I. George Washington:
A. Farewell Address:
“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.
Let it simply be asked -- Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”
B. Letter to Brigadier General Thomas Nelson after the Battle of Germantown 1777
“We must endeavor to deserve better of Providence, and, I am persuaded, [that] she will smile on us” (The Writings of George Washington. Ed. John C. Fitzpatrick. 39 vols. Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1931-44. 10:28).
C. August 1787, Letter to Marquis de Lafayette:
“Being no bigot myself …, I am disposed to indulge the professors of Christianity in the church that road to heaven which to them shall seem the most direct, plainest, easiest, and least liable to exception” (Washington 29:259).
D. Nelly Custis (granddaughter), Letter to Jared Sparks:
Washington “must have been a Christian,” but “On communion Sundays, he left the church with me after the blessing, and returned home, and we sent the carriage back for my grandmother” (Jared Sparks, ed. The Writings of George Washington; Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, and Other Papers, Official and Private, Selected and Published from the Original Manuscripts; with a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations. 12 vols. New York: Harper, 1847. 12:406-07)).
E. Episcopal Bishop William White:
“Truth requires me to say, that general Washington never received the communion,” though “Mrs. Washington,” was “an habitual communicant” (Sparks 12:406-07).
F. Dr. Abercrombie's Letter to a friend in 1831:
"With respect to the inquiry you make, I can only state the following facts:—that, as Pastor of the Episcopal Church, observing that, on Sacrament Sundays, General Washington, immediately after the desk and pulpit services, went out with the greater part of the congregation,—always leaving Mrs. Washington with the other communicants,—she invariably being one,—I considered it my duty, in a Sermon on Public Worship, to state the unhappy tendency of example, particularly of those in elevated stations, who uniformly turned their backs upon the celebration of the Lord's Supper. I acknowledge the remark was intended for the President; and as such he received it. A few days after, in conversation with, I believe, a Senator of the United States, he told me he had dined the day before with the President, who, in the course of conversation at the table, said that, on the preceding Sunday, he had received a very just reproof from the pulpit for always leaving the church before the administration of the Sacrament; that he honoured the preacher for his integrity and candour; that he had never sufficiently considered the influence of his example, and that he would not again give cause for the repetition of the reproof; and that, as he had never been a communicant, were he to become one then, it would be imputed to an ostentatious display of religious zeal, arising altogether from his elevated station. Accordingly, he never afterwards came on the morning of Sacrament Sunday.”
G. Dr. Wilson Sermon on the "Religion of the Presidents," Albany 'Daily Advertiser,' 1831:
"When Congress sat in Philadelphia, President Washington attended the Episcopal Church, The rector, Dr. Abercrombie, told me that on the days when the sacrament of the Lord's Supper was to he administered, Washington's custom was to arise just before the ceremony commenced, and walk out of the church. This became a subject of remark in the congregation, as setting a bad example. At length the Doctor undertook to speak of it, with a direct allusion to the President. Washington was heard afterwards to remark that this was the first time a clergyman had thus preached to him, and he should henceforth neither trouble the Doctor or his congregation on such occasions; and ever after that, upon communion days, 'he absented himself altogether from church.'"
H. Mr. Robert Dale Owen Letter November 13, 1831, Published in New York:
I then read to him [Dr. Wilson] from a copy of the 'Daily Advertiser' the paragraph which regards Washington, beginning, 'Washington was a man" etc., and ending 'absented himself altogether from church.' 'I endorse,' said Dr. Wilson with emphasis, 'every word of that. Nay, I do not wish to conceal from you any part of the truth, even what I have not given to the public. Dr . Abercrombie said more than I have repeated. At the close of our conversation on the subject his emphatic expression was -- for I well remember the very words -- "Sir, Washington was a Deist."
II. Ben Franklin:
A. Constitutional Convention (1787):
“How has it happened…that we have…not once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? … The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see…—that God governs in the affairs of men…. I…beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that…clergy…be requested to officiate in that service” (Jonathan Elliot, ed. Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution in the Convention Held at Philadelphia in 1787; With a Diary of the Debates of the Congress of the Confederation as Reported by James Madison, A Member and Deputy from Virginia. 5 vols. 5:253-54).
When Franklin’s plea was tabled he wrote on his proposal: “The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.” (Max Farrand, ed. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. 4 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1911. 1:452, n. 15).
B. To Ezra Stiles (1790).
Here is my creed. I believe in One God, the Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we can render Him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound religion (emphasis added).
“As to Jesus of Nazareth I have…doubts as to his divinity; though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it is needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble” (Complete Works 10:194).
C. Autobiography:
George Whitefield “us’d to indeed sometimes pray for my Conversion,” the preacher “never had the satisfaction of believing that his Prayers were heard” (109).
III. John Adams
A. Letter to Thomas Jefferson:
It was “awful blasphemy” to believe that the “great principle which has produced this boundless Universe…came down to this little Ball to be spit-upon by Jews” (The Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete
Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams. Lester J. Cappon, ed. 2 vols. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1959. 2:607).
B. Treaty of Tripoli Article 11, signed by President Adams and unanimously approved by Congress:
“As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”
IV. Thomas Jefferson:
The virgin birth was comparable to “the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter,” (Adams and Jefferson 2:594).
The Trinity was a “deliria of crazy imaginations,” (The Works of Thomas Jefferson. Ed. Paul Leicester Ford. 12 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-05. 12:242).
There was “not a young man now living in the United States who will not die an Unitarian” (Adams and Jefferson 2:368).
“If the sublime doctrines of philanthropism and deism taught by Jesus of Nazareth in which we all agree, constitute true religion, then, without it, this would be as you say, something not fit to be named, even indeed a Hell” (Julian P. Boyd, ed. The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Princeton, 1950, II, 545-47, cited in Moynahan, The Faith, 592).
V. Patrick Henry and James Madison:
Henry proposed legislation in Virginia “that the Christian Religion shall in all times coming be deemed and held to be the established Religion of this Commonwealth.” James Madison successfully opposed Henry, arguing that any attempt to establish Christianity would overturn Roger William’s tradition of “offering an Asylum to the persecuted and oppressed of every Nation and Religion” (cited in Moynahan, The Faith, 591-92).
