[Vision2020] A Column for George Washington on his BD

[Nicholas Gier]

Dear Visionaries:

Some years back Pastor Peter Lillback was a keynote speaker at Moscow's own
Trinity Festival sponsored by Doug Wilson's Christ Church.  Now, thanks to
the Great Goddess, discontinued.  She hates dishonest religious fanatics.

I wrote to Lillback warning him that he risked his reputation associating
with a pastor who had written a discredited book defending Southern
slavery.  He answered saying that this was no reason for him to cancel his
trip.  Now that I have read Lillback's book I can say that was right in my
warning: Pastor Lillback is a much better scholar than Pastor Wilson, but
still he fails utterly to prove that Washington was an orthodox,
trinitarian Christian.

Happy BD, George!

Your friend in liberal religion,

Nick

*George Washington's Liberal Religion*

By Nick Gier

Thanks to Glenn Beck's fawning promotion, an obscure self-published book on
George Washington's religion has become a best seller among conservatives.
On his show Beck enthused: "It so discredits all of the scholars and it's
amazing.  It's the best book on faith and the founding I think I've ever
read."

In his book* George Wasghinton's Sacred Fire* conservative Presbyterian
minister Peter Lillback stretchs and bends the evidence in his attempt to
make Washington an orthodox Christian.

Here is the essence of his argument in the form of a syllogism: major
premise: Anglicans are orthodox Christians; minor premise: Washington was
an Anglican; therefore, Washington was an orthodox Christian.

Although Thomas Jefferson was a life-long, church-going Anglican, he firmly
rejected the Trinity and the deity of Christ. Surveys show that a great
many of today's Anglicans/Episcopalians join Jefferson in his heresies, so
we have to reject the major premise as obviously false.

Washington was a nominal Anglican who attended church irregularly, ceasing
after his retirement. His diaries show that he frequently dishonored the
Sabbath. We learn from one entry that he would have collected his rents on
Sundays, but he declined because the people living on his land were
"apparently very religious."

The weakest arguments in the book are the ones devoted to proving that
Washington believed in the deity of Christ and the Trinity. In all of his
voluminous writing only once does he speak of Jesus and this single
incident, which he may not have written himself, is in a speech to the
Delaware Indians. Church historian Forrest Church states that Washington
was "deafeningly silent" on the question of his belief in Christ.

With so little evidence to work with, Lillback is forced to make some very
indirect and dubious inferences.  For example, he thinks that Jesus is the
referent in phrases such as "divine author of our blessed religion," when
in fact it most likely means God.

The only argument that Lillbeck can make that Washington believed in a
triune deity is that as an Anglican he would have affirmed church creeds,
and he would have read from the trinitarian Common Book of Prayer. Anglican
Jefferson attended church much more often than Washington did, and he would
have joined, as I have as fellow Unitarian, congregations in reciting the
trinitarian creeds.

Pastor Lillback admits that one could never say that Washington was an
evangelical Christian, but he claims that our first president did once rise
to the level of evangelism in his support for the Anglican mission to the
Indians. But that would make Jefferson a Christian evangelist as well,
because he signed bills from 1802-04 supporting the building of churches
and the sending of missionaries to the native tribes.

The Rev. James Abercrombie criticized Washington from the pulpit not only
for not taking Communion, but never kneeling in prayer.  The mural in the
Capitol's Rotunda depicting Washington kneeling in prayer in Valley Forge
is based on very flimsy evidence. I'm pleased that Lillback agrees that the
alleged incident may not have happened.

With regard to Washington's prayers, Lillback admits many of were written
for the president, and one of the authors was none other than the
unorthodox Thomas Jefferson. At least Lillback has the honesty to admit
that Washington's infamous "Daily Sacrifice Prayers" may not have come from
his hand or mouth. They have been rejected as forgeries by the Smithsonian
Institute, primarily because they do not match his handwriting or his
horrible spelling and grammar.

After extensive research historian Paul Boller concludes that "if
Washington was a Christian, he was surely a Protestant of the most liberal
persuasion." He would have fit John Adam's definition of a liberal
Christian very well: "I believe all the honest men among you are
Christians, in my sense of the word."

Nick Gier taught religion and philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31
years.
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