The Enlightenment, Catholics, Jesuits, Freemasons, and Revolutionaries

Washington in his Masonic Apron

An important aspect of the Enlightenment that needs to be looked at before we can return to our series on the history of the Church of England is Freemasonry.  Freemasonry is a system of lodges to which men belong in fraternal organization for purposes of business and social alliance, charitable works, and political activity.  Historically it also had much to do with intellectual discussion and exchange of knowledge.

According to Masonic myth and legend, Freemasonry has an ancient history going back to the geometer Euclid, the construction of the monuments of ancient Egypt, the building of the temple of Solomon, the construction of the medieval cathedrals etc.  Historical data is far more mundane however.

The medieval craft system of guilds organized professionals by craft for the training of new members for that craft as well as for charitable outreach, pious devotion, the regulation of the craft and its business practices, and socialization.  One such guild was the stonemason’s guild.  In Britain the guild system survived the Reformation and, in fact, the professional classes which the guilds represented were overwhelmingly in favor of the new Protestantism.  Being of the professional classes and able to send their male progeny to universities, the guilds were composed of men of above average education who were very much alive to the scientific developments and philosophical/theological currents of the day.  In Tudor and Stuart England, guildhalls were often the scene of lively conversations and political intrigue.  They were as much gentlemen’s clubs as they were professional fraternities. 

A stonemasons’ guild “lodge” in Edinburgh, Scotland –the Ancient Lodge of Edinburgh, Mary’s Chapel (so named because it met in Mary’s Chapel, Niddry’s Wind, Edinburgh) –was the first of these lodges that took in members who were not, in fact, stone masons.   The minutes of the lodge show that in 1634 Lord Alexander, Sir Anthony Alexander, and Sir Alexander Strachan were admitted to the lodge as “speculative” members (as differentiated from “operative” members who were actual stone masons).  Some claim that this lodge had been accepting these sort of honorary members since at least 1600.  It is notable that these recorded members are from the aristocracy as it shows both a desire to participate in the intellectual and charitable life of the lodge on the part of men whose own social class lacked this sort of cohesion, and a certain liberality of mind in these nobility being willing to participate in activities with men of wealth but without title. Incidentally, Sir Alexander Strachan, one of these speculative members, was closely connected to King Charles I, which certainly made his membership politically advantageous to the lodge, at least until the Civil War. 

It is difficult to say exactly why the Stone Mason’s guild became the nucleus of these new associations.  There could be a number of factors.  Stone Masons were a more mobile profession than most other guilds with masons moving around the country—indeed around Europe—wherever work was to be found and thus they had a stronger tradition of welcoming new members than the more settled guilds such as goldsmiths or furriers.  Also, because they worked for contract rather than owning their own business, they were not so much in competition with one another as members of those guilds whose businesses in the same town encouraged a certain rivalry and mistrust.  For whatever reason, through the seventeenth and certainly in the eighteenth century, there were fewer and fewer “operative” stonemasons and more and more “speculative” masons admitted to membership in English lodges.

And perhaps because masonry involved the sciences—mathematics, geometry, physics, and even a basic knowledge of geology and the different qualities of stone, the lodges drew men of scientific inquiry.  During the years of the English Civil War and the religious chaos that came with the breakdown of English religion into dozens of sects from the orthodox Presbyterians and Congregationalists to the far more outré groups such as the Quakers, and even more the Diggers, Ranters, and Fifth Monarchy Men, many of your more educated and professional men began to question Christian doctrines such as the Trinity which they perceived to be irrational.  We see by the end of the period the rise of Unitarianism and then the jump to Deism which posited belief in a Supreme Being but One who set the “clockwork” of the universe into an eternal motion and then abandoned it to itself. 

Freemasonry spread from England to France in the early eighteenth century, aided by both the partisans of the exiled Stuarts and the commercial and intellectual ties that developed with France despite the political tensions between the two countries.  The French Lodges tended to draw political liberals (as well as scientists and philosophes) and were in many ways the incubators for democratic ideas that would set in motion the French Revolution.  Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot were all Freemasons.  Freemasonry established itself among the American colonists as well and George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Monroe, John Hancock, Benedict Arnold, Patrick Henry, Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and Elbridge Gerry were all Freemasons. 

In Europe Freemasonry became associated with opposition to the Catholic Church as part of the ancien regime.  The alliance of “Throne and Altar” which characterized pre-revolutionary France proved all but fatal to the Catholic Church.  While Freemasons are not associated with the Jacobins and the extremes of the Terror, the French lodges had long served as breeding grounds of democratic ideals.  The intellectual curiosity characteristic of Freemasonry also made the Masons question many Catholic beliefs and practices that represented the medieval world and had grown into an outdated ridiculousness by the Enlightenment.  The papal bulls of Clement XII and Benedict XIV proscribing membership in the Freemasons had never been ratified by the French Crown and consequently many French clergy belonged to the Freemasons.  Some lodges were exclusively clerical. 

Freemasons, who found the rigid intellectualism of the Jesuits to be opposed to their own spirit of intellectual inquiry, played critical roles in having the Jesuits expelled from Portugal (1759), France (1764), the Spanish Empire (1767) and Malta (1769) leading up to the suppression of the Order in 1773.  By no means,  however, should they be credited (or blamed) entirely for the downfall of the Society of Jesus as the Jesuits had entire coalitions of enemies working against them. 

