The question of George Washington’s Christianity is at the heart of the controversy over his religion. As we assemble the evidence of Washington’s belief in the Christian Gospel, we wish to highlight a few important considerations.
First, for the sake of argument, we will set aside the authority of the classic anecdotes and oral histories that have traditionally been used to substantiate Washington’s Christianity. These are simply rejected as untrue or unproven by those who doubt his Christianity. For example, modern author, Joseph J. Ellis, in his book His Excellency: George Washington, says that the cherry tree incident (first popularized by Parson Mason Weems) is “a complete fabrication.”2
Second, since we have consciously adopted a “minimalist facts” approach, we will not base our arguments on disputed evidence, such as the explicitly Christian Daily Sacrifice prayers that were in the manuscript book found in Washington’s effects about a hundred years after his death. Since it cannot be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wrote them or that he read them or used them, but only that he possessed them, we will not appeal to them to establish our claim of Washington’s Christianity.3
Third, we will engage the opponents of Washington’s Christianity, who refuse to accept his own personal approach of “works not words.” As we do, we reiterate that if this canon of Washington’s self-interpretation were followed, the overwhelming evidence already cited would end the debate. But since the skeptics require written proof of his Christian faith, we will proceed to provide it.
Fourth, given Washington’s personality and principles, we must recognize that he never intended to provide a personal creed. His daily priorities and profoundly busy life did not give him the leisure or the impetus to compose a personal creed. So we will seek to demonstrate his Christianity through his occasional self-revealing statements, wherein he identifies himself as a Christian or gives us insights into his faith in the Gospel. In the previous chapter, we saw his commitment to the essential elements of a Christian worldview.
A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE OF WASHINGTON’S CHRISTIANITY SO FAR
What we have learned about Washington’s Christianity thus far can be summarized as follows:
• He was from a British Christian culture, from a colony that had an established Christian church and from a family that had for several generations been explicitly Christian and active in the Anglican tradition.
• His home training was clearly Christian in orientation, in terms of the tutors and texts, as evidenced by extant schoolbooks and school papers. His childhood education was conducted under a Christian father, until Augustine Washington died when George was eleven, and then under his devout Christian mother.
• He pursued a career in the military that brought him into a highly structured environment that regularly had morning and evening prayers in accordance with the liturgical Christian “divine service” of the Book of Common Prayer. The military vocabulary of his era was marked by a direct use of Christian theological terms: pardon, redemption, the atonement, grace, mercy, forgiveness, salvation, justification, imputation of guilt, appeal to heaven.
• He married a devout Christian woman and raised his adopted children under the tutorship of Anglican clergy, buying for his children not only explicitly Christian text books, but also prayer books and Bibles, with their names personally gilded upon them.
• He served in the leadership of the Anglican Church, taking vows not only to the worship and doctrines of the Christianity expressed by the Anglican Church, but his attendance, contributions, and involvement in issues concerning the church in terms of church government and the House of Burgesses were exemplary. His ecclesiastical vocabulary is extensive.
• He served in the role of sponsor of eight children in the sacrament of Christian baptism, something that Thomas Jefferson would not do, because his Unitarianism prevented him from taking the required public vows to the historic Christian faith. Washington had no scruples in this regard and performed this duty willingly, which is particularly significant, given Washington’s consistent emphasis upon his personal candor and constant concern for strict personal integrity.
• He openly encouraged the work of the clergy and chaplains in his roles as military, ecclesiastical, and civil leader. When such were not available to do their work, he performed their functions, both leading in prayers, and, even conducting a Christian funeral in the case of General Braddock in 1755.
• His vocabulary is replete with theological concerns. He speaks of God some 140 times, the divine 95 times, heaven 133 times, Providence 270 times, and uses various honorific titles for God some 95 times. He alludes to approximately 200 different biblical texts, some of them scores of times, and does so in a way that shows that he was remarkably biblically literate.
