25
“EXCEPT THE LORD BUILD THE HOUSE . . .”
The search was almost over. We had seen how miraculously God would intervene to preserve and protect His covenanted people. And He continued to do so, even though they did not always live up to their end of the covenant. We saw how He brought them by His grace to final victory. At last, all that God had purposed for His “New Israel” seemed to be within reach. America was now free to be the “city on a hill” that John Winthrop had envisioned.
But instead, a sad trend toward a de-emphasis of the Covenant Way had already begun. Even as the newborn republic was everywhere proclaiming its trust in God, that trust was lessening. For the first time in more than a century and a half, America’s ministers were no longer its most influential leaders. We needed to find out why.
We did find out. And in the process we discovered something else: that despite the spiritual decline, God made certain that those same covenant promises that He had made to our ancestors when He brought them here would always be a viable possibility in the United States of America. We saw how He ensured that, no matter what happened in intervening generations, we Americans would still be able to avail ourselves of those promises and reenter a covenant relationship with Him as a nation.
The state of the nation was one of exhilaration. For the United States of America was truly a nation—totally free and independent for the first time in the nearly two centuries since the first English ships had sailed up the James River to settle Jamestown and the three centuries since Columbus had glimpsed the low coastline of San Salvador.
“Great indeed is the salvation He hath shown! And great the obligations we are under to praise!” preached George Duffield in Philadelphia, reflecting the sentiment of the majority of the nation’s ministers. For Duffield, the destiny of the Redeemer Nation, of the City set on a Hill, was now fulfilled. God’s “New Israel” was now established.
With Israel of old, we take up our song: “Blessed be the Lord, who gave us not as a prey to their teeth. Blessed be the Lord, the snare is broken and we are escaped.” . . . Here also shall our Jesus go forth conquering and to conquer, and the heathen be given Him for an inheritance, and these uttermost parts for a possession. The pure and undefiled religion of our blessed Redeemer—here shall it reign in triumph over all opposition!1
But Duffield’s words were premature. While this promise was indeed bright, it had not happened yet. And David Tappan, in his pulpit at Newbury, Massachusetts, was one of the first of the minority to sound a more cautionary note. He reminded his hearers that God had delivered America in spite of her national traits—not because of them.
Let us beware that we do not impute these signal divine appearances in our favor to any peculiar excellence in our national character. Alas, the moral face of our country effectually confutes such a vainglorious statement. Crimes of the blackest hue, countless multitudes of abominations, mark the visible character of this great, this highly favored community, and still provoke the great displeasure of heaven. . . . Let us remember that for His own sake, He hath done these great things, not for any righteousness in us. . . . But that His own name might be exalted, that His own great designs . . . extending the Kingdom of His Son, may be carried into effect.2
John Rodgers, in New York, preached a whole sermon on the remarkable instances of Divine Providence in the war just concluded. Among other things, he pointed out that if the British had first struck in the South rather than at Boston, three colonies—Georgia and the two Carolinas—in all likelihood would not have joined the war. He speculated on what would have happened had a lesser man assumed the generalship of the army and on the unlikelihood of such total surprise as that which accompanied the attacks on Trenton and Princeton. He noted the extraordinary timing of the arrivals of de Grasse and Washington at Yorktown, which sealed Cornwallis’s fate.
Lastly, God has done great things for us, by that honorable, and may I add, glorious peace, by which He has terminated the late unnatural war. . . . There is not an instance in history, within my recollection, of so great a revolution being effected in so short a time, and with so little loss of life and property, as that in which we this day rejoice.3
With few exceptions, it seemed to the ministers of America that the Light, which had been brought by the first Christ-bearers, had at last been joined by the glory of his Kingdom come—or soon coming. The most outspoken was Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards. This candid and persuasive clergyman was shortly to become President of Yale College and the leading advocate of his age for evangelical Christianity. Dwight was looking for the imminent arrival of God’s kingdom:
God brought His little flock hither and placed it in this wilderness, for the great purpose of establishing permanently the Church of Christ in these vast regions of idolatry and sin, and commencing here the glorious work of salvation. This great continent is soon to be filled with the praise and piety of the Millennium. But here is the seed, from which this last harvest is to spring.4
Dwight was convinced that a return to Puritan ideals and priorities was the only thing that would ensure the coming of the Kingdom that God had clearly intended to create here. And one of the themes that he repeatedly hit upon was the need for a reestablishment of the covenant relationship that their forebears had entered into with God and with one another. He was not averse (as were most of his colleagues) to looking at the duality of the Old Testament concept of covenant—at what would happen if they did not keep their end of the bargain.
