WASHINGTON’S GOD: RELIGION, LIBERTY AND THE FATHER OF OUR COUNTRY
by
Michael Novak and Jana Novak
Basic
Books, 2006
256 pages,
$26
Available in bookstores
What were George Washington’s
religious convictions? Did Washington,
raised an Episcopalian, actually believe the truth claims of Christianity? Or
were his limited public statements on religion designed only for public
consumption, masking someone who was at heart a deist?
Many contemporary scholars would
answer the last question with an unqualified “Yes.” Michael and Jana Novak
claim they’re wrong. Catholic theologian Michael is a high-profile promoter of
“democratic capitalism” and a spiritual guide of sorts to the Bush
administration on its freedom-advancing agenda. He teams up with daughter Jana
(their first book, Tell Me Why, was a
father-daughter conversation about God) to show that Washington was very much a Christian, even
if he was discreet about it. They also parry claims that Washington was a closet deist whose
religious pronouncements were merely window dressing for public-relations
purposes.
The Novaks’
argument turns on Washington’s
understanding of divine providence. Washington’s
writings are replete with references to providence, and the evidence suggests
he had a keen sense of providential “interpositions” in his life. From
surviving ambushes during his forays against the French in western Pennsylvania to the fortuitous and wholly unexpected fog
that allowed him to evacuate his troops from Long Island in the face of an
otherwise certain rout, Washington
did not think of God as some distant and disinterested force. His public
statements and prayers likewise point to a God who is at work in history.
Washington, write the Novaks,
“had no use for a watchmaker god indifferent to the affairs of humans,
including the fate of freedom in the United States, and universally. Washington’s God had
freedom in mind when he made the world. … That is why Washington’s
God credibly favored the experiment in freedom here in the United States, just as the God Jehovah favored
the Hebrews in their liberation from Egypt. The evidence simply does not
allow the description of Washington
as a deist.”
Why, then, has Washington been stuck with that label? The Novaks suggest three reasons: Contemporary historians are
often allergic to religion and downplay its role. Washington’s public reticence about matters
religious abets such trends. And historical shifts taking place in Washington’s own day
changed how one characterized someone as “religious.”
The Novaks
make a reasonable case for reaffirming Washington’s
Christian credentials, but not a definitive one. Further research on the
subject would be welcome and, in fact, the Novaks
note that such is in the works.
While Michael Novak can be
persuasive — he’s a gifted writer, an important intellectual and a faithful
Catholic — this reader retains a certain reserve about his ability to find an
almost crypto-Catholicism among the American Founders and first architects of
capitalist thought. Still, it’s clear he and his daughter are on solid ground
in arguing that the founders were far from closet secular humanists colluding
to tamp down religion in the public square. The Novaks
offer a provocative thesis that could go far in recovering the religious roots
of the American founding.
John M. Grondelski writes from Washington, D.C.
