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vincentML -> RE: Thanksgiving to God: An Act Of Congress and the President (11/28/2009 3:04:26 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Musicmystery
Church of England / Episcopal
The Wiki article contains some unverified controversy of interest. I offer it with no conviction of my own but just as a matter of curiosity. Make of it what you will:
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"Washington regularly attended Sunday services and purchased a family pew at several churches. Rev. Lee Massey, his pastor in Mt Vernon, wrote "I never knew so constant an attendant in church as Washington."[8]
Whether Washington partook of communion is a question of tremendous controversy. In 1833, Nelly Custis-Lewis, Washington's adopted daughter, wrote about her mother, Eleanor Calvert-Lewis, who lived at Mount Vernon for two years: "I have heard her say that General Washington always received the sacrament with my grandmother before the revolution."[9]
Major William Popham, one of General Washington's aides during the Revolution wrote, "the President [Washington] had more than once—I believe I say often—attended the sacramental table, at which I had the privilege and happiness to kneel with him."[10]
Another contemporary, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton (the wife of Alexander Hamilton), is reported by her great-grandson to have said the following to him: "If anyone ever tells you that George Washington was not a communicant in the Church, you say that your great-grandmother told you to say that she 'had knelt at this chancel rail at his side and received with him the Holy Communion.'"[11]
Besides a few other contemporary accounts like those above, the record of his taking communion contradicts such claims.[12] Among the sources, ministers at four of the churches Washington often attended wrote that he never took communion. Rev. Dr. James Abercrombie, rector of St. Peter's Episcopal Church, in Philadelphia, related a story in which Washington said he was never a communicant.[13] Washington regularly left services before communion, along with the other non-communicants. When Abercrombie mentioned in a weekly sermon that those in elevated stations set an unhappy example by leaving at communion, Washington completely stopped attending on communion Sundays[14][15] (communion was not celebrated every week in the Episcopal Church at that time). Long after Washington died, when asked about Washington's beliefs, Abercrombie replied: "Sir, Washington was a Deist!"[16]
Washington took his first presidential oath on the King James Version of the Bible. There is no known record of a Bible being used at his second inauguration.
<SNIP>
His adopted daughter, Nelly Custis-Lewis, in response to a request from Jared Sparks in 1833 for information on Washington's religions views, wrote, "He attended the church at Alexandria when the weather and roads permitted a ride of ten miles (a one-way journey of 2-3 hours by horse or carriage). In New York and Philadelphia he never omitted attendance at church in the morning, unless detained by indisposition [sickness]." She continues by saying "No one in church attended to the services with more reverential respect." She adds: "I should have thought it the greatest heresy to doubt his firm belief in Christianity. His life, his writings, prove that he was a Christian. He was not one of those who act or pray, that they may be seen of men."[9]
On February 1, 1800, a few weeks after Washington's death, Thomas Jefferson made the following entry in his journal, regarding an incident on the occasion of Washington's departure from office:[19][20]
"Dr. Rush tells me that he had it from Asa Green that when the clergy addressed Genl. Washington on his departure from the govmt, it was observed in their consultation that he had never on any occasion said a word to the public which showed a belief in the Xn religion and they thot they should so pen their address as to force him at length to declare publicly whether he was a Christian or not. They did so. However he observed the old fox was too cunning for them. He answered every article of their address particularly except that, which he passed over without notice. Rush observes he never did say a word on the subject in any of his public papers except in his valedictory letter to the Governors of the states when he resigned his commission in the army, wherein he speaks of the benign influence of the Christian religion.
"I know that Gouverneur Morris, who pretended to be in his secrets & believed himself to be so, has often told me that Genl. Washington believed no more of that system than he himself did."
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Washington was rather enigmatic wasn't he? I always found him as the most distant of the Founders to understand.
vincent
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