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 , 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 was very much a Christian, even if he was discreet about it. They also parry claims that was a closet deist whose religious pronouncements were merely window dressing for public-relations purposes.
The Novaks’ argument turns on ’s understanding of divine providence. ’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 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, 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.
, write the Novaks, “had no use for a watchmaker god indifferent to the affairs of humans, including the fate of freedom in the , and universally. ’s God had freedom in mind when he made the world. … That is why ’s God credibly favored the experiment in freedom here in the , just as the God Jehovah favored the Hebrews in their liberation from . The evidence simply does not allow the description of as a deist.”
Why, then, has been stuck with that label? The Novaks suggest three reasons: Contemporary historians are often allergic to religion and downplay its role. ’s public reticence about matters religious abets such trends. And historical shifts taking place in ’s own day changed how one characterized someone as “religious.”
The Novaks make a reasonable case for reaffirming ’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