• He was explicitly a praying man, as evidenced by a custom-sized prayer book that he ordered to fit comfortably in his pocket. More than 100 different prayers (or references to prayer) in his own hand were found throughout his private and public letters.
• His views of religion are discoverable in some measure, even though as a military and government official, as well as a manager of a vast plantation, his extensive duties and writings would normally not be expected to turn in a direction of theology. These views include an overt affirmation of revelation, the reality of both natural and revealed religion, a concern that his Protestant soldiers not ridicule Roman Catholics for their beliefs, and an equal concern that Protestant and Jewish minorities not be fearful of persecution or bigotry from the new federal government he helped to fashion and to initiate.
• Indeed, Washington was keenly aware of the spiritual component of human life, referring again and again to the human spirit, as well as acknowledging the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work. He frequently reveals his own spiritual concern for prayer, dependence on Providence, and faith and trust in God.
• He was also consciously influenced by the emphasis upon reason emanating from the Enlightenment. But this expressed itself not in hostility to faith, but hostility to superstition. Thus, Washington’s writings explicitly criticize the deistic thought of his day. This is seen in phrases like, “worse than an infidel,” “that man must be bad who does not believe,” and his strong warning in his Farewell Address to those of the deistic mindset who would discountenance the necessary supports of “religion and morality” for political prosperity. His broken relationship with Thomas Paine is illustrative of this as well. Thomas Paine, the highly esteemed best-selling patriotic writer of Common Sense, was Washington’s friend. But Thomas Paine, the critic of revealed religion, as manifested in the Age of Reason, was carefully addressed by Washington’s distance and silence. Instead of pursuing reason over revealed religion, Washington’s letters manifest a commitment to revelation coupled with a “rational ground for belief,” “moral certainty,” and a self-description of “no sceptic on normal occasions.” In a previous chapter entitled “Washington vs. Deism,” we offered a comparison of his views with those of the Deists, and found Washington’s beliefs inherently and consistently incompatible with the teachings and ethics advocated by the Deists.
• In fact, it is remarkable that so much of Washington’s faith can be discovered at all, given that by habit and principle he was a man who did not talk about himself. This is universally confirmed by the testimonies of those who personally knew him. His personal faith was thus, not easily or often put into words, but rather was expressed in actions according to his motto: “deeds not words”4 which was also consistent with the motto on the Washington family’s Coat of Arms: Exitus Acta Probat, meaning, “the end proves the deed.” As his granddaughter said, “His mottoes were, “Deeds, Not Words”; and “For God and My Country.”
Thus, George Washington’s own rule for interpreting himself or anyone else was the necessity of looking at a person’s conduct, not primarily reading or hearing one’s words. On this basis, the evidence is unimpeachably clear—Washington was a Christian. But given the fact that those who have denied his Christianity have erected a standard of evidence that Washington explicitly did not intend—that is, a verbal, written, self-disclosing personal declaration of his heartfelt beliefs—before they will accept the claim that he was self-consciously a Christian, we will seek to address their concerns.
