Washington’s religion

Adam Kirsch, an aggressive atheist who writes for the generally neocon New York Sun, has a contemptuous review today of Washington’s God by the Catholic neocon Michael Novak and his daughter Jana. The Novaks’ thesis is that George Washington was a Christian. Kirsch indicates (as do the Novaks) the many Deist and non-Christian things about Washington. The Novaks reply (with a further reply by Michael Novak at NRO) that Washington was nevertheless a Christian, based on the fact that Washington attributed to God or Providence the kinds of active involvement in the world—helping in battles, assuring a good harvest, rewarding virtue, punishing sin—that characterize the Christian God and not the watchmaker god of Deism.

While Kirsch’s agenda, evident in article after article, to remove Christianity from any place in American society makes him an unreliable voice in this debate, the Novaks’ argument also cannot be accepted, because they define Deism incorrectly. Deism is not, as is commonly thought, the belief in a God who created the universe and then left it to its own operation. Deism is the belief that God can be known through natural reason without revelation, and thus without church and sacraments. Thus one could believe in a God or Providence who is active in human affairs, and still be a Deist.

As for my own view of Washington’s religious beliefs, I would say he was at least a strong Deist, that is, a devout believer in a guiding Providence, a belief he expressed passionately and repeatedly. Yet (and here I get closer to the Novaks’ conclusion, if not their argument) he was clearly something more than a Deist. Consider this important passage from his First Inaugural Address and my discussion of it that follows:

“[I]n these honorable qualifications [i.e. the character of the members of Congress] I behold the surest pledges that … the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality…. I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire, since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between [private] virtue and [public] happiness; between duty and advantage; … since 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 … “

That last phrase is the clearest expression of the idea of an intrinsic, transcendent, divine morality that it is man’s duty to follow. Washington began our national government with the unqualified assertion that its political well-being depended on obedience to objective moral truth, a moral truth, which, in the actual American context, not in Mr. Rowe’s fantasy secular America, is closely tied with Protestant Christianity. Some later presidents spoke of God’s blessings without any reference to the virtues needed to bring about those blessings. Jefferson in his first inaugural describes his countrymen as “acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter.” For Jefferson, God is more or less a projection for man’s hopes and desires, not the source of moral law, obedience to which is the basis of public prosperity. Needless to say, Jefferson’s view was not that of Washington and Adams and most of the other founders, nor of most Americans throughout our history.

Washington may have believed that a God who is the source of objective morality can be known purely through natural reason and not revelation, and thus Washington could still technically be called a Deist. But Washington’s God gets so close to the Christian God, the God who does not exist merely as an impersonal truth but who responds to man’s outreach toward him, and Washington’s feelings toward this God are so deep and ardent, that it is hard to call him only a Deist.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 15, 2006 05:34 PM | Send