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PRESIDENT GEORGE WASHINGTON
First Inaugural Address
30 April 1789
City of New York

George Washington, in his official capacity as President, exclaimed in his First Inaugural Address that the success of the government depended on its connection with God. In the closing paragraph of his address, he said:

"I shall take my leave; but not without resorting once more to the benign Parent of the Human Race in humble supplication...so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures on which the success of this Government must depend."

Besides taking a reading of President Washington's historical record, a reading of our various other founding father's letters, diaries, and notes on their conversations, public announcements and speaches, joined with a reading of our early Republic's laws and proclamations, leaves no doubt of our Constitutional Framers' mind-set, beliefs, and hopes for the future of the country when they finally agreed upon the wording of the First Amendment in 1791. In the bright light of the Constitutional Framers' multitude of thoughts on the meaning behind the words of the First Amendment, it is with only with a good deal of tortured imagination that one can interpret the "anti-establishment" clause as a "firewall" separating state and faith.

When Fisher Ames, confabulators, and signers of the Bill of Rights finally agreed upon, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free expression thereof;" what they had in mind was exactly what it stated. And that is, on the one hand, that there would never be a state sponsored religion, and that the government would not be permitted to favor one religion over another, and on the other hand, that no authority could ever deny the freedom of religious expression, at any place, at any time, whether in the government, or in public institutions, or in the private sector.

The "anti-establishment" clause was never intended to be a firewall between government and religion, as has been propagated by the cult of pop culture and by some misguided federal judges. There can be no doubt that even the least religious of the Constitutional Framers did not envision the "anti-establishment" clause as a means of pulling down the basic Christian tenet that all of them felt was the underpinning of our nationhood.

The Signers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights never, not in their wildest dreams, would have dared conceive of a Godless Government and a Godless Nation. Expressions of God had, therefore, been woven into our Nation's consciousness, into its Motto, onto its money, into prayer by Congressional chaplains, used to justify our Declaration of Independence, Gettysburg Address, and other proclamations and declarations. To the present and through our expected future, oaths before God are taken by our new Presidents, and by those preparing to give testimony to Congress.

With but one grossly misunderstood and highly distorted exception (that of Thomas Jefferson, the self-professed desciple of Christ, who late in life said that the Second Amendment should be a wall between Church and State), it is historically proven that our founding fathers' ideas and writtings on the First Amendment prove that they never envisioned any kind of wall between faith and government. Based on their historical records, the founding brethern would certainly not have objected to Treasury Secretary Chase and Congress approving the motto of "In God We Trust" in 1837. Nor would they have objected to the inclusion of "God" in the Pledge of Allegiance during the Cold War. And very likely they would have appreciated the enriched Pledge of Allegiance, aka Pledge of Citizenship.

So, my dear countrymen and countrywomen, President George Washington and his nation-founding colleagues never intended that God be forced out of the lives of the people, or out of the Life of the Nation, or out of the implicit underpinning of government, but ought to be integral as voiced in his First Inaugual Address.

Your humble servants,

John E. Appleseed & Bette C. Ross