WASHINGTON’S STATEMENTS THAT IDENTIFY HIM AS A CHRISTIAN
Consider these declarations of George Washington as a Christian. (Many of these have been previously mentioned, but now we here assemble them together for the reader to experience the full impact.):
1. Washington called himself a Christian as part of a faith declaration he made to acknowledge the truth of a personal claim he made in a letter. He freely wrote of his own accord, “On my honor and the faith of a Christian....”5
2. As a military commander he said to the Delaware Indian chiefs that they do well to learn about the Christian religion. He said in May 1779:
...Brothers: I am glad you have brought three of the Children of your principal Chiefs to be educated with us. I am sure Congress will open the Arms of love to them, and will look upon them as their own Children, and will have them educated accordingly. This is a great mark of your confidence and of your desire to preserve the friendship between the Two Nations to the end of time, and to become One people with your Brethren of the United States. My ears hear with pleasure the other matters you mention. Congress will be glad to hear them too. You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are.6
Similarly, he wrote to Reverend John Ettwein from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to the Heathen from Mount Vernon on May 2, 1788:
...So far as I am capable of judging, the principles upon which the society is founded and the rules laid down for its government, appear to be well calculated to promote so laudable and arduous an undertaking, and you will permit me to add that if an event so long and so earnestly desired as that of converting the Indians to Christianity and consequently to civilization, can be effected, the Society of Bethlehem bids fair to bear a very considerable part in it....7
3. The records of the Country Court of Fairfax has under the date of February 15, 1763, “George Washington, Esqr., took the oaths according to Law repeated and subscribed the Test and subscribed to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England in order to qualify him to act as a Vestryman of Truro Parish.”8 This doctrine included the following teaching from the eleventh article of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion:
We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings; Wherefore, that we be justified by faith only is a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort....9
As a committed Anglican, Washington regularly prayed the General Confession of the Morning Prayer as he worshiped with the Book of Common Prayer throughout his military career and in his lifelong worship in the Anglican/Episcopal tradition:
ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God, who confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.10
4. On perhaps as many as eight different occasions, Washington said the following in a public worship setting as he stood as a sponsor for a child who was being baptized and answered this question:
DOST thou believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth? And in Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son our Lord? And that he was conceived by the Holy Ghost; born of the Virgin Mary; that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; that he went down into hell, and also did rise again the third day; that he ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; and from thence shall come again at the end of the world, to judge the quick and the dead?
And dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost; the holy Catholick Church; the Communion of Saints; the Remission of sins; the Resurrection of the flesh; and everlasting life after death?”
These are all affirmations of the Apostles’ Creed. To this question at each of these eight baptisms he publicly declared, “All this I steadfastly believe.”11 Again, Thomas Jefferson could not bring himself to say these words publicly because he did not believe them.12
5. Washington in private settings identified himself as a Christian: He wrote to comfort Major General Israel Putman on October 19, 1777, saying,
...I hope you will bear the misfortune with that fortitude and complacency of mind, that become a Man and a Christian....13
Washington wrote to John Christian Ehler on December 23, 1793, calling on him to be more of a Christian,
...Don’t let this be your case. Show yourself more of a man, and a Christian, than to yield to so intolerable a vice...14
In September 1775 he spoke as a Christian to Col. Benedict Arnold:
...I also give it in Charge to you to avoid all Disrespect to or Contempt of the Religion [Roman Catholicism] of the Country [Canada] and its Ceremonies. Prudence, Policy, and a true Christian Spirit, will lead us to look with Compassion upon their Errors without insulting them....God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men....15
6. Washington in public settings openly identified himself as a Christian:
In his General Orders from Head Quarters in New York on July 9, 1776, he called on his entire army to be Christian soldiers:
...The blessing and protection of Heaven are at all times necessary but especially so in times of public distress and danger—The General hopes and trusts, that every officer and man, will endeavor so to live, and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country.16
Consistent with this are his General Orders from Middle Brook on Monday, April 12, 1779, where he “enjoins” a “strict” keeping of a day of prayer and fasting for the forgiveness of sins:
