George Washington held a deep and quiet Christian faith throughout his life
George Washington was born into a family with deep roots in the Anglican Church. His great-great-grandfather, the Reverend Lawrence Washington, spent his life in service to the church. But his continued loyalty to the royal family in the English Civil War cost him his position as rector of All Saints Church in the Essex village of Purleigh. Fortunately, Reverend Washington was given the opportunity to work at a smaller, less wealthy parish nearby until his death in 1652. Their father’s persecution at the hands of the Parliamentary government under Oliver Cromwell eventually led two of his sons, John and Lawrence, to emigrate and settle in Virginia. They remained devout members of the Anglican Church, however. John, who became George Washington’s great-grandfather, served as a vestryman for Appomattox (later called Washington) Parish, and he and Lawrence left statements of their faith among their surviving papers. Both George Washington’s father Augustine and George’s older half-brother Lawrence served as members of the vestry, as did Washington and other men in his extended family. This office required taking an oath as a “true sonn of ye Church of Engld,” who believed in the “Articles of faith” as expressed by the Anglican Church and would conform to the doctrine and discipline of that church, which was headed by the English king. Following the death of his father in 1743, when George was only 11 years old, he was raised by his deeply Anglican mother, Mary Ball Washington, who regularly exposed her children—and later, her grandchildren—to both the Bible and religious publications of the period.
Christian Soldier
In his private life, Washington admitted to being a Christian. For example, when an old friend asked to borrow a substantial amount of money from him in 1763, Washington replied with regret and accompanied his letter with a copy of his account with an English mercantile firm, along with the comment that this enclosure was “Upon my honor and the faith of a Christian . . . a true one,” providing evidence that he was telling the truth and simply did not have the money to help his friend at the time. Over the course of his life, he also challenged others to look to their Christian faith to give them the strength to overcome challenges, both personal and national. During Washington’s presidency, when Mount Vernon’s hired German gardener was drinking to excess, Washington wrote to him from Philadelphia, outlining the dangers of alcoholism and urging him to do better: “Don’t let this be your case. Sh[o]w yourself more of a man, and a Christian, than to yield to so intolerable a vice.” He closed with the words, “I am Your friend.” To his army during the Revolution, Washington acknowledged that they had been “zealously performing the duties of good Citizens and soldiers,” but warned them not to be “inattentive to the higher duties of Religion. To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian.”
Still, Washington was not the kind of person who saw Christianity—or even one type of Christianity—as the only permissible religion in the new United States. Several months after his return to Mount Vernon at the end of the Revolution, as he was making plans to attend to the plantation’s many needs following his eight-year absence, he learned that a shipload of German immigrants had just arrived in Baltimore. This news led him to contact a former army colleague there to see if he could hire or indenture both a carpenter and joiner to assist with improvements at Mount Vernon. In the letter, he stressed that the men did not have to be either German or Christian: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews, Christian of any Sect—or they may be Atheists.” He simply wanted good workers.
In the Hands of Providence
What were Washington’s actual religious beliefs? Foremost among them, and most basic, was a belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, or God. He typically referred to this being as “Providence,” something that has led some historians to question his Christian faith. His use of the term “Providence,” however, was standard among Christians of England and her colonies at the time. “Providence” was often used as a substitute for “God” during the 17th through 19th centuries, and according to the Oxford English Dictionary, also applied to the deity when “exercising prescient and beneficent power and direction.” Included in the providentialist theology brought to America with English colonists were the ideas that “all events in the world were controlled directly by God and expressed his omnipotent will,” and that “men and women should submit to divine providence.” Also central, according to historian Richard Godbeer, were the concepts that wondrous events were a sign of God’s approval or disapproval; that suffering was a judgment from God, to which the believer must respond with repentance; and that “God was inherently mysterious and his will utterly impenetrable.”
