c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ I grew up in Alexandria, Va., George Washington’s hometown, graduated from a high school and a university bearing his name, took visiting relatives on countless tours of Mount Vernon, and attended a synagogue on North Washington Street. No wonder Washington’s historical persona constantly hovered over my youth.”GW,”as we call him in Virginia, was 67 _ an advanced age for that era _ when he died 200 years ago on Dec. 14, 1799. It’s an anniversary that should not be neglected in the rush to reach the millennium.

Washington’s permanent legacy is more than his countenance on our money, more than a monument in America’s capital city, more than the name of a state, and certainly more than a bridge connecting New Jersey and New York.

Every American knows Washington, America’s military leader during the War of Independence, was our first president. However, many are unaware that he refused an offer to become king of the United States, and even fewer people know much about GW’s religious beliefs.

But his views on the subject and his positive attitude toward Jews created important precedents when America was in its infancy.

It’s frequently forgotten that when Washington became president the U.S. population was about 3 million, most of whom were Protestants. There were small numbers of Roman Catholics, Quakers and Jews, along with a few declared atheists like Tom Paine.

The role religion would play in the newly independent country was hotly debated by a pair of Washington’s fellow Virginians, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. The two patriots were bitterly divided on the critical question of whether Christianity should be the official established religion of the nation.

Throughout the centuries, that question was usually an easy one for leaders to answer: the majority religion of a land was the established faith because of its demographic size or political power. But Jefferson, the author of the Virginia statute on religious liberty, was opposed to linking church and state while Henry, the defender of political liberty, strongly favored the establishment of Christianity.

Perhaps recognizing the religious diversity already present in the new Republic, Henry would allow people the right to choose a particular church for tax purposes.

But what were the views of the towering figure of the period, the majestic Washington? Martin E. Marty, the eminent historian of religion, has written that the first president’s spiritual beliefs were”noble, vague and bland.” Marty writes that GW, an Episcopalian and a Mason, rarely received Communion and attended church perhaps once a month. Washington”was consistently silent on the divinity of Jesus.” In addition, the national icon of Washington kneeling in prayer at Valley Forge during the Revolutionary War has no historical basis. Indeed, it was”a posture he was never known to assume.”However, GW did believe religion and moral values were indispensable foundations of American democracy.

Marty wryly notes Washington did not care if workers at his Mount Vernon estate were”Asian or African _ most likely slaves _ or European, Muslim or Jewish.”Like any concerned homeowner, Washington apparently cared only whether the workers”did their job well.” When Washington became president, members of the Newport, R.I., synagogue, which was founded in 1677, sent a letter of congratulations to the nation’s first chief executive. On Aug. 21, 1790, Washington responded in a beautifully worded letter that has become a classic articulation of America’s commitment to religious liberty.

Washington’s extraordinary sense of religious inclusion was a radical position in the 18th century and it remains so on the eve of the 21st.

America has given”mankind … an enlarged and liberal policy … worthy of imitation … liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.” Washington assured his Jewish fellow citizens that the government”gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” In his closing remarks, Washington used the Hebrew prophet Micah as inspiration:”May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Washington’s historic letter to the Newport synagogue was one time when Washington was clearly”noble,”and not”vague or bland.”Thank you, Mr. President.

DEA END RUDIN