George Washington
 http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_buckner/quotations.html

George Washington
(1732-1799; "Father of His Country"; 1st U.S. President, 1789-1797)

The following year [1784], when asking Tench Tilghman to secure a
carpenter and a bricklayer for his Mount Vernon estate,
he [Washington] remarked: "If they are good workmen, they may be of
Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mohometans,
Jews or Christians of any Sect, or they may be Atheists." As he told a
Mennonite minister who sought refuge in the United
States after the Revolution: "I had always hoped that this land might
become a safe and agreeable Asylum to the virtuous and
persecuted part of mankind, to whatever nation they might belong...."
He was, as John Bell pointed out in 1779, "a total
stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited
Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of
another." (Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas:
Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 118.
According to Boller, Washington wrote his remarks to Tilghman in a
letter dated March 24, 1784; his remarks to the
Mennonite--Francis Adrian Van der Kemp--were in a letter dated May 28,
1788.)

Government being, among other purposes, instituted to protect the
consciences of men from oppression, it is certainly the duty
of Rulers, not only to abstain from it themselves, but according to
their stations, to prevent it in others. (George Washington,
letter to the Religious Society called the Quakers, September 28,
1789. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene Ehrlich, eds., The
Harper Book of American Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p.
500.)

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was by the
indulgence of one class of the people that another enjoyed the
exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government
of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to
persecution no assistance, requires only that those who live under its
protection should demean themselves as good citizens in
giving it, on all occasions, their effectual support. (George
Washington, letter to the congregation of Touro Synagogue Jews,
Newport, Rhode Island, August, 1790. From Gorton Carruth and Eugene
Ehrlich, eds., The Harper Book of American
Quotations, New York: Harper & Row, 1988, p. 500.)

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which
are caused by difference of sentiments in religion appear
to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be
deprecated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal
policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have
reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we
should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch
as to endanger the peace of society. (George Washington,
letter to Edward Newenham, October 20, 1792; from George Seldes, ed.,
The Great Quotations, Secaucus, New Jersey:
Citadel Press, 1983, p. 726.)

In the Enlightened Age and in this Land of equal Liberty it is our
boast, that a man's religious tenets will not forfeit the protection
of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the
highest Offices that are known in the United States.
(George Washington, letter to the members of the New Church in
Baltimore, January 27, 1793. Quoted in Richard B. Morris,
Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny: The Founding Fathers as Revolutionaries,
Harper & Row, 1973, p. 269.)

... Bird Wilson, Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, was one of
the first openly to challenge in public the pietistic picture
of Washington that was being built up by [Mason Locke] Weems and his
followers. In a sermon delivered in October, 1831,
which attracted wide attention when it was reported in the Albany
Daily Advertiser, Wilson stated flatly that "among all our
presidents from Washington downward, not one was a professor of
religion, at least not of more than unitarianism."
Washington, he went on to say, was a great and good man, but he was
not a professor of religion; he was really a typical
eighteenth-century Deist, not a Christian, in his religious outlook.
(Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas:
Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, pp. 14-15.)