In the nineteenth century, Italian Freemasons were very active in both the revolutions against the papacy in the Papal States and the move for Italian unification and the ending of temporal power for the Popes.  Giuseppe Garibaldi, the “George Washington of Italy” whose military genius was able to bring down the power of the various Italian princes—including the papacy—was a vehement Freemason.  All in all, the relationship between Freemasonry and Catholicism has not been a happy one.  

James Madison, the Constitution, and "A Christian Nation?"

James Madison, Architect of the American
Constitution

The next of our founding fathers we want to look at in regards to whether or not the United States is by design of our Founding Fathers a Christian Nation, or a Judeo-Christian nation, is James Madison, the principal architect of the United States Constitution.  Madison, like Washington, was an Anglican/Episcopalian.  (Anglican until the Bishop of London renounced jurisdiction over the American Church upon English recognition of American independence in 1783 with the consequent result that American Anglicans were now an autonomous religious body and came to be known as the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America.)  Madison was not particularly devout and seems to have worn his Christian faith somewhat casually although his wife, the famously extroverted Dolly, converted from the Quaker faith in which she had been raised to the Episcopal Church.  Dolly, like many of the wives of the founders of the Republic, was more religious than her husband.  Madison’s religious beliefs are particularly important given his role in the Constitution of the United States.    

     In the first years of the American Republic we were governed by The Articles of Confederation, a constitution that conceived of the nation as a loose affiliation of autonomous states pledged to collaboration rather than as a single nation with a sovereign government.  The system outlined by the Articles did not work.  It was ineffectual in dealing with issues such as the immense debt incurred by the American Revolution as well as matters of foreign policy.  Collaboration under the Articles depended on the mutual trust among the States but the divisions that would eventually lead to Civil War some eighty years later were already beginning to fester, imperiling the unity of the new nation.  It was clear to many, though not to all, that a stronger federal government had to be designed.  A convention was called to refashion the Articles of Confederation but once in session and without explicit authorization from the Continental Congress that convoked such an assembly, the convention decided to scrap the Articles and replace it with an entirely new Constitution.  Given that so many of the heroes of the Revolution were members of that Convention—Washington, Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, among others (Jefferson and Adams were abroad on Diplomatic Missions) the members of the Constitutional Convention got away with their bait-and-switch coup and our present Constitution was the result.  It was not an easy struggle.   There were those among the great founders who were appalled that so much had been taken from the sovereignty of the several states and given over to the national government.  Moreover, they not only saw the danger to the States, but saw the rights of individual imperiled by the failure of the new Constitution to explicitly guarantee them.  It was agreed that as soon as the Constitution was approved it would be necessary to amend it with a “Bill of Rights” that would make explicit the rights that were taken as due the individual under the English Common Law tradition dating back to Magna Carta. 

     Madison did not single-handedly write the Constitution.  No one person wrote it.  He did not even serve the role to the Constitution that Jefferson had for the Declaration of Independence.  The Constitution was produced by incessant argument and debate over each point but no individual was as active in that discussion and debate process as was James Madison.  In the four months of the convention (May-September 1787) Madison spoke over 200 times.  He clearly articulated a plan for government and when it was necessary to come to compromise, as it was time after time on point after point, it was Madison who guided the way out of each impasse.    

      When the Constitution was finally ratified it was Madison who then took up the cause for a Bill of Rights.  It was not at first a popular cause among the leaders of the new government although it certainly was a matter of concern in several of the States and among the citizenry at large.  Congress and the Executive branch were busy trying to get the Constitution itself to work and were reluctant to begin amending it.  Nevertheless Madison was able to guide the passage of the first ten amendments which we now call the Bill of Rights.  He did not get everything he wanted.  For example, Madison wanted an amendment that would assert the sovereignty of the national government over that of the individual States—an amendment that some historians believe would have prevented the Civil War, or at least robbed secession of any constitutional legitimacy.  (It would have interesting consequences for several of today’s issues as well.)  Nevertheless, the Bill of Rights was eventually passed and quickly ratified by the states. 

      The first amendment guarantees: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

      The phrase that interests us in this question of our being a Christian nation is the idea that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibition the free exercise thereof.  It is clear from the text that not only is no one Church to be established—or proscribed—but religion itself is neither to be established nor proscribed. 

      Madison was a protégé of Thomas Jefferson and while he may or may not have subscribed to Jefferson’s deist philosophy, he clearly subscribed to Jefferson’s political philosophy articulated in Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.  Madison had worked with Baptist preacher, Elijah Craig (after whom the designer Bourbon is named), in making sure that there would be constitutional guarantee for religious liberty.  Craig had served time in jail for preaching without a license in the days when the Anglican Church was established by law in Virginia and non-Anglicans were forbidden to preach or hold services.  While an Episcopalian himself (his cousin, also James Madison, was the first Episcopal Bishop of Virginia) Madison clearly wanted to make sure that the no religion was set up to have a claim of precedence over others in either Virginia or the new Republic.  It would be inconsistent with his record to say that the “Father of the Constitution” saw the United States as a Christian Nation in the sense that Christianity (or any other religion) had a pride of place among various systems of belief or thought recognized by law or governmental courtesy in the American Republic whom he had done more than any other individual to shape.         