The Honorable the Congress having recommended it to the United States to set apart Thursday the 6th day of May next to be observed as a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, to acknowledge the gracious interpositions of Providence; to deprecate deserved punishment for our Sins and Ingratitude, to unitedly implore the Protection of Heaven; Success to our Arms and the Arms of our Ally: The Commander in Chief enjoins a religious observance of said day and directs the Chaplains to prepare discourses proper for the occasion; strictly forbiding all recreations and unnecessary labor.17
In his General Orders from Head Quarters in Valley Forge on Saturday, May 2, 1778, he told his men that it was even more glorious to be a Christian than to be a patriot:
While we are zealously performing the duties of good Citizens and soldiers we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of Religion. To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian.18
He wrote to Governor Jonathan Trumbull, also a clergyman, on September 6, 1778. His words show that he believed, along with the minister, in the sovereignty of God over life for “his people”:
...The violent gale which dissipated the two fleets when on the point of engaging, and the withdrawing of the Count D’Estaing to Boston may appear to us as real misfortunes; but with you I consider storms and victory under the direction of a wise providence who no doubt directs them for the best of purposes, and to bring round the greatest degree of happiness to the greatest number of his people.19
On June 8, 1783, Washington wrote to every Governor of all thirteen of the new American states, and in so doing, consciously and explicitly prayed as a Christian:
...the Legacy of One, who has ardently wished, on all occasions, to be useful to his Country, and who, even in the shade of Retirement, will not fail to implore the divine benediction upon it. I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection, that he would incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government, to entertain a brotherly affection and love 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 Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.20
On October 28, 1789, Washington wrote to the First Presbytery of the Eastward indicating his sympathy for Christianity in its simplicity with respect to “the path of true piety.” He proceeds to declare his intent as leader of the new “government” under its new Constitution or “Magna Charta” to assist these “ministers of the gospel” in the “furtherance” of “true religion”:
I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna Charta of our country. To the guidance of the ministers of the gospel this important object is, perhaps, more properly committed. It will be your care to instruct the ignorant, and to reclaim the devious, and, in the progress of morality and science, to which our government will give every furtherance, we may confidently expect the advancement of true religion, and the completion of our happiness.21
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO GEORGE WASHINGTON
We know that George Washington was not a theologian or an evangelist. So the topics of his daily duties did not directly engage spiritual or biblical themes. Given his inward and shy personality on matters concerning himself, we should not expect a treatise from him that would summarize his “few and simple”22 points of religion.
But given the reality we have already seen repeatedly, namely, that spiritual truths and Christian ideas surface in his writings, perhaps it is a useful exercise to assemble the elements of the Christian Gospel that have been preserved for us by his own pen. This method has both a strength and a weakness. The strength is that all of the words are Washington’s. The limitation is that the distilling of all of this relevant material is ours—the result of careful study and assembly. We believe this presentation of the Gospel according to George Washington is faithful to Washington’s writings and to the theology he subscribed to and professed as an eighteenth century Anglican. This exercise will also show Washington’s extensive exposure and commitment to the Christian Gospel. It may be compared to the task of systematic theology—carefully discovering theological ideas and then constructing them in the logical order that the material itself suggests.
While the principles of Washington’s religion were “few and simple,”23 they were cognizant of the “gospel.”24 Thus he spoke of “our blessed Religion,”25 “the Religion of Jesus Christ,”26 and “the blessed religion revealed in the Word of God.”27 Washington spoke of “true religion”28 yet coupled it with his gracious spirit declaring that “a true Christian Spirit, will lead us to look with Compassion upon their Errors [the inhabitants of Quebec] without insulting them.”29 This true religion was both “natural and revealed.”30 Yet it was especially as revealed religion that it was “above all,” since it was available to Americans through “the benign light of revelation,”31 and was found in “Holy Writ.”32
Washington was aware of his own inner life, referring often to “my soul.”33 The “Divine Author” of the religion that Washington received when he wrote of “our blessed religion” was none other than the religion of Christ. It was Christ in his “charity, humility and pacific temper of mind” that Washington called all Americans to “imitate.”34 Consoling a friend he wrote, “...our Religion holds out to us such hopes as will, upon proper reflection, enable us to bear with fortitude the most calamitous incidents of life.”35 Since the “Lord and Ruler of Nations”36 and the “Divine Author of life and felicity”37 has come to the earth allowing people to celebrate the “Christmas Hollidays,”38 George Washington as a child could copy such a Christmas poem:
Assist me Muse divine to sing the morn,
On which the Saviour of mankind was born;
But oh! what numbers to the theme can rise?