“Nothing obstructs the deliverance of America,” he had preached in 1777, “but the crimes of its inhabitants.” Only if America honored the vertical and horizontal aspects of the covenant would “independence and happiness [be] fixed upon the most lasting foundations, and that Kingdom of the Redeemer . . . [be] highly exalted and durably established on the ruins of the Kingdom of Satan.”5
So there it was, once again back to the same basic truth: the glory that could be America’s depended on her living up to the light that she had been given. Nothing had changed since leaders like William Bradford and John Winthrop and Thomas Hooker had heeded God’s calls on their lives and given definition to the corporate call on God’s people. As far as God was concerned (if Dwight was hearing him correctly), the covenant was still in effect.
Dwight was not the only one gravely concerned about the need for a spiritual binding together. Washington wrote to the governor of each of the thirteen states upon his disbanding of the army:
I now make it my earnest prayer that God . . . would incline the hearts of the citizens . . . to entertain a brotherly affection for one another, for their fellow-citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field. And finally that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves, with that charity, humility and pacific temper of mind, which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.6
Just how united were the United States? The dire peril of the war that had threatened them all had forced a semblance of the covenant on the states. For there could have been no suing for peace, no conditional surrender; it had to have been either victory or subjection of the most ruthless sort. That was how Great Britain traditionally dealt with uprisings—with the gibbet or the headsman’s axe.
America had known this in her heart. So, when Boston’s harbor had been shut down, all the colonies had responded spontaneously; after the Battle of Lexington, riflemen from Virginia and Maryland had marched to Cambridge. And when Cornwallis had cut into the heart of Virginia, there were many soldiers from Massachusetts who had come down to avenge her. For eight years the states had fought and bled and cared for one another, almost as if they had covenanted before to do so.
Yet even with all the prayer and the sacrifice, Congress still had to beg the states for money to support the war effort. Nor was it empowered to impose a draft, with the result that the Continental Army was trying to attract recruits at the same time that soldiers were going for several months without getting paid.
But what really belied any covenant attitude among them—what proved that the horizontal aspect of the covenant was not possible outside of Christ—was what happened as soon as the war was over and the pressure lifted. Fallen humanity’s utter selfishness came roaring back with a vengeance. States that had throughout the war avoided contributing their fair share now simply refused to pay at all. Massachusetts wound up paying more of the war’s expenses than any other state—about as much as Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, and Maryland combined—though her population was only 13 percent of America’s total.7
The disputes between the states accelerated and deepened with a rapidity that was disheartening, to say the least. Some states were willing to cede their western holdings to Congress; others refused to do so. Some states had worked hard to pay off their war debts; others wanted Congress to assume them. The Articles of Confederation—an emergency, stopgap solution intended to provide some form of unified, legal government—were woefully inadequate. They provided for no executive or judicial branches and no national power to compel. The only power Congress had was the power to make war and peace, draft treaties, and maintain a postal service. Yet some of the states thought that even this was too much and refused to ratify the Articles.
Quarrels between the states finally grew deep-seated and vindictive, with each state raising or lowering tariffs and coining its own money. Several states even sent their own ambassadors abroad to make trade agreements in competition with one another and with the United States government. In a word, the Union was a mess. And many of the most responsible, realistic leaders in America were seriously beginning to question whether it would work at all.