... Like his father before him, he [George Washington] served actively
for many years as one of the twelve vestrymen for Truro
parish, Virginia, in which Mount Vernon was located. According to
Charles H. Callahan, "The regularity of his attendance at
the meetings of the vestry and the progress of church work throughout
the parish during his incumbency is a striking testimonial
of the religious zeal and activity of him and his associates."
Actually, under the Anglican establishment in Virginia before the
Revolution, the duties of a parish vestry were as much civil as
religious in nature and it is not possible to deduce any exceptional
religious zeal from the mere fact of membership. Even Thomas Jefferson
was a vestryman for a while.* [Boller's footnote is
shown at the end of this selection.] Consisting of the leading
gentlemen of the parish in position and influence (many of whom,
like Washington, were also at one time or other members of the County
Court and of the House of Burgesses), the parish
vestry, among other things, levied the parish taxes, handled poor
relief, fixed land boundaries in the parish, supervised the
construction, furnishing, and repairs of churches, and hired ministers
and paid their salaries. *As Bishop William Meade put it,
somewhat nastily, in 1857: "Even Mr. Jefferson, and [George] Wythe,
who did not conceal their disbelief in Christianity, took
their parts in the duties of vestrymen, the one at Williamsburg, the
other at Albermarle; for they wished to be men of influence."
(William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia, 2
vols.; Philadelphia, 1857, I, 191). (Paul F. Boller, George
Washington & Religion, Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press,
1963, p. 26.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
... if to believe in the divinity and resurrection of Christ and his
atonement for the sins of man and to participate in the sacrament
of the Lord's Supper are requisites for the Christian faith, then
Washington, on the evidence which we have examined, can
hardly be considered a Christian, except in the most nominal sense.
(Paul F. Boller, George Washington & Religion, Dallas:
Southern Methodist University Press, 1963, p. 90.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
[on Washington's first inaugural speech in April 1789] . .. That he
was not just striking a popular attitude as a politician is
revealed by the absence of of the usual Christian terms: he did not
mention Christ or even use the word "God." Following the
phraseology of the philosophical Deism he professed, he referred to
"the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men," to
"the benign parent of the human race." (James Thomas Flexner, George
Washington and the New Nation [1783-1793],
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970, p. 184.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Washington's religious belief was that of the enlightenment: deism. He
practically never used the word "God," preferring the
more impersonal word "Providence." How little he visualized Providence
in personal form is shown by the fact that he
interchangeably applied to that force all three possible pronouns: he,
she, and it. (James Thomas Flexner, George Washington:
Anguish and Farewell [1793-1799], Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1972, p. 490.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
No citizens ... were more sensitive to Washington's role as an
upholder of liberties than the religious minorities. These groups
were less anxious to cultivate what they had in common with other
Americans than to sustain what kept them apart. Washington
recognized this, just as he recognized the tenacity of regional and
economic interests, and he took pains to explain precisely
what national unity meant to him. He carried to his countrymen a
vision of "organic" rather than "mechanical" solidarity, a union
based on difference and interdependence rather than uniformity of
belief and conduct. Washington's understanding of the kind
of integration appropriate to a modern state was not shared by the
most powerful Protestant establishments, the New England
Congregationalists and Presbyterians; but other religious groups could
not have been more pleased.... Acknowledging in each
instance that respect for diversity was a fair price for commitment to
the nation and its regime, Washington abolished
deep-rooted fears that would have otherwise alienated a large part of
the population from the nation-building process. For this
large minority, he embodied not the ideal of union, nor even that of
liberty, but rather the reconciliation of union and liberty.
(Barry Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol,
New York: The Free Press, 1987, pp. 85-86.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
George Washington's conduct convinced most Americans that he was a
good Christian, but those possessing first-hand
knowledge of his religious convictions had reasons for doubt. (Barry
Schwartz, George Washington: The Making of an
American Symbol, New York: The Free Press, 1987, p. 170.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Following a tradition transmitted from Cicero, through Machiavelli, to
their own contemporaries like Paine and Jefferson, the
less pious men of the time saw in religion a necessary and assured
support of civil society. Although guided in their own conduct
by secular traditions, they felt that only religion could unite the
masses and induce their submission to custom and law. So they
joined their orthodox countrymen in attributing to the hero [George
Washington] a deep religious devotion. (Barry Schwartz,
George Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, New York: The
Free Press, 1987, p. 173.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As President, Washington regularly attended Christian services, and he
was friendly in his attitude toward Christian values.
However, he repeatedly declined the church's sacraments. Never did he
take communion, and when his wife, Martha, did, he
waited for her outside the sanctuary.... Even on his deathbed,
Washington asked for no ritual, uttered no prayer to Christ, and
expressed no wish to be attended by His representative. George
Washington's practice of Christianity was limited and
superficial because he was not himself a Christian. In the enlightened
tradition of his day, he was a devout Deist--just as many
of the clergymen who knew him suspected. (Barry Schwartz, George
Washington: The Making of an American Symbol, New
York: The Free Press, 1987, pp. 174-175.)
*******************************************************
 In the last years of Washington's Presidency, Thomas Paine published The
Age of Reason, his extended attack on orthodox religious beliefs and on the
Bible. In doing so, he spoke for the most advanced liberal thinkers of his
day. Eight American editions of his book appeared the first year. Though
stating their opinions less bluntly, Franklin and Jefferson and perhaps a
majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence basically
agreed with Paine. Paine was not the atheist he has been called, but a
deist, believing in God the First Cause, who worked solely through the laws
of nature.