More Notes on Maryland Catholicism

The rebuilt Catholic "Chapel" on the site of
Saint Mary's City in Maryland

I mentioned yesterday that the traditional American Catholicism that is rooted in the Catholic experience of the Maryland colony is more like the post-conciliar Catholicism of today while our memories of the Church before Vatican II reflect the faith and practice of the immigrants that flooded the United States from 1840 until World War I.  I had a number of emails asking me to clarify.  “Surely,” one asked, “the Mass in colonical Maryland was in Latin, was it not?”   Another wrote: “In the picture of the Church in Saint Mary’s City that you posted on the web page, there was an altar rail and the altar seems to face the wall.”  So what do I mean when I maintain  that colonial and early United States Catholicism had  more in common with the Catholicism that we practice today than with the Church that those of us who grew up before Vatican II remember?  
      In the first place.  Yes, the Mass was celebrated in Latin in 1632 when The Ark and The Dove brought the first Catholic settlers.  And the Mass was in Latin in 1776 when Charles Carroll went up to Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence.  Father John Carroll who was to be our first bishop and other priests discussed Mass in English, but had no permission from Rome to implement their plan.  Without such permission, however, they did (on their own authority) put the Marriage Rite, the Baptism Rite, and parts of the funeral rite (though not the Requiem Mass) in English.  Some of the prayers for Confession were also put into English though not the formula of absolution.  And yes, the altars in the churches invariably faced the rear wall of the church as they did everywhere else except for some of the churches in Rome, most notably the papal basilicas, where they have always faced the people.  So what do I mean in comparing the recusant Catholicism of colonial Maryland with our Vatican II Catholicism today?
      Well there are several points.  Before we get to liturgical issues, I would like to look at ecumenism.  Two and a half centuries ago the Catholic Church was mortally opposed to what today we call ecumenism.  To put this in context we must remember that first of all the Catholic Church was opposed to democracy and taught that monarchy was the form of government most consistent with the law of God because it reflects the Divine Order of the Universe.  God has not established that his laws are determined by the consent of the governed and nations too should be ruled by monarchs who shape laws by decree so that the earthly realm will most resemble the heavenly realm.  (Believe it or not, there are still crackpots in the Church who agree with this.  Michael Voris of “Real Catholic TV” advocated this some time back on his internet-based television network.  The internet also has various blogs and webpages on the subject of Catholicism and Monarchy, and the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was not only a maintainer of the Traditional Pre-Conciliar Liturgy but politically an ardent Monarchist.      
      The Catholic Church not only supported Monarchy as the ideal form of government (thought it “tolerated” democratic republics such as the New United States) but also maintained as a matter of doctrine that although every political society was morally bound to permit the Catholic Church freedom of worship and unhindered participation in public life, that when Catholics became the political majority in a country they had to establish the Catholic Church as the official religion of the State and to put limitations on the practice of non-Catholic “cults” whether Christian or otherwise.   Furthermore the State was obligated to shape its laws according to Catholic morals and doctrines.  Divorce, for example, should not be legal, nor contraception in a Catholic State. The American principle of Separation of Church and State and its corollary of Freedom of Worship was something that could be tolerated until Catholics became the political majority in the United States.  As late as the mid 1950’s the Vatican silenced an American theologian, a Jesuit (who else?) at Catholic University in Washington DC and forbad him (his name, by the way, was John Courtney Murray) to teach, speak, or publish on the issue of Separation of Church and State.  At the Second Vatican Council, the Council did a 180 degree about-face with the decree Dignitatis Humanae asserting that every person was to be given the freedom of conscience in matters of religion.  Similarly until Vatican II, the Holy See had repeatedly condemned the Ecumenical Movement, most notably in the 1928 Encyclical of Pius XI, Mortalium Animos. 
      Interreligious cooperation of sort was prohibited and Catholics were not so much allowed as to say the Lord’s Prayer with Protestants.  As for cooperation with Jews—or Muslims—well, it was not even in the realm of possibility. 
But the American tradition was very different.   Catholics in the former English colonies knew what religious persecution was.  Even in Maryland—founded to be a refuge for Catholics from persecution in England, Catholics had been denied voting or public office since the beginning of the eighteenth century.  American Catholics universally supported the Revolution in hopes of attaining full rights as citizens.  Charles Carroll, the most politically prominent (and the wealthiest) of American Catholics spoke of the “rights of conscience,” to be among the “common rights of nature” granted not by government but inherent in human freedom and dignity.   Carroll’s cousin, Father John Carroll who was to become the first Catholic Bishop in the new nation, ardently supported the cause of Independence and, according to the website of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, defended the American principle of religious toleration despite its variance from traditional Catholic doctrine.  Moreover, Carroll was cordial and collaborative with the clergy of other denominations, respected by all and respecting all.  It was not uncommon in colonial and newly independent America for Protestant and Catholic clergy to cover the pastoral needs of each other’s widely scattered flocks.  Funerals in particular were handled by whatever clergy were available.  Father Gabriel Richard, a French émigré priest serving in Michigan territory before the War of 1812 even served for a time as the pastor of a Protestant congregation in addition to the pastoral work in his own parish.  Catholics and Protestants generally lived together not only peacefully but in mutual respect and cooperation.  Episcopalian George and Martha Washington were friends with such Catholic families as the Lees (the Maryland Lees, not the Virginia Lees—though themselves related, the Maryland Lees had become Catholic at some point) and the Digges.  As I mentioned in an earlier post (January 2, 2012), Washington supposedly gave the first contribution to the building of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Alexandria Virginia through the agency of his friend Col John Fitzgerald.  It was a world of civility and good relations that cut across religious lines two centuries before John XXIII saw Protestants not as heretics but as “separated brethren.” 