George Washington, who passionately wanted no more of public life, now felt compelled to do all he could to save the Union. He started a letter-writing campaign to the people who were in a position to most shape opinions in America. Pleading from deep conviction and with great dignity for the salvation of the nation and exerting all of his own considerable influence, he declared that “something must be done, or the fabric will fall, for it is certainly tottering.”8
That “something” turned out to be the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in May 1787. Originally convened to patch up the holes in the Articles of Confederation, it was soon redirected to the framing of a whole new constitution. Washington was hoping that he would not have to go, but the state of Virginia insisted that he be among her delegates. And once he got to Philadelphia, he was the unanimous choice to chair what should have been an awesome and momentous occasion. For it was the first time in history that people had ever had the opportunity to freely write a new constitution for their own representative government.
It started out, instead, to be an extremely stormy convention. The Northern states insisted that representation be apportioned on the basis of population; the Southern states (less densely populated) felt it should be on the basis of land under cultivation. And the small states feared a ganging up by the larger states, both Northern and Southern. There was a great deal of heat and very little light being generated; in fact, historians are in general agreement that it was only the dignity of Washington’s presence and demeanor that preserved the convention at all. God’s placing of the right person in the right role at the most critical moments in American history is a thing of never-failing astonishment.
In his superb two-volume history, A New Age Now Begins, Page Smith offers this appraisal of Washington:
His genius was the ability to endure, to maintain his equilibrium in the midst of endless frustrations, disappointments, setbacks and defeats. . . . George Washington became the symbol of the [American colonists’] determination to endure. He was bound to create and sustain a Continental Army and in the process to destroy or at least mute the deep-rooted parochialism of the states. So he not only symbolized the will of the Americans to persevere in the cause of liberty, he symbolized the unity of the states; he embodied the states united, or the United States. . . . If Washington’s army had disintegrated, as it seemed so often on the verge of doing, Congress might well have followed suit. . . . If Congress had disbanded, the problem of creating a viable nation out of thirteen disparate and jealous provinces would have been infinitely more difficult. Above all, if Washington had not, in his splendid erectness . . . and his presence, embodied the union, it is doubtful that unification could have been accomplished on the practical political level. . . .
In a sense it was Washington’s restraint, more than Washington’s actions, that determined his greatness. . . . Greatness consists, as we have said before, in being appropriate to the requirements of the hour. By this measure Washington, as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army and perhaps even more as the first President of the United States, was a very great man.9
Smith does not comment on the source of Washington’s remarkable ability to endure, but Washington himself commented on it often enough, giving the credit to God and expressing his own needs through prayer. As for his restraint, which is another word for self-denial, never did it bear more fruit than at the Constitutional Convention of 1787. As deeply as he felt about the issues at hand, he would not permit himself to enter into the debate. He remained scrupulously impartial in the manner in which he presided, and he restricted himself to sharing his beliefs in between the floor sessions.
Nevertheless, the mood eventually reached an ugly pitch, and it became painfully apparent to all present that the convention and the Union were about to break up. “And thy neighbor as thyself”—the horizontal aspect of the covenant, which Timothy Dwight and a few others were calling for—seemed to be nowhere in evidence. What was now being required of the states was the same relinquishing of self-interest and individual rights that the Pilgrims and Puritans had chosen when they entered into covenant with God and one another. But the states were unwilling to give up enough of their “sovereign rights” to form the nation that God intended.
With debate over representation now hopelessly deadlocked and growing increasingly bitter (part of the New York delegation had already gone home in disgust, and others were preparing to follow), God once again had mercy on the affairs of America. This time he used perhaps an unlikely (and therefore quite arresting) vehicle—the eighty-one-year-old philosophe who had, some forty years before, good-naturedly rejected the efforts of his friend George Whitefield to convert him.
At this crucial moment, when there was not a person present who had any real hope of finding an effective solution, Ben Franklin rose to speak on June 28. This elder statesman, who was also one of the most prominent physicists of his age, quietly said:
In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor. . . . And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?
