Was George Washington Religious? 

I wonder how ground news would work on biblical source criticism.

This is so freakin’ perfect. The first sponsor of ANY video I will actually buy.

@@MusicalRaichu Source criticism is pretty neat. Q is most likely the man Jesus Himself. And J and E are likely comprised into the book of Genesis, in 1300bc. Which, actually, using that date, you can track the whole Biblical Timeline through history, and even date the flood. There's so many historical artefacts that prove the Bible, it's undoubtedly being written at the time periods it describes. Which is all the more reason to believe in it. And the Gospels are pretty much Eye Witness accounts. Papias, through the testimony of St. John, tells who wrote two of them, and Luke would accompany Paul, and have met eye witnesses. Paul actually met with the disciples eight years after Jesus' death. And Luke travelled with Paul, so it's clear that they had access to firsthand sources and witnesses. John is actually written by John, too. John dictated it to Papias.

You never mentioned in the video he was a freemason. If you knew anything of freemasonic beliefs then the distancing himself from christian beliefs makes sense and believing in an impersonal distant creator.

The Ground News recommendation was one of the extremely few on RU-vid that I've found useful. UPDATE: My "free subscription" hit its limit in just a few minutes. I know they want paid subscriptions, but that didn't make a good impression on me.

@@steverogers5730 sure, and as the first elected leader of the first major democracy in thousands of years Washington knew he was setting many examples and precedents. A self imposed term limit, choosing to be called "Mr president" instead of one of the grandiose other titles people proposed, etc. Its not unreasonable to suggest, though i have about as much evidence for my reasoning as most other people seem to, that he saw a responsibility as the first leader of possibly the first secular government in history with no imposed religion and sought to set a precedent by not publicly supporting a personal religion even indirectly

He simply may have been aware of religious wars raging across Europe a few generations earlier and wanted to avoid that in America

It sounds like he was private about his religion long before the first amendment was written. If he started avoiding communion after the Revolutionary War, that is almost 10 years before the Bill of Rights existed. If it's true that he changed from before the war, I think it could be that he saw the church he was going to as linked to Britain and after gaining independence from the country, he also wanted to practice independence from the church. Not letting anyone know your beliefs, so they can't tie you to an institution and not following its rules would give that kind of freedom.

@@jasons5916 Obviously Washington influenced the Bill of Rights. His values would certainly play into their creation, so of course he would have been practicing his beliefs prior to their creation.

No

Like damm, guess the Crusaders were debating Aristotle philosophy when they tried to take Jerusalem.

That statement itself is a kind of usable history for Quakers. How do you circle the square of venerating a murderer (as pacifist Quakers might call a soldier)? By pointing out that said murderer was very pious, of course. Thirty years later, now Quakers can also participate in Washington veneration and they can do so guilt-free. A cynical take? Sure. But we should never underestimate the power of both wanting to fit in with the crowd/society and cognitive dissonance.

@@nuke___8876 the fact that a person is a soldier doesn’t undo the fact they’re killing a person? whether a person or is legally sanctioned in the action or not, the end result is the same

​@@DontKnow-hr5my Kurt Vonnegut, a veteran of WWII, responded to "there are no atheists in the trenches" with "There’s somebody who's never been in the trenches."

@@nuke___8876 I don't think it's a cynical view. It's crucial that people realize that while politicians constantly use history conscious of the fact, most people don't. As you pointed out, they're just trying to figure a way out of the cognitive dissonance.

He didn’t speak about it publicly because he was an Episcopalian . Liturgical churches are much more reserved in expressing theology than other denominations .

​@@karlstrauss2330 But that is not what the video is analyzing. Yes, he was an Episcopalian, but did he subscribe to Christian beliefs? I know lots of people that simply go through the motions, often to satisfy a loved one or to maintain a reputation in their community.

@@PeacefulPariah yes he did. “Almighty and eternal Lord God, the great creator of heaven & earth, and the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; look down from heaven, in pity and compassion upon me thy servant, who humbly prostrate myself before thee… sensible of thy mercy and my own misery; there is an infinite distance between thy glorious majesty and me… I humbly beseech thee to be merciful to me in the free pardon of my sins, for the sake of thy dear Son, my only saviour, J. C., who came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance… Help all in affliction or adversity-give them patience and a sanctified use of their affliction, and in thy good time deliverance from them; forgive my enemies, take me unto thy protection this day, keep me in perfect peace, which I ask in the name & for the sake of Jesus. Amen." - George Washington, Wednesday Morning Prayer recorded in the Prayer Journal, dated April 21-23, 1752;

​@Karl Strauss That's over 20 years before the revolution. Even 10 years ago I was a very devout Catholic. Now I'm a devout atheist. People can learn and change their beliefs with new information.