Two Remarks on George Washington

Emanuel Leutze's 1851 painting of Washington

Crossing the Delaware--the surprise attack on British

forces at the Battle of Trenton, Christmas night 1776.

Permit me just two more remarks about George Washington before we move on.  George Washington wore  his Masonic Apron and other lodge insignia for the laying of the cornerstone of the United States Capitol in 1793.  If an American President today appeared in Masonic insignia there would be a huge outcry from Catholics on the right and secularists on the left.  I think we need to pay attention however to the significance of his wearing these symbols of a private affiliation for the performance of a public act.  While I don’t think one could say—given the earlier entries in this series of blogs—that Washington conceived of this Republic as a “Christian Nation” or a “Judeo-Christian Nation” as some of the advocates of keeping atheistic displays off the Leesburg Courthouse Lawn, Washington certainly did not believe that one’s religious biases should be kept out of public life.   Freemasonry is not a religion but its insignia, rituals, and symbols stand for a belief system and Washington himself displayed those symbols of the Masonic belief system at one of the most important events in the history of the Republic. 
     Now, on for another remark about Washington though having nothing apropos of the religious debate.  We all have in our mind the image of Washington crossing the Delaware, standing in the prow of a boat and looking noble.  According to one of his chief officers, General Henry Knox—who weighted over 300 lbs—Washington was seated in the boat and wanted to make sure that Knox was seated too, declaring:  "Shift your fat ass, Henry, but slowly, or you'll swamp the damn boat!"  Sort of makes us shift our image of ol'George, doesn't it?

The Christian Faith of George Washington IV (and final)

George Washington wearing his Masonic Apron

while laying the cornerstone of the United States

Capitol

Well back to the Christian faith—or lack thereof—of George Washington, the most important of our Founding Fathers. Washington was, as we have said, an Anglican (before the American Revolution) Episcopalian (after American independence when the Episcopal Church in America separated from the Church of England.)  He attended church with a respectable regularity (though far from every week) and even served as vestryman and warden of his parish for about twelve years before the American Revolution.  There is debate as to whether or not Washington participated in The Holy Communion in the Episcopal Church but it seems as though he did not.  Given his undisputed integrity in public and private life, this abstinence from the Lord’s Table might be an important indication of how he understood Christian faith. 
      In addition to Washington’s being an active member of the Episcopal Church he was also a Freemason.   He was initiated in Freemason Lodge no.4 at Fredericksburg in 1752 at age 20.  Freemasonry was not simply a social activity for Washington.  With the same or even greater regularity as Washington attended church, he attended Lodge Meetings both while at Mount Vernon and while away, including the years spent away commanding the American forces during the Revolution.  Many of the senior officers in Washington’s command were also Freemasons, including his favorites, the Marquis de Lafayette and Henry Knox.  When Washington was sworn in as President in 1789 he took the oath of office on the Bible belonging to Saint John’s Lodge in New York City,  and when he laid the cornerstone of the United States Capitol in 1793 he wore his masonic apron, a sign of his membership and status in the Freemasons.      
       Today many devout Protestants are members of the Masons—and even, despite Church Law, Catholics.  Traditionally, however Lutherans and Catholics, the two most doctrinally minded Churches in the spectrum of Christian denominations, have refrained from affiliating to the Masons because historically Masons have offered a questionable (from an orthodox point of view) theology that differs substantially from Christian faith.  Classic freemasonry does not embrace the Father-God revealed in the Christian scriptures whose personal oversight extends into the lives of each of his children but rather offers the rationalist deity who is the Master Mason of the universe, the great designer of the laws of nature and embodiment of a rational justice whose moral laws are written on the human heart not by divine revelation but by absolute reason.  Such religion has a positivist understanding of the human person as guided by reason, not by grace, to goodness and sees sin not as the violation of Divine Command but a failure of reasonable judgment on the part of the individual.  Such “sin” does not need atonement and Christ is no longer Savior of the World but moral guide whose teachings are founded in reason rather than in revelation.  Such a savior has no need of being divinity incarnate but an enlightened human person whose godliness is a measure of his reason and not a divine nature.  As we saw in previous postings this allows the thinker to move from Christianity to Deism, from faith in Jesus to an admiration of Jesus, from Trinitarianism to Unitarianism or Deism (or Agnosticism) and from a personal God whose immanence is apprehended by faith to a Supreme Being whose Transcendence renders the believer significant only to the extent of his reasonable choices in life.  Now, I am not saying that all Masons, and in particular contemporary Masons, have moved this far from orthodox Christianity but it was typical of the Masons of the late seventeenth and of the eighteenth centuries.  Did Washington embrace such a rationalist “faith” rather than Christian orthodoxy?  We cannot say for sure but it is interesting that when Washington wrote of God he used such terms as “Providence,” “The Great Architect of the Universe,” "that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be"and “The Blessings of Heaven.”  When he wrote about Jesus it was as a moral teacher, not as a Redeemer.   All in all, one would have to say that viewed from today’s perspective Washington was more the Mason than the Episcopalian; more the Deist than the Christian.   Yet, unlike Jefferson or Franklin, I don’t think one could say about Washington that he wasn’t a Christian, at least of some sort.  In religion, as in politics, Washington was not a theoretician but a doer.  I suspect that for him Christianity was not about affirming doctrinal faith in Jesus Christ but living according to one’s best ability to follow the practical ethics found in the New Testament.  Even here, however, I think modern Christians would find Washington wanting.  Most seriously he maintained slaves.  He supported the American rebellion against constituted legitimate authority and he did so, in great part, because it was to his personal economic advantage.  But again when it came to morality, I think Washington was a man of practical judgments not abstract theory.  He did provide in his will that his slaves (not Martha’s) should be freed upon Martha’s death.  Even though Anglicans, like most Christians (including Catholics) other than Quakers did not object to slavery, Washington’s own moral compass told him that slavery was morally unsupportable but he knew that he could not maintain his public responsibilities without the benefits of a slave economy, nor was he willing to leave his widow without the practical support she needed to maintain their standard of livelihood once he was dead.  (And actually the majority of slaves on their estates were Martha’s, not George's.  He had no right in law, of course, to free her slaves.) I think for Washington public responsibilities took moral precedence over the freedom of one’s slaves.  This is a curious perspective, indeed troubling to the modern mind, but where would our Republic be had he chosen otherwise?  Similarly, Washington had no qualms about violating the oaths of loyalty to the King he had taken as a member of the militia, as a member of his church vestry, and as a member of the House of Burgesses.  I think Thomas Jefferson made it clear in the Declaration of Independence that the King’s failure to maintain the welfare of his American subjects justified the colonists in turning away from his “protection,” but it must be noted that severing the political subordination to Great Britain was of immense financial benefit to Washington and other Virginia Planters.  All of this is a way to say that Washington seems to have been guided not by Christian moral teaching but practical ethics symptomatic of Deist thought.  On the other hand, I think it is noteworthy that Washington has never been accused of marital infidelity with either a slave nor a social peer, despite his well-known love for Sally Fairfax, the wife of a friend and neighbor.  This is only one example of Washington being a person of exceptional ethical fiber. For Washington it would seem that moral integrity was more a matter of personal honesty rather than what we would call today “social justice.”  I don’t think that was atypical, however, of eighteenth-century men of his social position whether or not religious. 
     Finally, let us note that when Washington was dying no clergy were summoned to attend him.  His funeral at Mount Vernon comprised both the traditional Episcopalian (formerly Anglican) Prayerbook rite and Masonic rituals. 
     All in all, I think Washington might be categorized with the oxymoron of a “Christian Deist.”  Unlike Jefferson or Franklin, Washington’s practical mind permitted him a dual allegiance to a vague Christianity and the religious indifferentism of Enlightenment Freemasonry. Unlike the more militant (and mostly European) masons, Washington was not hostile to religion and he never tried to exclude it from public life.  In addition to Sunday Worship he attended various services organized for the Continental Congress.  He was not only a generous financial supporter of the Episcopal Churches to which he belonged, but local legend maintains that through the agency of his friend and former aide, Colonel John Fitzgerald, Washington was one of the first contributors to the building of Saint Mary’s Church, Alexandria, the first Catholic Church in Virginia.  On the other hand, religious principles cannot be said to have guided his public or private life.  One would have to lump him with Jefferson, Franklin, and John Adams in embracing a public life guided not by Christian principles but by what we might today call humanist ethics.       