Unless kind angels aid me from the skies?
Methinks I see the tunefull Host descend,
Hark, by their hymns directed on the road,
The gladsome Shepherds find the nascent God!
And view the infant conscious of his birth,
Smiling bespeak salvation to the earth!
For when the important Aera first drew near
In which the great Messiah should appear
And to accomplish His redeeming love
Resign a while his glorious throne above.39
And as an adult, he could likewise speak openly of Christmas: “I hope the next Christmas will prove happier than the present....”40 “...I may on these accounts venture to hope that you will spend a happy and merry Christmas....”41 And pray as Washington did on Christmas Day, on December 25, 1770. This year Christmas fell on a Tuesday. His entry for this date says, “Went to Pohick Church and returnd to Dinner.” Christmas Sundays in the Anglican tradition were also Sundays when the Lord’s Supper was celebrated.
The Nativity of our Lord, or the Birthday of Christ, Commonly called Christmas-Day. The Collect: Almighty God, who hast given us thy only-begotten Son to take our nature upon him, and as at this time to be born of a pure Virgin; Grant that we being regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, may daily be renewed by thy Holy Spirit; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the same Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
And soldiers and congressman together can affirm “the enlightening sounds of the Gospel”42 that declare that “above all ... he hath diffused the glorious light of the gospel, whereby, through the merits of our gracious Redeemer, we may become the heirs of his eternal glory.”43 And so people can prepare for death by writing, as George Washington did in his youth, as he copied a “Form of a Short Will.”
In the Name of God, Amen. The Sixth Day of Oct. In the year of our Lord, 1744, I, A.B. being Sick and Weak of Body but of Sound Judgment and Memory (thanks to God Therefore) Remembering the mortality of my body knowing that it is Determined for all men once to die, Doe make and ordain this my last Will and Testament, That is to say Principally and first of all I recommend my Soul to God Who gave it hoping for salvation in and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, and my body to have buried in a decent manner ....44
Thus “Ministers of the Gospel”45 have the duty to “prepare [men] for the other world.”46 They do this by “instructing the ignorant and reclaiming the devious,”47 “propagating the gospel”48 and seeking “to Christianize”49 non-believers. “Sin”50 and “evil men” exist.51 “Sinners”52 express their “nature”53 through “iniquity,”54 “depravity,”55 “rascality”56 and failure to heed “conscience.”57 Thus, men fail to keep their “duties to God and man.”58
But, because God is “powerful to save,”59 “we must place a confidence in that Providence who rules great events, trusting that out of confusion he will produce order, and, notwithstanding the dark clouds, which may threaten at present, that right will ultimately be established.”60 He is the “the Sovereign Dispenser of life and health”61 and the “Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and Sovereign Arbiter of Nations.”62 He rules from a “throne of grace,”63 extending grace,64 and mercy,65 from a propitious66 heaven for the “professors of Christianity” who seek the “most direct plainest and easiest” “road to heaven.”67
Washington’s copied childhood poem described the work of the cross with these words:
Beneath our form every woe sustain
And by triumphant suffering fix His reign
Should for lost man in tortures yield his breath,
Dying to save us from eternal death!
Oh mystick Union! Salutary grace!
Incarnate God our nature should embrace!
That Deity should stoop to our disguise!
That man recovered should regain the skies!