I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: “that God governs in the affairs of man.” And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?
We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war, or conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.10
Franklin’s motion failed because someone pointed out that the convention had no money to pay a chaplain. But a motion by Edmund Randolph of Virginia that “a sermon be preached at the request of the Convention on the Fourth of July” went through quickly. During the three-day recess many of the delegates, including Washington, went to a special service at the Calvinist church. After the oration by a young law student, the minister of the church, the Reverend William Rogers, prayed for the delegates that God would “be their wisdom and strength [and] enable them to devise such measures as may prove happy instruments in healing all divisions.”11
Rogers’ prayers were answered, for under Washington’s careful shepherding, the convention soon thereafter reached the harmonious compromises that gave us the Constitution of the United States. The Union was assured.
James Madison, not given to Christian exuberance, wrote to Thomas Jefferson in Paris that “it is impossible to conceive the degree of concord which ultimately prevailed, as less than a miracle.”12 The following year he and New Yorkers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay would author the Federalist Papers, explaining the new Constitution to the people of New York State in an attempt to persuade them to ratify it. Remarking on the astonishing resolution of the convention’s conflicts, Madison wrote: “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it [the Constitution] a finger of the Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the Revolution.”
“We the People of the United States . . .” Thus begins what has become the oldest written constitution still in effect today. William Gladstone, one of Britain’s great prime ministers, called it “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”13 Legal minds of more than two centuries have continued to marvel at it as being almost beyond the scope and dimension of human wisdom. When one stops to consider the enormous problems the Constitution of the United States of America somehow anticipated and the challenges and tests it foresaw, that statement appears more understated than exaggerated. Not even the combined collective genius of the fledgling nation could claim credit for the fantastic strength, resilience, balance, and timelessness of the Constitution. And most of them knew it.
The proof of its magnitude is how well it works—better than its framers ever dared hope. In a number of recent controversies, the world has seen just how well the intricate system of built-in checks and balances—and its awesome self-cleansing ability—works. Through due process of law, the body politic purges itself—so smoothly and effectively that many of us take it for granted.
Why does it work so well? Aside from the Divine origin of its inspiration, the Constitution was the culmination of nearly two hundred years of Puritan political thought. The earliest church covenants started with the basic, underlying assumption central to their faith: the sinfulness of humanity’s fallen nature, in which “dwells no good thing.” That may appear depressingly negative to anyone who wants to believe in the innate goodness of man. But the fact is, it is only depressing to someone who has not yet learned the full reality of the truth that Jesus Christ came to save sinners and that only He can be our righteousness.
As we have seen, the Puritans were anything but joyless, no matter how certain modernists would like to paint them. They were, nonetheless, absolute realists about the sinful nature of human beings when they are not allowing the Spirit of Christ to operate within them. The Puritans calmly anticipated the possibility of the very worst happening in their church and civil governments, and they planned accordingly, so that when the worst occasionally did occur, the blockage, rather than the system, would be eliminated.
The Constitution was conceived and framed on exactly this principle. The Federalist Papers revealed that the Constitution was based on the assumption that “the primary political motive of man was self-interest, and that men, whether acting individually or collectively, were selfish and only imperfectly rational.”14
In Paper #10 Madison focused on the chief obstacle inherent in the democratic system—“a factious spirit”:
There are two methods of curing the mischief of faction: the one, by removing the causes; the other by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an element without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other. . . . The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man.15
The alternative to removing the causes of faction was to control its effects, and this was what the Constitution was all about. In contrast, all totalitarian governments—whether Nazi, Communist, or Islamic—always attempt to remove the causes of faction by removing liberty and, as much as possible, freedom of thought. And through intensive indoctrination of the young, they also attempt to impose a sameness of opinion.
In American life in the early seventeenth century, the cause of faction was much reduced because so many people sincerely wanted the will of God to prevail. A community of people trying to find God’s will tended to create agreement among themselves. Hence there was the dynamic tension of a general uniformity of opinion, while at the same time the liberty always existed to choose one’s independence over the will of God.