    

The Christian Faith of George Washington III

Pohick Church, one of the churches that Washington

attended regularly.  This picture is taken from the

website.  Notice the centrality of the pulpit and how

the commuion table is placed in a more subordinate

position.  This arrangement was not unusual in 

Episcopalian Churches before the Oxford Movement

of the nineteenth century 

  So what about George Washington and his religious beliefs?  Was he a Christian?  Did he believe that this new Republic which he was so instrumental in creating was to be a Christian nation?  Remember we are looking at this in the context of the controversy of atheist displays on the Courthouse lawn at beautiful Virginia Horse Country Leesburg (the Home Town of Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum) Virginia and the claims of Loudon County Maven Barbara Curtis whose Blog Mommy Life is filled with information (and misinformation) of all sorts.  In the debate over the Leesburg Courthouse lawn Ms. Curtis asserted that “There is also the fact that our nation is indeed a Judeo-Christian nation - there's no disputing that.”  Is there no disputing that?  I am not so sure.  We have been looking at American History, first in the colonial period and then in the time of the creation of the American Republic, to see whether or not the United States was meant to be a Christian, or a Judeo-Christian, nation.  Massachusetts history would support Ms. Curtis’ claim, but the Founding Fathers of the Republic are not so univocal.  We have looked at the religious opinions of Jefferson, Franklin, and the Adams cousins and it would appear that the three responsible for the Declaration of Independence would not support the claim that we should be “A Christian Nation,” at least not as that claim is put forth by modern political “conservatives.”  (I put “conservatives” in quotation marks because I think they deviate from our American political heritage in any number of matters.)  Sam Adams who was somewhat of what we might call today an “evangelical” may have supported the Christian Nation idea.  So now we have moved on to George Washington—the single most significant—though not the most influential—of the Founding Fathers.  I make that distinction because Washington was extremely proactive in the practical matters of establishing the new nation  but not in shaping the political theory behind it.  He was a member of the Continental Congress and an advocate for Independence.  He was given command of the American forces fighting for Independence.  I chaired the Constitutional Convention of 1787.  And he served as the First President under the Constitution.  Yet other than being an advocate for Independence in the Continental Congress and an advocate for a (relatively) strong Federal Government in the Constitutional Convention he was not given to participating in the debates that shaped the new nation.  Washington was never much of a talker but more of a doer.  And it is precisely for that reason that the religious opinions of George Washington comprise a tricky subject.  Our last two entries painted a picture of eighteenth century Anglicanism (and its American expression, The Episcopal Church), the denomination to which Washington was formally affiliated. We have seen that Episcopalianism in the eighteenth century was not easily or narrowly defined and that an Episcopalian might be anything from an agnostic to an evangelical.  So what about George?  
      Well, in the first place George was an Anglican/Episcopalian not just in name but in practice.  He was affiliated to several Episcopalian parishes relatively near to Mount Vernon, most especially Pohick Church and Christ Church, Alexandria.  He worshipped at each of these Churches though with some irregularity.  Washington kept a meticulous journal of his daily activities and they indicate that he went to church about one Sunday in four while at Mount Vernon.  This is not a bad record for eighteenth-century Virginia gentry; after all it was not easy going to Church in eighteenth-century Virginia plantation society.  New England townsfolk could be religious without much inconvenience.  Pohick Church was about seven miles distant and would have been about an hour and a half by horseback or two hours by carriage each way from Mount Vernon. Given that George invariably went to Church in Martha’s company he probably went by carriage but, usually leaving church after first service (Morning Prayer) while Martha remained for Holy Communion at the second service, he may have returned by horseback.  Such a schedule probably meant leaving Mount Vernon before six a.m. and returning between eleven and noon.  Christ Church was three miles further from Mount Vernon than Pohick Church and in another direction, making the round trip perhaps an hour longer each way.  Weather would be one deterrent to Church attendance with rain making the roads difficult and snow making them impassable. However, Washington’s diary mentions Sundays where he went Fox-hunting rather than to Church so it was not always a weather related skip.  Sometimes too he stayed home to catch up on correspondence or to meet with his farm manager. 