@@brutusthebear9050 "The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country." General George Washington, General Order, July 9, 1776 "Perhaps, Sir, No occasion may offer more suitable than the present, to express my humble thanks to God, and my grateful acknowledgments to my Country, for the great and uniform support I have received in every vicissitude of Fortune, and for the many distinguished honors which Congress have been pleased to confer upon me in the course of the War." George Washington, Address to Congress, Princeton, August 26, 1783

Reminds me of the old term "Yellow Journalism" and our involvement in the 11 Year War, or at least the last 12th year of it....

The nature of storytelling doesn't consider too many chronological facts, just an overall mythology to convey some actual event that may have been much more mundane in real life.

Yeah, it's not like anyone was going to (or was even able) to fact check it at the time. It was just a story, and like many stories it was more useful when truth-adjacent.

Who needs fact-checking when it would ruin the narrative?

This is pretty common in a lot of weird religious stuff. People tend to just look past it because the story makes em feel good.

Almost as if he had an agenda that never involved the truth

Benjamin, Washington both stay level /G\

I second a video on Jefferson as he seemed to be pretty sympathetic towards Unitarianism (John Adams was part of that group) and at that time Unitarians were considered to be barely Christian because of their rejection of the Trinity and their very rationalist theology and his version of the Gospels pretty much depicts a fully human Jesus without miracles, in general most of the Founders come across to me as theologically liberal Christians (for their time at least) or just not very devout about it in general. From what I've read Franklin might have been the closest to being truly a Deist but that might be debatable as well.

@@monus782 Unitarians are still not considered Christian because they aren’t

No Christian would dare participate in a revolution. The Founding Fathers were devil worshipping Freemasons.

Tbf, deism in this context is more like modern agnostics who were raised Christian

I've heard the strangest takes on Masonry. It's kind of annoying to constantly have to explain to people we aren't Satanists. We're not really anything anymore which is half the reason no one wants to get involved except to get away from their wives for a while

Aw man I just finished the video and he didn't even mention Washington was a Mason. I really don't get it. I think it's because academic channels like these use classical academic sources which had a tradition of explicitly not talking about Masonry. That tradition of not talking about it needs to change to combat the intense amounts of misinfo out there which leads to dangerous conspiracy-minded indoctrination. Channels like this would do a great service to speak of Masonry as it actually is in the real world, don't ignore it.

not surprising given they the freemazons are super secretive and shaddy

​@@wildmen5025 Yep. They're just people and some of the most grounded I've ever met. Many of my Mason friends are university teachers or academics themselves (like one who has made it his life mission to study Sanskrit language and is at the forefront of translations of ancient Sanskrit texts). Exceptions like P2 in Italy give the impression all Lodges are like that. They're not. It's super vanilla compared to what I was in which was the OTO but I left that and am now in the process of entering Blue Lodge Masonry since everything I loved about the OTO was Masonic whereas what I didn't was all the Crowley stuff

@@elessal They're a society with secrets not a hidden underground thing (there's signs on towns with directions to the Lodge, hardly a hidden cult :p). Many of the "secrets" are in the times of the internet not very secretive you can go visit and speak to them or check out documentaries by BBC and others who've been given tours of the Lodge and explained what it's all about. There are also a lot of academic sources out there which are easy to find

I think you are referring to this passage from Wilde's essay, "The Decay of Lying": "The crude commercialism of America, its materialising spirit, its indifference to the poetical side of things, and its lack of imagination and of high unattainable ideals, are entirely due to that country having adopted for its national hero a man, who, according to his own confession, was incapable of telling a lie, and it is not too much to say that the story of George Washington and the cherry-tree has done more harm, and in a shorter space of time, than any other moral tale in the whole of literature."

@@markkozlowski3674 & as the passage continues... CYRIL: My dear boy ! VIVIAN: I assure you it is the case, and the amusing part of the whole thing is that the story of the cherry-tree is an absolute myth.

because the painter is a mormon.

It's all over the Evangelical world too - saw it over and over again in my 26 years in that bubble - because it justifies their burning desire to ram their religion down everyone else's throats.

probably not surprised by a two party system, and definitely not surprised by religion in politics. that being said, no slaves? that'll be a shock

It's hard to say. They would almost definately be period appropriate levels of sexist, homophobic, racist, etc. But on the other hand they wouldn't approve of Republican fascism, voter suppression, the Jan 6th Insurrection, Donald Trump, the general incivility of the Conservatives, etc.