The Constitution, this institutionalizing of the covenant’s legacy, was constructed on the realistic and scriptural assumption that the natural self-interest and self-love of man had to be checked. The checks and balances were ingenious: there would be three separate branches of government—legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative branch would make the laws, but the executive branch had the power to veto. The executive branch appointed the members of the Supreme Court, but the appointments were subject to the approval of the legislative branch. On the other hand, these appointments were for life, where the other two branches were subject to frequent elections.
There are many more examples, but the amazing thing is how smoothly such an elaborately interwoven and interdependent system works. And (aside from God’s grace and inspiration) it works for one reason: it begins with an acceptance of what the Puritans termed “the utter depravity of man.”
By contrast, less than two years later another revolution would take place, this one also by a people desiring to rule their own lives in a free and democratic society. The difference was that the French Revolution was based on the “enlightened” philosophy of the Age of Reason. Popularized by Voltaire and Rousseau, who emphasized the supposed innate goodness of man, it correspondingly de-emphasized the need for dependence on God or the redemption of Christ.
And what did the French Revolution produce? A democracy, to be sure—in the beginning. But it almost immediately devolved into a Reign of Terror, the likes of which for sheer rapaciousness and cruelty, has seldom been seen in the history of man.
In recent times it has become commonplace to hear America referred to as a democracy. We are not a democracy—or government by the majority—we are a republic. America’s system of government is based not on the whims and passions of men, unchecked by law, but on constitutional laws that protect the rights of individuals and minorities.
The Founding Fathers were clear-eyed about the dangers of “mobocracy,” as they called it. John Adams spoke for all of them when he said: “Democracy will soon degenerate into . . . such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man’s life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure. . . . Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”16
But to agnostics and atheists who have no Redeemer, no Savior, no Comforter, no source of grace or forgiveness or Providential intervention, the concept of utter depravity is so threatening that they have to believe in the basic goodness of man—or go into despair. Such people simply blind themselves to the bankruptcy of their philosophy and go through life carefully avoiding a head-on confrontation with reality, all the while affirming the nobility of “the Brotherhood of Man.”
Such a person was Thomas Jefferson, who was so blind to the forces being unleashed by the French Revolution that in a letter from France he would glowingly write, “The mass possesses such a degree of good sense as to enable them to decide well.” In this he was diametrically opposed by the realist Alexander Hamilton, who said, “Take mankind in general, they are vicious.”17
The new Rationalism, or Enlightenment, of the Age of Reason soon found its way into the most fashionable salons on this side of the Atlantic, and preachers such as Dwight and Witherspoon became gravely concerned, particularly since the epidemic seemed to be gaining a foothold on their respective campuses. But many other ministers were actually duped by its subtle blandishments, as it flattered the ego by exalting the intellect.
Why did the explosion of this false light progress so rapidly? Puritan tradition in America had put great emphasis on the importance of a well-trained and disciplined mind—albeit as a tool to be placed at God’s disposal and totally submitted to His will and glory. The first two colleges in America, Harvard and Yale, were founded in order to give future American ministers an education equal to those hitherto obtainable only at Oxford and Cambridge. The ministers were further encouraged to continue their studies after college, for the one thing the Puritans despised was a “dumb dog” of a clergyman in the pulpit.
But without the strong awareness of the dangers of self-righteousness, the intellect can easily become an instrument for the glorification of self, not God. Many ministers began to be led astray into Enlightenment thinking. Indeed, things got to the point that in some ministerial circles it became rather naïve and even primitive to think of God in such intensely intimate and personal terms as had been the case in the Great Awakening prior to the War for Independence. The “French Infidelity” caught on quickly, and a number of ministers became the unwitting progenitors of rational Deism. They had forgotten what the Puritans had known so well: that ultimately it was not the mind but the will that mattered—the willingness to put down one’s own will for God’s will.
