In view of Garry Gamble’s response to my Letter to the Editor I wish to clarify what I feel George Washington meant by his view of religion in his letter to his friend in 1792. First, though, I want to thank Mr. Gamble for his response.
In it, he quotes Washington’s view of the importance of religion in our civic life and that we apparently will have difficulties having a truly moral way of life without religion.
The question is: What did Washington mean by religion when he said that (with the assistance of Madison, Hamilton and John Day)? And what do we ordinarily mean when we refer to religion?
I am of the opinion that the word religion most often refers to “organized religion,” that is, religion as tied to dogma, doctrine and tradition (DDT), religion meaning going to church, being born again, belonging to a group of faithful which excludes other so-called unfaithful from their midst.
When Washington is writing to his friend he is referring to that kind of exclusionary religion impacting the civic life of the Irish people at the time and witnessed even to this day between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland some 250 years after Washington’s writ (and of course in our own country as well).
There is however another way of viewing religion. That is religion in a broader sense.
As a Deist, Washington refers in his Inaugural Address to the Deity as “Almighty Being,” “Invisible Hand,” “Providential Agency.”
I find that Washington, who attended church at times but never took Communion, is not speaking of that kind of universal sense of a creator when he speaks of the denominational bigotry and infighting among organized religions. He also finds, in my opinion, that such bigotry and infighting is what would be detrimental to our public discourse. Religion as a sense of loyalty to the creative energies of which we all are a part should be our guiding principle.
Jake Hjorth
Grand Marais
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