Originally Posted by
LOki
Strawman.
Yes, lets try <a href="http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/john_remsburg/six_historic_americans/chapter_3.html">Washington</a> on for size. In all of the above, NOT ONE MENTION OF CHRIST. Intersting omission for a Christian, certainly a serious ommission for a citation alleged to confirm Washington's Christianity--but not so interesting or serious if Washington was a Deist.<blockquote>"Washington was no infidel, if by infidel is meant unbeliever. Washington had an unquestioning faith in Providence and, as we have seen, he voiced this faith publicly on numerous occasions. That this was no mere rhetorical flourish on his part, designed for public consumption, is apparent from his constant allusions to Providence in his personal letters. There is every reason to believe, from a careful analysis of religious references in his private correspondence, that Washington’s reliance upon a Grand Designer along Deist lines was as deep-seated and meaningful for his life as, say, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s serene confidence in a Universal Spirit permeating the ever shifting appearances of the everyday world."
--<i>Washington and Religion</i> by Paul F. Boller, Jr.</blockquote>Boller's not the only one:<blockquote>"I have diligently perused every line that Washington ever gave to the public, and I do not find one expression in which he pledges, himself as a believer in Christianity. I think anyone who will candidly do as I have done, will come to the conclusion that he was a Deist and nothing more."
-- The Reverend Bird Wilson, an Episcopal minister in Albany, New York, in an interview with Mr. Robert Dale Owen written on November 13, 1831, which was publlshed in New York two weeks later, quoted from Franklin Steiner, <i>The Religious Beliefs of Our Presidents</i>, pp. 27</blockquote>And what did Washington think of religion and government?<blockquote>"If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."
--George Washington; letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789, in Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, Vol 1. p. 495, quoted from Albert J Menendez and Edd Doerr, <i>The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom</i></blockquote>How about these apples?<blockquote>"I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction. To this consideration we ought to ascribe the absence of any regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta of our country."
-- George Washington, responding to a group of clergymen who complained that the Constitution lacked mention of Jesus Christ, in 1789, Papers, Presidential Series, 4:274</blockquote>What else have you got?