Founder’s faith

Biographers and historians have characterized the religious beliefs of George Washington as deist, saying he had a general belief in God but did not subscribe to Bible-based Christianity.

This assertion is an error, say Michael Novak and Jana Novak, authors of “Washington’s God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country.”

“It’s easy to prove he’s not a deist. It’s hard to prove he’s a Christian,” Mr. Novak said.

Mr. Novak and his daughter presented their book at a panel discussion this month at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI) in Northwest.

They wrote the book, they said, at the request of James Rees, executive director of Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens, Washington’s Virginia home. Several visitors to the estate’s bookstore had requested a book about Washington’s religious beliefs.

“Many of the most popular books on Washington tend to not give religion a lot of coverage,” Mr. Rees said. “There has been a need for someone to come in and investigate Washington’s relationship with his God and sum up what kind of man he was in terms of that religion.”

Washington, a planter, businessman, general and the nation’s first president, was a lifelong Anglican who used a general rather than a confessional language of religion in his proclamations, general orders and 1796 “Farewell Address,” the Novaks said. He talked of God as Providence, the Creator, the Supreme Being, and Great Lord and Ruler of Nations, using nonsectarian, nondenominational names, they said. He did not use Christian terms such as “Savior” or “Redeemer,” they said.

Like many Anglicans, Washington understated his piety, Mr. Novak said. Records show that he attended church about once a month.

The nouns Washington used made it easy for historians to dismiss him as a deist, Ms. Novak said, but the verbs he used were in the Judeo-Christian tradition. In his “Thanksgiving Proclamation” of 1789, for example, Washington implores God for “His protection and favor.”

If he were a deist, Washington would not ask God to intervene, Ms. Novak said.

Washington and the other Founding Fathers wanted to prevent a government-established church, but did not advocate complete separation of faith and public life, said Matthew Spalding, one of the panelists and director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for American Studies.

The Founders thought that removing religion from the public square would violate the freedom of expression, Mr. Spalding said.

“The great lesson you get from Washington, indeed from the Founders in general, is a language to talk about the role of religion within a context of religious liberty,” he said.

The Founders wanted to provide a civil language of religion for people to use in the public square and thought government could support religious liberty while maintaining the separation of church and state, the Novaks said.

Gen. Washington ordered his troops to pray and behave like Christians. The American Civil Liberties Union would consider such language to be a breach of the separation of church and state, Ms. Novak said.

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