Pohick Church where Washington most frequently attended was the seat of Truro Parish which had been divided from Hamilton Parish by the Virginia General Assembly in 1732.  Pohick Church itself, originally known as the Occoquan Church (because of a local creek), had been founded in 1695 when it still was part of Hamilton Parish.   Washington served on the vestry of Truro parish from 1762 until 1774 and several times was one of the two Wardens.  It was during his time on the Truro Vestry that the Falls Church was built and Washington briefly served on the vestry at the Falls Church as well.  However as it was contrary to law for one to sit on two vestries simultaneously he did not stay with the Falls Church. (Before the Revolution when the Church of England was the Established Church, civil law governed matters spiritual as well as civic.)   Given the distance from Mount Vernon to the Falls Church it is unlikely that he attended services there with any regularity.  Modern day The Falls Church and also Truro Church have separated themselves from the Episcopal Church while Pohick Church is still Episcopalian.  We might talk about that in some upcoming blogs. 

     Before the American Revolution public office in Virginia was restricted to members of the Established Church, i.e. the Anglican Church and Washington’s dedication to public life would have required of him membership in the Established Church. He could not have served either in  the militia or held any public office unless he were a member of the Anglican Church.   

Ironically Washington’s church attendance was better when he was away from Mount Vernon than when he was there.  Stories that he only attended divine service when Martha was with him seem not to bear out the facts and all those Sundays at Mount Vernon when he skipped church indicate that Martha probably played little influence on his worship patterns.  During the periods of time that he lived in Philadelphia and New York attendance at church services was much more convenient as the churches were right in town—a walk from where he lived.  In Philadelphia he worshipped at Saint Peter’s Church; in New York at Saint Paul’s Chapel.  During his time in Philadelphia he also attended a Quaker service and, on one occasion, a service (I believe it was a Te Deum, not a Mass) at Saint Joseph’s, the Jesuit Church, which is Pennsylvania’s oldest Catholic Church.   

      While George was a Church-goer there is a dispute about whether or not Washington received Holy Communion at Anglican or Episcopal services.  This would be a significant indication as to what his faith—and the Christian religion—meant to him.  In Washington’s time, as mentioned in the previous blog, Anglican theology held for a Calvinistic approach to the Eucharist that Christ was truly present but in a spiritual (as opposed to physical) manner.  Some Anglicans/Episcopalians would have emphasized the idea that Christ was Truly present and considered the difference between spiritual and physical presence to be inconsequential.  Others would have gone for a more Zwinglian understanding that Christ’s presence was purely by “remembrance”—a sort of “present in my heart” approach.  The Anglican liturgy itself was (and to some extent still is) ambiguous so as to be as inclusive as possible.  Washington never commented on Eucharistic theology so we do not know what he believed.  Various family remembrances, primarily from a generation or two after Washington’s death, claim that he frequently attended Holy Communion.  Several of the rectors of the Episcopal Churches which Washington attended claimed, however, that he never took the Sacrament and one of them, the Reverend Doctor James Abercrombie of Saint Peter’s—the Philadelphia Church Washington attended during the Continental Congress—explicitly said that Washington was a Deist.   Abercrombie had, in a Sunday Sermon, criticized Washington and other public figures who refrained from receiving communion for setting a bad example by not remaining in church for the Sacrament.  Historians generally concur that the clergy records are more reliable than the family stories in this matter and take it that Washington attended Morning Prayer—a service  of psalms, prayers, and a sermon, but not Holy Communion. 

