Washington unmasked

Washington: A Life

As president, it was observed that he would stand rather than kneel when praying and that he almost never referred directly to Christ or Jesus. Speaking publicly, he preferred to use vague terms such as Providence and Destiny.

This, as Ron Chernow observes, has led some historians to lump Washington with the Deists, or even with near agnostics such as Jefferson. One of America’s great ironies is that the founding fathers of the nation — now the most visibly religious of western countries — were rationalists, influenced strongly by the enlightenment thinking of the time.