And so, for the first time, the ministers lost touch with the people. For the better part of two centuries they had provided the spiritual, moral, and intellectual leadership for the nation. Now that mantle had passed to statesmen, politicians, educators, publishers, and prominent laymen. The nation was spiritually adrift, and the ministers had no one to blame but themselves.
The people, however, still retained enough of a relationship with the Lord to know when their hearts were not being reached. And the people stayed away from church in droves. In 1788 when the ministers of Connecticut published a rebuke to the people for the neglect of their worship, the newspapers spoke some strong truth to the ministers in a reply on their editorial pages. “We have heard your animadversions upon our absence from Sabbath meetings,” said the New Haven Gazette, “and we humbly conceive that if you wish our attendance there, you would make it worth our while to give it. To miss a sermon of the present growth, what is it but to miss an opiate? And can the loss of a nap expose our souls to eternal perdition?”18
This attitude was symptomatic of the general feeling throughout the land. There were still many sermons about the Kingdom of God being established in America, but relatively few were dealing bluntly with what that Kingdom was going to cost personally. The problem was that the ministers themselves were no longer willing to pay the price. At the moment when the Light that had overcome the darkness in America should have been at its brightest, ready to burst into glory, it was beginning to dim. America had been complacent before—or affluent or self-reliant or greedy—but never had she been so adrift from her spiritual moorings.
The Constitution, however, was her safeguard. For the surprising truth about it is that it is nothing less than the institutional guardian of the covenant way of life for the nation as a whole. More than two centuries later, it still guarantees the possibility of reentering our covenant with God as a nation, whenever we might choose to do so. As long as the Constitution with its attendant Bill of Rights (for example, Article I: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”) remains the law of the land, the choice will still be there.
The Constitution is the finest contract ever drawn by man for his own self-government. But as precious as the Constitution is, it is nonetheless a secularizing of the spiritual reality of the covenant. It can thus never be the substitute for a national covenant life under the lordship of God. There is an enormous difference between the two, as Richard Niebuhr points out: “Contract always implies limited [commitment], covenant unlimited commitment. Contract is entered into for the sake of mutual advantages; covenant implies the presence of a cause to which all advantages may need to be sacrificed.”19
With the Constitution in place, America was ready to consider who should be her first President. The obvious candidate was already so popular that even those who jealously sought to tear him down dared not provoke the public’s wrath by saying much against him. When the electors from the thirteen states gathered, only one name commanded the respect of the States-Rightists as well as the Federalists. It mattered not to them that he sincerely did not want the honor and only wanted to be left in peace. No other name was put forward, and an express rider was sent to Mount Vernon to request George Washington’s presence.
A visit to Mount Vernon at the end of April when the dogwoods are in full bloom is a memorable experience. It is a beautiful and well-cared-for estate, with outbuildings in good repair, pointing up the traditional conservative lines of the main house. But from the moment one sets foot on the long brick walk, one is struck by the incredible sense of peace about the place. If it is possible to tell anything of a someone’s personality from the feel of his home, then this was the home of a someone who was perfectly at rest in his inner self.
Spacious and graceful, it is complete with a small formal garden and a greenhouse for experiments with growing oranges and peppers and other exotic plants. Blending harmoniously as it does with its natural surroundings, Mount Vernon reflects a heart in tune with its Creator. Standing on the porch with its tall colonnade, gazing out over the smooth green lawn and the swaying willows to the peaceful Potomac, one might conclude that this was God’s gift to an obedient servant and that Washington appreciated it as such.
But “to whom much is given, of him much will be required” (Luke 12:48). When the messenger from the Electoral College arrived, Washington sighed and went in to pack the appropriate attire.
He reached New York in time to be inaugurated on April 30, 1789. Prior to the ceremony he had requested that a Bible be obtained for the swearing-in. Now, stepping out onto the outdoor balcony of Federal Hall in full view of the assembled multitude, he placed his right hand on the open book and took the oath of office. Then, embarrassed at the thunderous ovation that followed, the pealing church bells, and the roaring of artillery, the new President went inside to deliver his Inaugural Address to Congress.