 For ordinary folk the idea of God the Great Watchmaker frozen in the
immutable laws of His clockwork universe was not enough. They felt the need
of a comforting and personal God attainable beyond the reasoning mind.
Where intellectuals turned to Unitarianism--a polite amalgam of deism and
Congregationalism--the masses sought the heady evangelism of the Baptists
and the Methodists, which itself seemed a democratic form of religion.
Itinerant preachers carried the gospel message beyond the Appalachians to
the remote and lonely regions of the frontier. At camp meetings, in the
light of flaring bonfires, they prayed and sang the gospel hymns and
shouted their simple message of sin and repentance until the more fervent
among them fell to the ground in spasms of emotion.

 While New England was shifting from the rigidities of Calvinism to
Unitarianism, the South, under the influence of its "peculiar institution,"
was moving toward a revival of Calvinist theology, buttressed by
evangelism, in which there was no room for deviation or ranging thought.
I,iberalism in theology could lead to embarrassing questions about slavery,
and the South, in sensing this danger, closed theological ranks. As for the
Negroes, by the time of the Revolution they had begun to drift into
separate churches conducted with primitive evangelistic zeal by their own
clergy.

 The religiousness of the century's end, known as the Second Awakening--the
first, or Great Awakening, had been initiated by Jonathan Edwards fifty
years earlier-- though in a sense the ordinary man's reaction to the
detached intellectuals of the Enlightenment, was above all an indication
that the United States was in the main still religious-minded.
(SOURCE OF INFORMATION: The American Heritage, History of Making the Nation
1783-1860, American Heritage/Bonanza Books N.Y. (1987) pp 77-78)
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Deist, or Unitarian, or Quaker, or indifferent, it is a general accepted
fact that four, maybe as many five or six of the first presidents were not
all that orthodox in their religious convictions.

The same can be said for a fair numbor of other leaders or influential men
of the founding period and periods that immediately followed.

By the late 1820s and there was real concern by many of the religious
conservatives/tradionalists about the rapid secularization of the nation
and its institutions. Men such as the Rev Jasper Adams, Supreme Court
Justice Joseph Story and others published material in the early 1830s
designed, in part, to try and reverse the trends they saw taking place.
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         Nonetheless, disestablishment was an accomplished fact, a social
symptom of declining interest in organized Christianity. Church-going in
Virginia had long been on the decline as communicants found more reasons
for attending Sunday horse races or code fights than for being in pews. In
1784 a foreign traveler in Richmond noted that the village had only "one
small church, but [it was] spacious enough for all the pious souls of the
place and the region. If the Virginians themselves did not freely and
openly admit that zeal for religion, and religion generally, is now very
faint among them, the fact might easily be divined from other
circumstances" (Schoepf, Travels in the Confederation, 11, 62).
SOURCE OF INFORMATION: The papers of James Madison, Volume 8, March 10,
1784- March 28, 1786.  Edited by Robert A. Rutland, William M.E. Rachal.
The University of Chicago Press, (1973) pp 295-298

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. . .  While at least thirteen of JM's petitions were circulated (and in
time bore 1,552 signatures), another (and still anonymous) petition writer
found that his attack on the "Teachers of Christian Religion" measure
gained more widespread support. Twenty-nine petitions, signed by 4,899
Virginians, came from the pen of this unknown opponent of a church-state
tie. These petitions were based on an argument that carries beyond JM's-the
General Assessment bill was not only contrary to the Virginia Declaration
of Rights and to the enlightened republicanism pronounced there, but the
proposed act was in conflict with "the Spirit of the Gospel." Whoever wrote
this petition, which was easily the most popular of the several circulating
protests, was clearly an active Christian who believed the General
Assessment bill would do nothing to check "that Deism with its banefull
Influence [which] is spreading itself over the state" (Vi: Westmoreland
County petition).  
SOURCE OF INFORMATION: The papers of James Madison, Volume 8, March 10,
1784- March 28, 1786.  Edited by Robert A. Rutland, William M.E. Rachal.
The University of Chicago Press, (1973) pp 295-298
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