IDK. How would they react to flight? Or computers? Or hot water from a tap?

Hamilton would be aroused

@@jacobortega3424 could you elaborate on what you mean by “religion in politics?”

As much as I like to talk about religion whenever the subject comes up I usually don’t bring it up myself and try to be as private as possible as well because I know how polarizing the subject can be (thus the famous phrase about how you should never bring it up in polite conversation alongside politics) and because many of my very personal beliefs are pretty unorthodox in nature so depending on whom I’m talking to I don’t want either start a debate or have to spend time explaining those beliefs to people so I wonder if Washington was in a similar situation (my impression for most of the Founders is that most of them were either theologically liberal Christians, for their time at least, or just not that devout about it).

@@monus782 Also he was very private with everything personal. To the point that Marth burned all their personal letters under his wishes. I gather that only one man actually knew about his religion in detail: Charles Lee. And he never wrote anything on the motion. So anyone saying one way or the other is just trying to add him to their causes.

What a well-written comment. A pleasure to read.

You don't have to be a Christian to believe in God.

@@todradmaker4297 Your stance is that Mary, the Virgin Mother of Jesus, is not Christian iconography? Slap yourself.

@@todradmaker4297Then why did he attend an Episcopalian church, read the Bible daily, pray consistently, serve as a vestryman in his church, and reference God and scripture constantly in his letters and speeches?

Nobody other than Catholics have pictures of Mary in either their houses or churches. Catholicism was a minority religion mostly in Maryland until later 19th Century migrations. More Huegonauts than Catholics in early colonial America and some French speaking congregations in SC survived into the early 20th Century. Valdez in North Carolina was settled by people who'd been non-Catholics for a few centuries at that point. The colonies and later states collected a fairly eclectic group of fringe religion including Swedenborgians, and I've even met Bahai followers in Philadelphia.

@@RebeccaOre G.W. actually donated toward the construction of a Catholic church in Baltimore and one of his friends was an archbishop.

🎯

Well said I was going to ask the same question of why he didn't bring up Washington's involvement in the Masonic Lodge even tho there is evidence he was initiated but didn't attended many of the meetings of his Lodge.He also he left out in this video a supposed death bed conversion to Catholicism by Washington as well....I wonder why?🤔

YES YES YES YES YES. Very incomplete presentation devoid of any mention of Washington’s freemasonry. Perhaps he was afraid that addressing it would earn him a RU-vid strike.

@@bongodrummond4638 I don't think he would get a strike but who knows in this day and age

I was thinking the same thing. It’s very strange that he didn’t talk about such a big aspect of Washington’s life.

My Grandfather's cousin was a high-ranked mason who was also a bit cagey about his faith. He used unusual words when describing God. I can't remember the exact words, but it wasn't English because we aren't English first language speakers.

That's probably partly because Arnold Friberg was a prominent Mormon artist who lived in Utah and created many paintings commissioned by the LDS church

@@ninjoshday good

​@@crazysarge9765 w2ww❤2😂❤2q11w1😂w1❤😊😊

Welcome to Utah.

Utah is a joke when it comes to religion and historical accuracy

Good historians will recognize the limitations of their own interpretations and theses. I don’t even consider the best of my own writings to be beyond certainty.

Because it is exactly that. It allows you to create any narrative you want from any peice of history

@@jonnyd9351 Sure, you can conceivably argue any thesis you want…but that doesn’t mean you’ve made a good thesis

History (though distorted) in some way is truth or an attempt at truth. Theology is just pure made up fuckery.

Thanks for the kind words! I'm planning a mini-series that will include Jefferson, Franklin, and a few others.

@@ReligionForBreakfast it would be interesting for you to throw in John Jay. They weren’t all deists. Add an orthodox Christian for good measure. 🙂 I’ll be looking forward to the series.

@@ReligionForBreakfast When are you gonna cover the Inca?

@@ReligionForBreakfast Looking forward to that since it's a contentious issue. It's also really cool that Jefferson removed the supernatural parts of the bible.

His experience with the British, where he was forced to swear that he wasn’t a Catholic? I believe, was very informative of his development of religious tolerance

Very insightful possibility. You should suggest it as a topic to Dr. Kat.

