Either trip by carriage involved a couple hours of travel round trip. Washington financially supported both churches and gave considerable personal time over the decades to his work on the church vestry. Throughout his presidency he regularly attended churches in New York and Philadelphia. A few clergy over the years expressed concern that Washington rarely if ever took communion, even though Martha usually did.
The Novaks write that this was not unusual for the time, and that the Eucharist was infrequently celebrated in churches of the era, even Roman Catholic ones.
Although not noted by the Novaks, 19th-century biographers often disputed claims that Washington never took the Eucharist. Ostensibly, the nearly year-old widow of Alexander Hamilton testified to her clear recollection of kneeling at the communion rail with the president. He prayed before meals, read sermons out loud to Martha, and bought devotional material for his stepchildren.
When stepdaughter Patsy was dying, he prayed audibly while on his knees at her bedside. Unlike Thomas Jefferson, who sometimes declined to serve as a godparent because of his theological doubts, Washington frequently agreed to the spiritual responsibilities of godparenting for the children of relatives and friends.
Shot in a duel, the flamboyant former aid to Washington dramatically requested the presence of an Anglican bishop and demanded the Eucharist while professing his faith in Christ.
Washington was a different character, and he died as he lived, with understatement and composure. He carefully wrote to their congregations, visited their places of worship, and received their delegations, commending their faith and urging their loyalty to the new republic and its promise of religious liberty to all. In religion, as in statecraft, Washington set the example that all other presidents would follow in some form.
The Novaks insist, not without logic, that a Washington without serious faith could not have managed this so equitably and successfully. The phrase is also notably found in a well-known letter that Washington wrote to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island.
In the letter, Washington proclaimed, "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid. George Tsakiridis, Ph. Notes: 1. Daniel L. The sheer magnitude of the umber of prayers, coupled with the expansive topics included in his prayers, give substantial credence to the universal testimony of Washington's contemporaries of his practice of corporate and private prayer.
This underscores how misplaced contemporary scholars have been in claiming that Washington was a man of lukewarm religious faith. June 1, at PM. With this in mind, I decided that it would be worthwhile to dissect the various "written prayers" that Peter Lillback sites in his book.
After all, the language that Washington used in these prayers should be a valuable tool in determining Washington's actual beliefs.
Washington's "God Talk" is noticeably absent the traditional Christian verbiage. Lillback's book is a farce! Lillback's definitely got major footnote disease. Too few footnotes make an argument weak; too many footnotes make you a pedantic freak! It's interesting how Beck supports this - I wonder if it's the "long book effect" going into practice here As a public educator, this worries me greatly.
June 3, at AM. As a fellow minister in Lillback's denomination, I can tell you that a large number of us are embarrassed by his poor historical methodology, and even more than that, of how all this distracts us from our main mission of proclaiming the Gospel of grace to needy sinners. It is really hard for us to fathom why any of this matters to the work of Word, Sacrament and Prayer which is ostensibly our main calling, regardless of what kind of country or culture we find ourselves in.
June 6, at PM. Seeker said…. First of all, anyone can, and most politicians did, flood their words with religious overtones. It means nothing. Notice the avalanche of religious justifications for slavery -- just astonishing floods of rhetoric, from Lee's defense of torture God intends pain for slaves "for their instruction to Davis "God delivered the Negro unto us, fit only for servitude See "Death of the Southern God" the best blog on Southern religious posturing on earth, and I say that entirely because I wrote it.
This God that shaped their lives, told them to enslave, told them to torture women, sell women, and burn an occasional violent slave to death -- that GOD, was dumped like a bed pan in a diarrhea ward. They spoke their beliefs on everything else -- white supremecy, the inferiority of blacks, they claimed blacks shouldnt vote, or marry whites, etc etc. Why not ever mention the God of slavery again?
They mentioned him every day, many times a day, in private and in public, before. Why suddenly dump that God? They knew that was bullship already. They never believed a word of it. John C. Bibliography: Chernow, Ron. Washington: A Life. New York: The Penguin Press, Henriques, Peter R. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, Munoz, Vincent Phillip.
God and the Founders: Madison, Washington, and Jefferson. New York: Cambridge University Press, Novak, Michael and Jana. New York: Basic Books, Thompson, Mary V. Podcast Mount Vernon Everywhere! George Tsakiridis, Ph. South Dakota State University Notes: 1. Ellis, Joseph J. His Excellency: George Washington.
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