A Year With George Washington
On April 5, 1732, 6-week-old George Washington was christened “according to conformity of the Church of England.” Washington spent the better part of four decades dutifully attending Anglican Church services, and the church, with its traditions, both religious and secular, had a profound effect on his life.
George Washington was born into a society under the religious authority of the Church of England. The Church of England, also known as the Anglican Church, was formed in protest when the Roman Catholic Pope Clement VII refused to grant King Henry VIII an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
King Henry’s intent was not to modify the tenets of the church but merely to supplant the Pope as its head by becoming the head himself!. After the Reformation, however, and especially during the reigns of Elizabeth I and King James I, the Church of England distinguished itself from the Catholic Church.
The Anglican Church had been incorporated into Virginia law since the early seventeenth century. Church attendance was therefore mandatory, and citizens were required to attend at least once per month. For many, once a month was all that was possible, as church ministers often had to travel to different parishes each week due to a shortage of preachers. This was the case with Washington, as his minister rotated between three different parishes each month.
Attending an Anglican Church in the eighteenth century, as stated above, was a blend of the religious and secular. The brief service consisted of readings from the 1662 edition of The Book of Prayer. The book, with its grand cadences and resonant tone, was deliberately repetitive. Washington would have been immersed in this style of worship for over forty years before the Revolution tore him away and would have been quite familiar with its messages. One Anglican Bishop in the late seventeenth century defended the tradition of repetitive worship to those who found the rote spiritual learning a bit strange:
“Whatsoever good things we hear only once, or now and then, though perhaps upon the hearing of them, they may swim for a while in our brains, yet they seldom sink down into our hearts, so as to move and sway the affections, as it is necessary they should do in order to our being edified by them; whereas by a set form of public devotions rightly composed, we are continually put in mind of all things necessary for us to know or do, so that it is always done by the same words and expressions, which, by their constant use, will imprint the things themselves so firmly in our minds, that. . . they will still occur upon all occasions, which cannot but be very much for our Christian edification.”
Washington alluded to scripture passages often in his writing. It seems his experience, at least, lends credence to the Bishop’s words.
For the Anglican churchgoer, Sunday was a religious rite, but it was also a means of mingling with one’s neighbors, staying informed about the business of the day, and immersing oneself in high society. A tutor from New Jersey named Philip Fithian, having grown up in the Presbyterian Church, and thus accustomed to a different set of religious mores, described attending services in Washington’s Anglican Virginia this way:
There are “three grand divisions of time at the Church on Sundays, Viz. before Service giving & receiving letters of business, reading Advertisements, consulting about the price of Tobacco, Grain &c. & settling either the lineage, Age, or qualities of favourite Horses. 2. In the Church at Service, prayrs read over in haste, a Sermon seldom under & never over twenty minutes, but always made up of sound morality, or deep studied Metaphysicks. 3. After Service is over three quarters of an hour spent in strolling round the Church among the Crowd, . . . [when one might be] invited by several different Gentlemen home with them to dinner.”
Washington’s land holdings were so vast that they spanned two different parishes. He therefore spent time at both Christ Church in Fairfax Parish, about 10 miles from Mount Vernon, and Pohick Church in Truro Parish, about seven miles distant.
Washington was active as a vestryman at both churches, particularly at Pohick, where he served from 1762 until he became Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army in 1775. Presumably, out of respect, he was not removed from the role by the church until after the Revolution. Upon returning home in 1784, Washington felt the need to resign.
During the Revolution, Washington attended church more regularly, paying little heed to the denominational makeup of the services. More often than not, Washington led his men by example and attended the Army Chaplain’s services.
If in a populated area, he would attend various churches within the town or village where he happened to be. In his first term as president, Washington worshipped at both Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel in Manhattan. During his second term, after the nation’s capital moved to Philadelphia, Washington attended services at both Christ Church and St. Peter’s.
Washington was considered by his contemporaries to be an honest and moral man. His faith was the cornerstone of his being. Below is just one of his many quotes on his faith in God.
“No man has a more perfect reliance on the alwise, and powerful dispensation of the Supreme Being than I have, nor thinks his aid more necessary.”
– George Washington