In Washington’s worldview, Providence was good, and it guided or directed events on Earth—in the lives of both individuals and nations. After a disastrous battle during the French and Indian War, he informed his favorite brother, John Augustine, “I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectations. I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me, and escaped unhurt.” Many years later, in the first year of the Revolution, he confided to a friend: “For more than two months past, I have scarcely immerged from one difficulty before I [have] been plunged into another. How it will end, God in his great goodness will direct.” Two years later, when things were going better, he wrote gleefully to a fellow general from Virginia, “The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.” He closed, teasing, “but it will be time enough for me to turn preacher, when my present appointment ceases; and therefore, I shall add no more to the Doctrine of Providence.”
Unwavering Faith
He also believed that Providence was wiser than any human and that it was up to each person to trust the final outcome of any situation to the divine. Writing to a friend about the rapid spread of democratic ideas in Europe, Washington noted that “the great ruler of events” was the only one who knew how the political situation there would resolve. People had to confide in the Deity’s “wisdom and goodness” and “safely trust the issue to him, without perplexing ourselves to seek for that, which is beyond human ken; only taking care to perform the parts assigned us, in a way that reason and our own consciences approve of.” Even when faced with serious illness and imminent death, Washington’s faith in Providence never wavered. During a life-threatening illness shortly after he became president, he assured the attending physician, Dr. Samuel Bard of New York: “I am not afraid to die and therefore can bear the worst …. Whether tonight or twenty years hence makes no difference. I know I am in the hands of a good Providence.” Washington faced several difficult medical conditions during his presidency. During one, he had a similar conversation with a former military aide, Colonel David Humphreys, expressing his great doubts about “whether ever I shall rise from this bed & God knows it is perfectly indifferent to me whether I do or not.” His longtime friend responded, “If, Sir, it is indifferent to you, it is far from being so to your friends and your country. For they believe it has still great need of your services.”
There was a direct relationship between human and godly actions, thought Washington. In trying to comfort a friend upon the death of his father, he reminded the younger man that it was an “inexhaustible subject of consolation, that there is a good Providence which will never fail to take care of his Children.” Christianity may be the only religion to turn the relationship between a father and his children into a metaphor for the relationship between the Deity and human beings, as seen in the words of Jesus in the New Testament. Washington also believed that the relationship between both individual people and nations depended on the behavior of humans. In orders to the American army in the Revolution, he reminded soldiers that God’s actions in their lives depended on their behavior. In one case, he excused most of his soldiers from hard duty on Sundays, so they could rest and attend “public worship.” He also told them how disappointed he was “that the foolish, and wicked practice, of profane cursing and swearing (a Vice heretofore little known in an American Army) is growing into fashion.” That cursing and swearing were a new vice to Americans is doubtful. Nevertheless, he hoped that “the officers will, by example, as well as influence, endeavour to check it, and that both they, and the men will reflect, that we can have little hopes of the blessings of Heaven on our Arms, if we insult it by our impiety, and folly.” Twenty years later, on the verge of retiring from the presidency, Washington similarly reminded his fellow citizens about their behavior toward other peoples and nations in the future, closing with the question, “Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue?”
“I now exist and appear in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectations”
As he lay dying from a virulent infection of the epiglottis, Washington could barely speak. His statements during this time were largely limited to last-minute instructions about his will and burial, as well as his thankfulness for those who were taking care of him. He may also have been thinking about his upcoming judgment before God.
Life of George Washington The Christian death, Junius Brutus Stearns; lithograph by Claude Régnier (Library of Congress)
Final Regrets
Did George Washington believe in a final judgment before God? In comments he made to an early biographer about slavery, he reflected, “The unfortunate condition of the persons, whose labour in part I employed, has been the only unavoidable subject of regret.” He expressed a wish that, if he made life “easy and comfortable in their circumstances” for the adults and laid “a foundation to prepare the rising generation for a destiny different from that in which they were born,” it would leave himself a sense of satisfaction and “could not I hoped be displeasing to the justice of the Creator.” That last phrase, perhaps, suggests regret and an uncertainty about the outcome of a coming judgment.
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Mary V. Thompson is the research historian at Mount Vernon and the author of three books: “In the Hands of a Good Providence”: Religion in the Life of George Washington; A Short Biography of Martha Washington; and most recently, “The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon.