The response that proceeded from the NPS guide in answering my question was often the typical rhetoric and sound bites that I’ve heard through the years from any uninformed skeptical antagonist.
Let me give you five examples of what the NPS guide said (from notes I was taking as he spoke and that I verified from witnesses afterward). I will later reiterate each and explain from history why they are incorrect.
(1) “George Washington didn’t even attend church!”
(2) While the NPS guide physically hunched over, mimicked and mocked one carrying and swinging an oversized bible in his hand, he said to the crowd: “Even if I said the founders were Christians, how could we really know? Just because people carry a big ol’ Bible in their hand, they can still be atheists!”
(3) “Most of these men owned slaves. How could good Christians do that?”
(4) “We know that Benjamin Franklin was a deist.”
(5) “We don’t really know for sure about their religion. It’s open for interpretation. You’ll have to do your own study on that.”
It was bad enough he retorted with only, and I mean only, negative comments on the founders’ religious views and practice, but that they were also jaded lies or half-truths used to attack and undermine their faiths. In the very house in which they adopted a Creator-filled Declaration of Independence, not one positive comment was made about any one of the founders’ Christian faiths.
The audience reaction was instantaneous shock--many were upset and even gasped that he was speaking so derogatorily about these founders and the/their Christian faith. You could see it on everyone’s faces. Dr. Jim Garlow was so disgusted by the presentation that he immediately defended the founders’ faiths by starting with the words, “Now, wait just a minute, that book on the table there in the portrait is a bible and most of these men were devout sincere Christians. We have proof of that!” (But rather than publicly rebuke or disrespect him, as the NPS did to our founders and many of our own faiths, Garlow and me--as well as others--spoke to the guide in private after, to no avail I might add.)
Because of the apparent awkwardness this NPS guide created and felt, maybe because he was not expecting that the audience would react negatively to what he said, he quickly quipped to us all that “we need to move to the next room”—and off we jetted through the doors. People instantly began to chatter in disgust about his disdain and religious antagonism toward the founders. I kept wondering what other religious rubbish about our founders in countless presentations has come from this and other NPS guides to even hundreds of thousands of school children and people from other countries, who come to this historic site every year to learn the “accurate” history of our republic.
Personally, I caught up with the NPS guide and privately talked to him for a little bit, and he was obviously nervous about the few of us that respectfully took question with what he shared. I asked him if the NPS guides were trained on the founders, he emphatically said, “Yes.” I replied in surprise, “On their religious beliefs and practices?” He retorted while looking away, “We’re trained on the founders.” I couldn’t help but think, “I’d love to see the religious training materials!” (Something I’m formally asking even now if you could and would please send a copy to me--please).
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Inside Independence Hall |
Like I said, I don’t want to be a critic. I want to be a helper. As a public figure, I’ve been at the end of criticism and don’t believe it should ever stop there. And though I assume (and hope) that you have many more competent historians on the premises than even I, I would like to save them some time by presenting, for example, what is said at other historic sites about these same founders—for example from a video on the religious devotion of George Washington that plays repeatedly in a loop for visitors all day, every day, at Mt. Vernon, George Washington’s estate. I will do so by examining the five statements above that the NPS guide made while on our tour, and why they don’t accurately reflect the truth or the beliefs of our founders. I certainly don’t intend to school you or others there, who likely even know more about America’s religious history than I present below. I truly only want to help you and those who train the NPS guides at the Independence Hall to expand, revise or fine tune their training materials, if needed, so that children and adults at the historic park get an accurate picture of our founders—as I know you and others want too. In fact, if it helps, please feel free to use this treatise in part or entirety. I don’t consider myself the pinnacle of any religious history teaching, but this below information is available from original documents and scholarly resources even on such government websites as the Library of Congress.
Examining the five key statements made by the NPS guide at Independence Hall
(1) “George Washington didn’t even attend church!”
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George Washington statue in front of Independence Hall,where he presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787. |
Nothing could be further from the truth. Washington attended Christ Church (the first Episcopal Church) just a few blocks away from Independence Hall with Betsy Ross, John Adams (our 2nd president), Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Robert Morris and many other signers of our founding documents.[3] He also had reserved pews at two churches in Virginia, at Pohick Church near Mount Vernon and one at Christ Church in Alexandria. [4]
Washington was a very spiritual man and his various acts and declarations throughout his life proclaim that. The NPS guide could have cited any of a number of examples in Washington’s life and even presidency.
For example, after pledging the presidential oath of office on April 30, 1789, Washington uttered the additional words, “So help me God.” (A declaration most U.S. presidents have subsequently repeated). Washington then kissed the bible afterwards and proclaimed, “we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the external rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained...." [5]
Just after being sworn in on the Bible as America’s first U.S. President, Washington and other leaders in our republic participated in a two-hour worship service at St. Paul’s Chapel (Anglican). While New York served as the capital for the new nation, President Washington weekly attended St. Paul’s for two years.
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St. Paul’s Chapel (New York) |
In his First Inaugural Address, Washington gave great praise to God and declared his and the republic’s dependence upon Him for all to hear: “Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station; it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States, a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes: and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success, the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own; nor those of my fellow-citizens at large, less than either. No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”[6]
President Washington signed a Thanksgiving Proclamation on October 3, 1789, which set aside Thursday, November 26 as a day “to be devoted…to the service of that great and glorious Being.”
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George Washington’s pew at St. Paul’s Chapel |
On May 12, 1779, Washington once addressed some Delaware chiefs among the Lenape Indians,[7] who desired to train their young people in American schools, saying, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.”
As General of the Continental armies, Washington supported religious freedom and practice, but he did insist at times that Sunday worship ceremonies be observed by his troops.
Though debated among scholars, as a minister myself, I find it compelling that the diary of Rev. Nathaniel Randolph Snowden (a story he said he heard from Isaac Potts, who was 26 years old in 1777) documented how Washington was seen praying in Valley Forge: “In that woods pointing to a close in view, I heard a plaintive sound as, of a man at prayer,. I tied my horse to a sapling and went quietly into the woods and to my astonishment I saw the great George Washington on his knees alone, with his sword on one side and his cocked hat on the other. He was at Prayer to the God of the Armies, beseeching to interpose with his Divine aid, as it was ye Crisis, and the cause of the country, of humanity and of the world.”[8] Based upon all Washington said about God, how could we not believe he was daily entreating the Creator at such a critical time in the life of the republic?