What you mentioned heavily reminded me of when nearly 200 years later John F Kennedy had to downplay his Catholicism when running for president because of fears of him being loyal to the pope, a foreign head of state, and I wonder if Washington had been more public about his faith he might have been seen as somehow still loyal to the Crown or favoring one church over the others and maybe that’s exactly what he was trying to prevent in the first place. As others have mentioned maybe he really did believe in the importance of the Separation of Church and State and he was trying to set an example through his own conduct.

The research has been done on this and basically what you write is all we have. It's a plausible explanation. I've noted before that it's ironic that Anglicans like Washington (and many others) would lead the revolution. Because technically, to be a member of that church in good standing, you take oaths of obedience to the crown. Which is what GW did on more than one occasion.

Good honest historian work here. “We don’t know” or “we can’t be sure” may not be as provocative but in so much of history it is as much as we can argue.

The entire point of the Christian religion is forgiveness for sins...

@@dawnfire82 Calvinists believe in predestination. Look it up before you attempt to dispute another person’s true story as an archetype to explain Washington’s behavior surrounding the Eucharist.

​@@jmelande4937 Exactly in what way is he wrong?

That's so sad! And so not what many branches of Christianity teach, which makes it extra sad.

Not really, some of Protestantantism's great theologians during this time came out of Oxford, Princeton ect. ect.

This raises a good question. Not that I think there is an answer "What were Washington's views of the 2nd Great Awakening?" It was in 1790.

So seamless I thought it was a 15 minute ad for a second

I HATE ADS! Except, this one was so good and worthwhile, Im actually gonna check it out!!!!

Many of those pseudonyms are very prominent in Masonry, of which he was a member. Added to his stated wish that the republic be open to Jews, Christians, Muslims, Etc. Makes for a fairly solid argument that he was a Deist of the masonic variety. Where he believed that the other religions of the world all worshiped the same god. A view that would not have likely gone over well with the general public.

As a Freemason I can say you have to affirm a belief in God to join; now you do not have to be a Christian but you must believe.

@@stormythelowcountrykitty7147 yup i read it on their website

@@stormythelowcountrykitty7147 or more accurately. Belief in a supreme being. Im pretty certain we accept polytheists too.

Yes I was heart broken also 😢

​@@rewt127 we do 😊

He could have even witnessed cannibalism, who knows

Never heard that one before. Now, I'm not a huge founding fathers guy, but... I mean, seriously, doesn't that neuter the point of the cherry tree myth? That even as a child, he was brave / noble / righteous / etc enough to fully admit to his wrongdoing?

Washington was a slave holder himself.

Now do Muslims. 🙄

@@dawnfire82 Nobody said anything about Muslims. This video is about Washington, hence the comment is talking about his mother. Jesus Christ.

@@dawnfire82 Adams told Muslims in North Africa that the US was not a Christian nation. The Puritans had show the horror of theocracies, and were not so far in the past then than they are now.

​@@Christopher-ii6tr TIL Satan is pro-democracy

but Freemasons deny Providence

"Many of the people who immigrated to America were fleeing religious persecution." That's not quite true. Many people who immigrated to America did so to impose religious persecution on others and themselves. The whole "fleeing" thing is just "useful history" so they don't seem like the bad guys.

I wish you all the best in the continuation of your oldest and most influential of faiths 🙏

Do you have a Roman soldier uniform? That religion was REALLY popular with the Roman Army. And it just feels right.

Not that old chestnut

​@Ed Carson You can have faith in the beyond without adhering dogmatically to any one doctrine. What's so eye-rolling about that?

@@theophrastusbombastus1359 well said

Interesting. I wonder what they feel about deists? I don't see a functional difference between being a deist and being agnostic, the only difference being one of personal belief. Both people would agree that they have no evidence for or against the existence of a higher power. If a deist can be a mason, it seems weird to exclude agnostics. My guess is its more of a tradition than anything else? There were very few agnostics or atheists back then and it seems people were culturally religious but it had less of an effect on their actions maybe?

@@kj_H65f well, the masonic lodge is a copy of solomons temple. Solomon built his temple using captured demons and then later was tricked most likely by a female entity that he could either not or didnt capture but did appear to him and warn him, she got him to sacrafice some locusts to moloch or bahl or both im not super sure but that is when he lost Gods favor and was left to himself. All of this leads me to think they dont discriminate because they agree there are higher powers and right and wrong are simply a matter of subjectivity. Again i dont know a whole bunch but i was privvy to a little more than most lol.

