George Washington Letter to Synagogue

Much has been written about the religious persuasions of the Founding Fathers, particularly their views on other religions.  While many fled their native lands to come to the colonies to freely practice their religions, there was much persecution and discrimination among religions. 

Yesterday was the birthday of one of those Founding Fathers, George Washington, Father of our Country.  Steven Waldman writes in Founding Faith – Providence, Politics and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America (Random House 2008) that Washington’s leadership in religious tolerance preceded his role as first president.  As commander of the Continental army, Washington prohibited demonstrations against troops on account of their religion.  His reason was simple:  The army needed to be a cohesive unit to stand up to the trained troops of Great Britain.  It could not afford disruptions due to religious conflict. 

Washington was the president of the Constitutional Convention, where issues of religious freedom were front and center.  In 1790, a year before the Bill of Rights, including the Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment, was enacted, Washington wrote to the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, “Happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.”  Washington closed with an invocation: “May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”[1]

Waldman writes in Founding Faith, “At one point, [Washington] surveyed all the possible causes of America’s greatness and highlighted just two.  The first was the “cheapness of land,” which allowed for much of the population to become property owners.  The second was “civil and religious” liberty, which “stands perhaps unrivaled by any civilized nation of earth.”  Long before Emma Lazarus welcomed the tired and poor, Washington declared that the “bosom of America [was] open to receive, the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions, whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.”[2]

Oh, that our country would live up to the exhortations of its first president!  (It never fully has, but we should aspire to be better.) 

---

[1] http://www.realcourage.org/2010/07/george-washington/

[2] Page 63.