Washington’s devotional practices reflect his moral integrity.  If there is one thing one can say about Washington is that, despite Parson Weems’ story of the cherry tree being a fabrication, he was a man of superior integrity.  He was certainly a gentleman and respectful of the opinions of others but he was extremely discreet regarding his own religious beliefs.  Martha, his wife, was a very devout Episcopalian who received the Sacrament often.  Washington normally accompanied her to church, both attending the Morning Prayer.   George would usually then leave while Martha remained for the second service of Holy Communion.  Washington never said why, but obviously the Holy Communion was not important to him.  Or perhaps it was too important to him to participate in a rite whose basic significance differed from his personal “faith.”  Perhaps when we look at the various other rituals which Washington did practice we can understand his rather unique Christianity. 

The Christian Faith of George Washington II



"Ancient of Days" by William Blake

(1757-1827) British Poet and Painter,

depicting God as the Architect of the

Universe, a common theme in

Enlightenment thought

Let’s pick up the Anglican/Episcopalian saga before looking at George Washington’s type of Christianity.  As I said in the last entry we hear that the hero of our Revolution and our First President was Episcopalian and we think “he’s almost a Catholic!” but that only shows to go you how little we know about Episcopalians or Anglicans at the time of George Washington.  This is an important topic for another reason as well.  When we look at the question of Anglican’s having “Valid Orders” it is important that we know their history to see if their doctrines of Eucharist and Priesthood have always conformed to what we Catholics believe to be the historic faith of the Church as it has come to us from the Apostles. 

      Henry VIII did not steer his Church of England on a Protestant course when he broke communion with Rome in 1536.  He kept not only the Mass but virtually all Catholic doctrine and practice other than religious life.  He closed the monasteries for a variety of reasons—financial gain for the crown being one of them but he changed almost nothing else.  The Pope’s name was dropped from the Mass but the Mass remained otherwise unchanged even for the Latin.  All Henry wanted was a non-papal Catholicism.  But he obviously knew what the future held and the Council of Regency he appointed to govern England until his son and heir, the future Edward VI, was old enough to govern for himself, was decidedly Protestant in its religious views.  Henry did die when his son was only nine and as Edward died before reaching his majority, this Regency Council governed England for the entire period.  The Protestant leaning majority soon rid itself of the more conservative minority and under the aegis of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury and thoroughly Protestant member of the Privy Council, transformed Henry’s non-papal Catholic Church into a Calvinist Church.  As regards the sacraments and worship they did this in two steps.  The first substantial Liturgical revision came with the 1549 Book of Common Prayer issued only two years after Edward’s ascension to the throne.  (There had been a few interpolations of English into the communion rite of the Latin Mass almost immediately after Henry’s death, but the Mass itself was untouched for over two years while Archbishop Cranmer prepared his new liturgy)  This first Prayerbook retained vestments, altars, and other Catholic ceremonial but it was no sooner published than Cranmer issued a second book that was stripped of almost all Catholic elements.  Like Luther, Cranmer was particularly ardent to strip the Mass (and priesthood) of any sense of sacrifice.  The rites of ordination of priests and consecration of bishops were similarly altered to remove any concept of a “sacrificing priesthood.”  The motivation for this was the mistaken idea about Catholic teaching, an idea, incidentally, held by many Catholics who had exaggerated sound doctrine into superstitious claptrap that each Mass was in and of itself a “sacrifice” as opposed to the idea that in each Mass the one sacrifice of Christ becomes present to us.  In orthodox Catholicism, unlike in what was once the popular Catholic imagination, Christ is not sacrificed again and again every time Mass is offered.  Christ has died once and for all.  In the Mass we are made present to that one eternal sacrifice which is sufficient for the redemption of the world. 

       The Mass neither repeats that sacrifice nor adds anything to it.  Knowing this we can see why Cranmer, Luther and other Reformers were anxious to avoid the idea of the Mass as Sacrifice even if they over-reacted in their zeal to protect the uniqueness of Christ’s once-and-for-all sacrifice.  But there were other problems in the Mass as well,  The “offertory” prayers of the “old Mass” ambiguously suggested that there were two sacrifices at the Mass, the first and lesser being the sacrifice of bread and wine to God so that they could be used in the second and essential “sacrifice,” in which Christ’s one and eternal Sacrifice is made present (or in the exaggerated view, in which Christ is offered again (and again and again) in each Mass). Cranmer’s work of stripping the Mass of any idea of Sacrifice was quick but thorough. It reduced the Mass, now known as “Holy Communion” to a mere memorial of Christ’s saving death.  Cranmer’s concept of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist was ambiguously confusing but is best summed up in the beautiful (but doctrinally problematic) prayer:  Take and eat this in remembrance that Christ died for thee and feed on him in thy heart by faith and with thanksgiving.  Beautiful sentiment—but is Christ present only by faith and what do we mean by remembrance? 

      In any event, At King Edward’s death in 1553, the Church of England had been thoroughly Protestantized and those clinging to Catholic theology or practice had been forced from their ecclesiastical offices and sometimes (but not always) imprisoned. 

       At Edward’s death, his Catholic sister Mary ascended the throne and in her five year reign restored the Catholic Faith and practice, bringing the Church of England back into the Roman Communion.  Unfortunately she did this in a particularly violent and bloody way, without any modicum of restraint or prudence, despite the advice of her Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury (who was also her cousin) Cardinal Reginald Pole.  Pole and Mary died the same day, November 17, 1558, leaving Mary’s successor, her Protestant half-sister Elizabeth, in need of a New Archbishop who could make a new—and Protestant--beginning.

        Elizabeth was one of the few genuinely intelligent people to sit on the English throne and she was not only fluent in classical languages but well instructed in theology. (Curiously, while she had a keen grasp of doctrine it sometimes seems that she lacked Christian faith.)   Her religious biases were for the sort of non-papal Catholicism of her Father.  She liked ritual and well understood that religious ritual actually bolstered the authority of the Crown. But Elizabeth had a problem and that was getting the power to rule firmly into her hands.  No one expected her to be Queen.  They expected her to marry and her husband to be King.  Elizabeth had no such strategy in mind. As she herself asserted, she had “the heart and stomach of a King” and was determined to rule in her own name.  To consolidate her power she had to woo the House of Commons for its support against the at-the-time all-powerful House of Lords.  The Commons, representing townsfolk, was thoroughly Protestant.  Actually they were Puritans, staunch Protestants who wanted to rid the Church of England of anything Roman.  The Reformation was on again and on with a fury.  The communion tables came back, the altars went out.  Vestments were destroyed; crosses and candles swept from the sanctuaries; statues and stained glass smashed.  Ordinary table bread was used for Holy Communion and tankards replaced chalices.  A new Prayerbook came out in 1559, substantially identical to the second Prayerbook of King Edward VI.  Priests and bishops were married (though not to each other—that comes later.) Matthew Parker, her choice for Archbishop of Canterbury, was consecrated according to the Ritual as reformed by Cranmer during the time of King Edward, not according to the Catholic Rite.  Theologians like Bishop John Jewel of Salisbury drew on Scripture and the Fathers to explain and justify the Reforms.  Elizabethan Anglicanism differed from Rome but was very orthodox—though with a strong Calvinist bent—in its soteriology.  Elizabethan Anglican sacramental theology is a bit more complex and while Catholics may not find it to be “orthodox,” was well rooted in patristics and sixteenth century New Testament scholarship.  Elizabeth had a remarkably long reign—almost forty-five years—and by her death England was thoroughly Protestant and thoroughly Reformed (i.e. Calvinist).  I don’t know that she was totally happy about that, but it is what she left as her legacy.

      Elizabeth was succeeded by her Calvinist cousin, King James VI of Scotland who became James I of England.  James too was highly educated and interested in matters theological.  His wife, Anne of Denmark, was a convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism but James remained a staunch Anglican though of High-Church sentiments rather than Puritan.  James is famous for having sponsored the English translation of the Bible that bears his name.   Beginning in the reign of James I and continuing on through that of his son, Charles I, there was a spiritual and theological revival in the English Church that crystalized during the tenure of William Laud as Archbishop of Canterbury.  Patristic scholarship and theological reflection, as well as somewhat of a recovery of the pre-Reformation English mystical tradition brought new—and very orthodox—life to the Church of England.  Under Laud’s administration, there was also somewhat of a corresponding liturgical revival though by no means a restoration of pre-Reformation ceremonial.  Unfortunately, it came crashing down with executions of King Charles and Archbishop Laud in 1649 and 1645 respectively.  During Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Commonwealth the Church of England splintered hopelessly.  The Episcopacy was abolished (temporarily) in favor of Presbyterianism but religious dissent burst out into numerous exotic forms with Quakers and Levelers, Baptists and Diggers, Congregationalists, Ranters and Fifth Monarchists.  What was beneath this disintegration of a National Church into numerous sects of dubious orthodoxy was the triumph of a neo-gnostic Illuminism in which the subjective religious experience of the individual was allowed to take precedence over the collective wisdom and ancient tradition of the community of the faithful.  When ultimate authority is not some outside source—be it scripture, sacred authors, papal authority, tradition—but individual opinion then there is no cohesive religious bond that means anything.  Reason may—or may not—play a role in the formation of opinions and while most of these sects were radically subjective with no regard for reason, there were many in society that saw religion as essentially irrational and opted not for faith but instead for rational philosophy and natural science to replace any sort of Divine Revelation be it canonical or individual.  This then, the mid-seventeenth century, is a period in which many embraced Enlightenment rationalism leading them to a very rational view of God as the impersonal architect of the universe.  It is here that we get Issac Newton, John Locke, Adam Smith, Alexander Pope, Joseph Priestly and a host of other very modern thinkers who had moved far beyond a theocentric view of science, philosophy, human society, religion, and the universe itself.  This was also the incubator in which Freemasonry was hatched as a rational alternative to Christian myth and ritual.   This rationalism was not without its effect on the Church of England which was closely connected to the universities and whose clergy were trained at those universities.  In the late seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries there were many priests and bishops—not to mention laity—who conformed in worship to Anglican practice but whose theology was riddled with rationalism that led to Arianism,  Socinianism, and even Unitarianism.  Christ’s Virgin Birth and his Physical Resurrection were called into question by some and many saw the Church existing primarily for character formation in sound morals rather than as a belief system.  Sermons were often moral exhortations free of specifically Christian doctrine and prayers were no more than the formation of moral precepts with references to a Transcendent Being.  This skepticism was by no means limited to Anglicanism and in America was found also among the New England Congregationalists.  It would cause a reaction in the formation of an Evangelical wing that was behind the First Great Awakening with the preaching of such Anglican promoters of Christian orthodoxy as George Whitefield and John Wesley.  In the nineteenth century it would be responsible for the reaction we call The Oxford Movement and the revival of Catholic heritage in the Church of England and the American Episcopal Church.  At the time of the American Revolution, however, the Anglican and Episcopal Churches had an evangelical wing but were heavily tipped in favor of religious rationalism.  But what about George himself?  Did he hold an evangelical faith or was he given to religious rationalism?  Well that is for next time.