign parent of the human race,’ but apparently could not bring himself to
speak the word ‘God’.”[xi]
Our second President, John Adams was a Unitarian who flatly denied the
doctrine of eternal damnation. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote,
"I almost shudder at the thought of
alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of
mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of
grief has produced!"
In
a letter
to Samuel Miller on July 8, 1820, Adams expressed unbelief of Protestant
Calvinism. "I must acknowledge that
I cannot class myself under that denomination."
In
"A
Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America"
[1787-1788], Adams wrote that "[T]he
United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of
governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now
sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture,
hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their
history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at
present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may
hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any
persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any
degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or
houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be
acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason
and the senses.”
Later
in the same document, Adams says, "[T]hirteen
governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without
a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the
northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in
favor of the rights of mankind."[xii]
In Part IV we shall discuss those among our
founders who were Christians, and their contributions to our Constitutional
Republic.
~~
[i] Remsberg,
J Six Historic Americans
[ii] IBID,
p. 104
[iii] IBID,
pp. 104-105
[iv] IBID,
p. 105
[v] IBID,
p. 105
[viii] Meade,
W, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia,
2 vols., Philadelphia, 1857, I, p. 191
[xii] Sweeley, J.W., Rights,
Liberties, and Social Justice: How
America Lost Its Moral Authority, Blue Dolphin Publishing
~~
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1 Comments:
I admire your research. I had formed similar conclusions about the framers of the Constitution but until now I had not read these documents which so well reinforce their intentions.
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