Dejected Adam! From thy Grave ascend
And view the Serpent’s Deadly Malice end,
Adorring bless th’Almighty’s boundless grace
That gave his son a ransome for thy race!68
As an adult, Washington described the work of the cross with these words: “The blessed religion revealed in the Word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest of purposes.”69 (emphasis ours)
But “the seventh, now called the first day”70 of the week” has come. And so, Washington was trained as a fourteen-year-old to determine the annual celebration of Easter each year.71 In 1768, Easter fell on April 3rd. Washington’s diary for that date says, “Went to Pohick church and returnd to Dinner.” The prayer that Washington said that Easter Sunday from the Book of Common Prayer affirmed a hearty belief in the resurrection of Christ:
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee, that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.72
The need for justification before God was implied by Washington when he used phrases like “answerable to God,”73 “so much to answer for,”74 and “justifiable in the eyes of God and men.”75 He declared, “God alone is the Judge of the Hearts of Men, and to him only in this Case, they are answerable.”76 And men have “much to answer for,” since their judge is “the supreme Arbiter of human events.”77 Washington warned of “the aggravated vengeance of heaven,”78 and referenced the “torment of a mental hell,”79 “the powers of hell,”80 as well as the reality of “blessing and curse.”81 Washington’s view of the curse seems to include a curse after death, as suggested by Washington’s phrase “the bitterest curse this side of the grave”82 and his statement that “Conscience again seldom comes to a Mans aid while he is in the zenith of health, and revelling in pomp and luxury upon ill gotten spoils; it is generally the last act of his life and comes too late to be of much service to others here, or to himself hereafter.”83
Thus, Washington and the leaders of the new nation believed that men needed “with united Hearts and Voice unfeignedly [to] confess their Sins before God, and supplicate the all wise and merciful disposer of events,”84 and “to implore the Lord, and Giver of all victory, to pardon our manifold sins and wickedness’s.”85 And “that he would in mercy look down upon us, pardon our sins and receive us into his favor....”86
In view of God’s great Providential care for the nation, Washington asserted that faith and gratitude were necessary, “The Hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations...”87 Washington joyfully wrote to his friend Marquis de Lafayette, drawing on their shared understanding of Christian teaching on sin and forgiveness: “I stand before you as a Culprit: but to repent & be forgiven are the precepts of Heaven: I do the former, do you practice the latter, and it will be participation of a divine attribute.”88
The Gospel message was so well understood that even soldiers utilized words such as “atonement,”89 “forgiveness,”90 and “pardon”91 to describe their work. So these truths called for men to become “Christian soldiers,”92 to be “more of a man and of a Christian,”93 and to seek one’s highest glory by adding to their character “the more distinguished character of Christian.”94 The work of the “Holy Spirit”95 was recognized and so Washington could speak of “all the workings of the spirit within,”96 “a Christian-like spirit,”97 “a true Christian Spirit,”98 and the “pure spirit of Christianity,”99 as well as praying that God would grant “spirit” to his army.100 Thus, there was the duty to be a “true Christian,”101 whose life was manifested not in “profligate morals, etc.,”102 but in “true piety.”103 Christians and Christianity were the friends of government in Washington’s mind: “While just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support.”104
Christians were to be active in the support of the government since “true religion affords to government its surest support,”105 and “religion and morality are indispensable supports for political happiness.”106 But because “the path of true piety is so plain,”107 no direction for religion per se was provided in the “Magna-Charta” or Constitution of America.108 So as the Christian seeks to live with the desire to be “justifiable in the eyes of God and man,”109 he seeks a “glorious immortality,”110 a “future happiness,”111 and “happiness hereafter”112 in “the world of spirits,”113 “the other world.”114 He knows there is a promised millennium,115 a last trump,116 and that when men die, they are facing a “life eternal.”117 He can sooth his conscience by awaiting the approbation of the Supreme Being.118
CONCLUSION
This summation of Washington’s theology is the Christian Gospel pure and simple. Washington’s expressed beliefs presented here are utterly inconsistent with Deism. Even if the arrangement of Washington’s theological themes assembled here is deficient, the sheer weight of the volume of the Gospel concepts affirmed by Washington and expressed in his own words militate against any claim of Washington’s Deism. The evidence is clear; Washington spoke with consistency and conviction in terms of the Christian Gospel. He could not have been a Deist. There is not a word of unbelief in the Christian faith in the entire body of Washington’s writings. The claim for Washington’s Deism is a myth without a single word of substantiation.