@@kj_H65f Personal belief is a pretty big difference, though. I don't know where the masons stood, but a belief in a higher power is so entwined with morality for some (e.g. the assertion that atheists are untrusthworthy or amoral simply because their morality isn't based on godliness) that a person's beliefs are just as important as they way they actually behave.

@@kj_H65f The sole religious requirements of (the most prominent form of) Freemasonry are that a Mason-to-be must believe in a Supreme Being of some sort and a Volume of Sacred Law (VSL), i.e. some sort of holy or philosophical text that they use to order their lives. Jews, Christians, and Muslims say "I believe in God. He created the world and everything in it; He intervenes in the world and provides rewards and punishments for us in this life and the next because He loves us". Their VSLs are, respectively, The Tanakh (which Christians call The Old Testament), The Bible (The Tanakh plus The New Testament), and The Qur'an. Hindus say roughly the same things, but pluralize "God" and the following pronouns and generally believe in a cycle of reincarnation rather than any permanent afterlife. There are a number of important Hindu scriptures, but most likely their chosen VSL is the Bhagvad Gita. Deists say "I believe in God/the Gods. He/She/It/They created the world and everything in it, but they don't take an active interest in Creation or in Us anymore. There may or may not be an afterlife where we may or may not be punished, but any apparent relationship between our living moral conduct and our success or failure here and now, in the world of the living, is pure coincidence." Deists don't typically believe in Divine Revelation, as a consequence of the "God does not intervene" principle, so they don't consider any text "holy" per se, but they may take any or a number of these or other religious texts, depending on their personal interests and/or the culture they grew up in, as containing a philosophy worthy to live by, befitting the high wonder and beauty and order of Creation, despite being mere works of men. These and, all theists, pass Masonry's religious test because they can say the first sentence truthfully and in good conscience, and they have their books. Everything in between and all the even finer details not mentioned are irrelevant to Freemasonry. An agnostic says "I can't say for certain that any higher power exists". They may _possibly_ hold a VSL level of attachment to a proper religious or philosophical text, but statistically most of them probably don't consciously think about religion or philosophy much at all, almost certainly not to the point of holding any work to be their "Sacred _Law"._ Deists can pass the religious test. Agnostics fail the first (and arguably more important) question and very likely fail the second. Ergo, deists can be Masons and Agnostics cannot (again, in the oldest and most prominent form of Freemasonry).

There is no Masonic God however he could have simply understand the potential issues of taking side with denominations maybe 🤔

He would have had to if he was a Mason. Emphasis is placed on being true to one's faith in the fraternity

@@wildmen5025 Yeah but that's in the fraternity, praying publicly wouldn't be true to the idea.

@@ohajohaha he prayed during the battle of new York i believe

Pretty hard to stop people from praying. All you need is a few seconds of silence.

The Masons believe that being part of the church of one's neighbors had value, bu to also keep in mind that a Muslim Mason was a fellow Mason.

When I was in college I was a very conservative, even fundamentalist, type of Catholic who had very questionable views about history and politics (one of those views being that democracy itself was a mistake and absolute theocratic monarchies like 17th century Spain were the best form of government) and I think one of the things that broke me out of that mindset is taking a class about Ancient Greece that heavily taught historiography and to this day I’m really thankful for learning about that concept

The Continental Congress attended a Mass of Celebration at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Philadelphia at the conclusion of the Revolution. He wondered how the people had adopted the Protestant church after the splendor of the service. Our French Allies were pleased.

Except for the fact that he also served as Master of his lodge - A lodge which exists to this day?

@@stickoutofthemud Masonry is agnotics as to which divine being, just says to be part of your neighborhood faith community.

Which War? He fought in the French-Indian War prior to the Revolution and was known for his brutality against Native Americans.

​@@eq2092 the war he claims providence saved his life

I think the truth is that George Washington believed in God but not Jesus. He would have been a hypocrite to partake in communion.

Or he met another God 🕺🤖 and thus doubted Christianity ✝.

@@eq2092 "was known for his brutality against Native Americans." A reasonably well-propagated lie is that the Iroquois called him "eater of villages." However, Washington did not fight in Iroquois land (which is in the northeast) in that war. He fought in Ohio and Virginia. A biographer I read long ago (Joseph Ellis) demonstrated that name was earned by a family member, several generations back, and Washington 'inherited' it.

But maybe he didn't believe that Jesus was the Grand Architect; just one of the carpenters.

May be a rare practice rather than a normal one. When I was trying to be christian, I only saw it once in over 20 years.

i was just going to make the same comment! everyone always seems to forget about us lol