Speaking with a gravity befitting the heavy responsibility he had just undertaken, he stressed the role of God in the birth of the nation:
It would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplication to that Almighty Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States. . . . No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. . . . We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.20
The next eight years saw the sober, prayerful judgment of this leader imparted to the beginnings of the new nation. Thanks to God, the United States was getting off on the right step.
But there was another spirit rising in those first eight years, a spirit which was a further refinement of the new rationalism. It held that while Christianity had certainly played its part, it was most definitely not the sole wellspring of morality that devout Christians claimed. Indeed, it had exerted entirely too much influence on the running of the country and the affairs of its citizens. When this spirit cried out for the separation of Church and State (which were already separated), what it was really calling for was a drastic de-emphasis of religion’s public influence in national life. Orthodox Christianity was no longer regarded as advisable or necessary, for it called people to believe in myths, and thus it had no right to a major role in the shaping of their lives. If some people wanted to indulge in it, that was their own business, but other people should not have to be exposed to it.
The person who came to personify this attitude also came from Virginia, from an estate three days’ ride from Mount Vernon. It was an estate which was also beautiful in its way—an exquisite monument to the intellect of its owner, Thomas Jefferson. As Washington’s Secretary of State and later as President, Jefferson was careful to conceal his rationalism and never commit himself publicly on the subject of Christianity, beyond stating that in his opinion Christ was the greatest moralist who had ever lived. For, as modern historian Russell Kirk points out, “were his rejection of Christ as supernatural Redeemer fully known, he and his party would be in deep difficulty with popular opinion.”21
It was what Jefferson did not say that gave his position away. Those ministers who were still in close touch with the Lord and still had an appreciation of His call upon the nation were incensed that Jefferson would be given such national responsibility. None was more outspoken than Timothy Dwight, whom Jefferson’s inner circle sarcastically referred to as “the pope in New Haven.”
The battle lines were drawn: throughout the country there were religious leaders who believed with Dwight that “where there is no religion [meaning Christianity], there is no morality” and that “with the loss of religion . . . the ultimate foundation of confidence is blown up, and the security of life, liberty and property buried in ruins.”22
On the other hand, the movement around Jefferson maintained that human beings had progressed to the point where they could be responsible for their own morality, without the benefit of an intrusive, restrictive, narrow-minded religion. The rationalists would affect a posture of marvelous toleration. As Puritan Nathaniel Ward said, “Nothing is easier than to tolerate when you do not seriously believe that differences matter.”23
Jefferson’s true feelings finally came to light with the posthumous publication of his personal correspondence. Here he revealed himself to be a private champion of Unitarianism, who, during his term in the office of President, compiled the “Jefferson Bible.” This was a retelling of the story of Jesus, pointedly leaving out every reference to the miraculous or the divine origin of the Savior. His purpose:
The establishment of the innocent and genuine character of this benevolent moralist, and the rescuing it from the imputation of imposture, which has resulted from artificial systems invented by ultra-Christian sects, e.g., the immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of Hierarchy, etc.24
Since such a list includes practically every tenet of the Christian faith, what Jefferson was really calling for was an end to orthodox Christianity.
Unitarianism was just coming into being, and as he confidentially wrote to Benjamin Waterhouse, “That doctrine [Unitarianism] has not yet been preached here to us [in Charlottesville], but the breeze begins to be felt which precedes the storm, and fanaticism is all in a bustle, shutting its doors to keep it out.” In Boston, however, Jefferson would write to Thomas Cooper, “Unitarianism has advanced to so great strength as now to humble this haughtiest of all religious sects [Presbyterianism].” And finally, in one of his last letters, he would write to Waterhouse: “I rejoice that in this blessed country of free inquiry and belief, which has surrendered its creed and conscience to neither kings nor priests, the genuine doctrine of only one God is reviving, and I trust there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.”
