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Paul Johnson, the celebrated historian, has written at
least nine other significant historical books. According to the author, George Washington is the
best-documented figure in the entire eighteenth century. I simply wanted to document Paul Johnson’s
understanding of George Washington’s position on the First Amendment.
[Regarding the bill of rights] (The full text below is a
direct quote.)
Its
most important element concerns religion.
As Washington wished, religion figures only briefly in the
Constitution itself. But the First
Amendment, again with his sanction, specifically rejects a national church
and forbids Congress to make ‘any law respecting an establishment of religion
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’
This prohibition has been widely misunderstood in our own times and
interpreted as a constitutional veto over anything religious taking place
with federal approval or on federal property. In fact it was nothing of the sort. Such an interpretation would have angered Washington, who saw
the provision as aimed at any attempt to erect a national church of any
denomination. He detested the feeble
and ambiguous from of Protestantism represented by the Church of England, and
the bigoted versions of New England.
He was by instinct a Deist rather than a Christian. But he would have been incensed to have
been called a non-Christian, let alone an anti-Christian. All his codes of morals, order, and
propriety were rooted in Christianity, which he saw as the greatest
civilizing force the world had ever known.
He was a man of exceptional tolerance, and wrote of immigrants, whom
he did not much esteem as a rule: ‘If they are good workmen, they may be of
Asia, Africa or Europe. They may be
Mohamedans, Jews or Christians of any sect, or they may be atheists.’ Buts uch new arrivals had to recognize
that they were joining a community under God—or Providence or ‘the Great
Ruler of Events,’ to use favorite expressions of his—and the paramount mode
of worship of this God was Christian.
The notion that the First amendment would be twisted into an
instrument to prohibit the traditional practices of Christianity would have
horrified him. He served for many
years as a vestryman of his local Anglican-style church because he believed
this to be a pointed guesture of solidarity with an institution he regarded
as underpinning a civilized society.
An America without religion as the strongest voluntary source of
morality was to him an impossibility.
It
is significant that the day after the House of Representatives passed the
First Amendment, on September 25, 1789, it also passed, by a two-to-one
majority, a resolution calling for a day of national prayer and thanksgiving,
and asked Washington to appoint the day.
The Resolution reads: ‘We acknowledge with grateful hearts the many
signal favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity
peacefully to establish a constitutional government for their safety and
happiness.’ Appointing the national
holiday of Thanksgiving, Washington replied, in words equally significant:
‘It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God,
to obey His Will, to be grateful for His mercy, to implore His protection and
favour... That great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all
the good that was, that is, or that ever will be, that we may then unite in
rendering unto Him an sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and
protection of the people.’ (pp. 102-104)
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