PART I

While the new nation's shape was being hammered out, George Washington
largely stood above the fray, a luxury he was permitted on account of his
iconic status as father of the nation. He took particular care almost never
to broach matters pertaining to religion.

Washington's personal views on religion are obscure. Though raised
Anglican, he chose not to take Communion (a rite reserved for church
members or "communicants"). When he attended church, he was not particular
about the house of worship attending Quaker, German Reformed, and Roman
Catholic services as well as those conducted by mainline Protestants. He
was just as inclusive in his personal hiring, welcoming (in a letter to
Tench Tighman, March 24, 1784) "Mohometans, Jews or Christians of any Sect,
or they may be Atheists," so long as they "are good workmen." As
commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary forces, Washington rejected a
request by the other army chaplains to preclude John Murray, a Universalist
minister, from serving in that capacity. Yet he encouraged his unit
commanders to begin each day with a prayer. And, as president, he
inaugurated the tradition-suspended by Jefferson, only to be reinstated by
Madison of issuing national prayers of thanksgiving.

Arguing from such evidence (buttressed by the fact that he knelt alongside
his fellow delegates while an Episcopal priest recited the Thirty-fifth
Psalm at the outset of the First Continental Congress), advocates for a
Christian America place Washington at the head of their march. His general
attitude toward religion does not support such a claim. At times, he even
evinced a personal animus against organized religion. There are reports
that after one preacher, with Washington captive in the pews, upbraided him
for refusing communion-it being the duty of great men to set a good
example-Washington never returned to church again.

On church-state separation, Washington is most forthcoming in a series of
letters he wrote early in his presidency to religious leaders and
congregations of various faiths. In them, he either pledges the
government's absolute neutrality in matters of religion or defends that
neutrality. In letters written in May 1789 (his first month in office),
Washington reassured the United Baptist Church's General Committee that
their rights were safe on his watch and issued a like promise to a
conference of Methodist Bishops. That October, he made the same protections
clear to the Quaker annual assembly for the Mid-Atlantic states, western
Maryland, and Virginia. The following month, he gently, yet decisively,
answered a complaint from the New Hampshire-Massachusetts Presbytery that
no mention of either God or Christ had been included in the Constitution.
Shortly thereafter, President Washington reached out to America's Roman
Catholic and Jewish populations as well, in the latter instance assuring
the warden of a Hebrew congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, that fines
and imprisonment for breaking Christian sabbath statutes would now be a
thing of the past.
SOURCE: Letters on Religious Laws, George Washington, The Separation of
Church and State. Writings on a Fundamental Freedon by America's Founders.
Edited by Forrest Church, Beacon Press, Boston, (2004) pp. 104-106

CONTINUED IN PART II