Why such concern about describing exactly where Jefferson really stood? Because he was greatly responsible for initiating the de-emphasis of religion in public life that has gained much momentum in our time. For Jefferson’s refusal to accept that morality not only stems from Christianity but cannot long exist without it—is reflected with mirror-like verisimilitude today.
The conflict finally embroiled even Washington. For eight years our first President had been led to preserve the dignity of his office by refusing to get entangled in the gut-level fighting that was going on, permitting himself to comment on it only upon the occasion of his leaving office. In his farewell address, Washington said: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”25
Washington’s successor to the Presidency, John Adams, would go on record with a clear statement about the importance of religion and morality to American life. In an address to the Massachusetts militia in 1798, he warned: “We have no government capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge . . . would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made for only a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”26
A generation later, the great French historian Alexis de Tocqueville would spend a year traveling in the United States and would confirm Adams’s statement with this observation: “I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion—for who can search the human heart—but I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions.”27
George Washington’s last day in office did not involve the ordeal of public ceremonies that was required at his leave-taking as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army; nonetheless, it was a day of honor for the retiring President. For he was voluntarily laying down the reins of power—an immensely honorable gesture of self-denial. Like the Roman hero Cincinnatus, to whom he was often compared, he had saved the republic in war and was now finally retiring to his farm.
It would have been easy for Washington to continue on into a third term; many had begged him to do it, and the people would certainly have re-elected him. But he was sixty-four years old now and tired. The Presidency had taken a tremendous physical and emotional toll. Perhaps he also sensed that his Maker would soon be calling him home, and he wanted to see one more spring and summer come to his beloved estate on the Potomac.
He had just come from the swearing-in ceremonies at Congress Hall, where John Adams had taken the oath of office and then delivered a moving Inaugural Address. Washington had stopped by his quarters to clear his desk before paying the new President a visit at his rooms in the Francis Hotel. There is no account of these last moments at his desk, but from what we know of the man and the circumstances surrounding his departure, it is not difficult to imagine them.
On his desk were drafts of the last two personal letters he had written as President—to Henry Knox, offering his condolences on the death of three of his children, and to his friend Jonathan Trumbull who, as Governor of Connecticut, had once raised nine companies of riflemen in response to the General’s urgent personal appeal. Also on his desk was a large pile of letters from friends and well-wishers and some clipped-out editorials. Most of them were full of praise, except for a vitriolic attack by Tom Paine, who had done his best to smear the reputation of the departing President and hence the Federalists, which Washington and Adams and Hamilton had led.
It was only politics, Washington might have told himself. But Paine’s comments hurt, as they were intended to, and the General knew that there was more to them than just politics. Paine had privately asked him for the job of Postmaster General, and when Washington, after much consideration, had turned him down as not sufficiently qualified, Paine had flown into a rage, calling him “treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life.”28 The public did not know that and would not, unless Washington chose to reveal it. If he were to expose what lay behind Paine’s vicious personal attack on him, the latter’s career as a pamphleteer and editorialist might well be finished.
Washington merely shook his head and looked out the window. In another month the dogwoods would be out at Mount Vernon, he might have mused. Or perhaps he prayed and commended the nation into the hands of the God who had shepherded them so amazingly to this point. Then, slowly and stiffly, he got up from the familiar desk, gathered the papers into a letter case, took a last look around, and left.
Outside he did not seem to notice the handful of people, waiting at a respectful distance, as he turned and headed down Chestnut Street toward the Francis Hotel. The people followed discreetly behind him without speaking. Others joined them as they recognized the tall, slightly bent figure, until by the time he reached his destination, there was a sizable throng assembled. On the steps of the hotel, he turned and took note of them standing there, from all trades and all walks of life. They said not a word, but as he noted how many eyes were glistening with tears, his own suddenly brimmed. He bowed silently and quickly went inside.29
“Good-bye, Mr. President,” someone called after him. “God bless you!”