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To: pissant
Look: before you burn up the Internet trying to prove that the general was a "devout Christian," please understand where I am coming from.

There is no doubt that he attended church (I have visited three churches that he attended with regularity: Christ Church in Alexandria, Christ Church in Philadelphia and St. Paul's in NYC [he couldn't attend Trinity since it burnt by the time of his inauguration]; all Anglican/Episcopal).

I have read about 15 biographies of the General and have a reasonably good understanding of his life. He certainly thought of himself as a "Christian" but his personal devotion to Christ is very hard to document. He believed that proper behavior included regular church attendance.

You should know something else about the General: even though he was a humble man, he believed that he was destined (by Providence) to help found this great country. Because of this belief, he felt that he must do certain things that were consonant with a man of his responsibility (odd as it seems, keeping slaves fell under this heading--he did not like slavery, but as an ambitious politician from Virginia, being an abolitionist would've ended his prospects).

He kept (almost) all of his letters; his journals and diaries and papers add up to 33 large voumes. In NONE of his writing are there devotional messages of the type characterized in the "Prayer Journal" that you would have us believe he wrote (as in your first post on this matter).

The best evidence is that he was a Christian of the Deist variety who believed that Church attendance was a good thing. He was much more a Son of the Enlightenment (his Freemasonry is evidence for that) than a Born Again Christian. I can't remember him EVER mentioning Jesus or Christ in any of his writings.

107 posted on 11/29/2004 12:25:26 PM PST by Pharmboy (Listen...you can still hear the old media sobbing.)
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To: Pharmboy

I don't need to burn the internet up to find the quotes. They are readily available in many trustworthy archives. I understand where you are coming from, but you ignore the volumes of evidence that he was devout. He was certainly a very private man, and didn't constantly claim to be a Christian. There are many Freemasons that were/are also Christians.


128 posted on 11/29/2004 12:51:28 PM PST by pissant
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