George Washington: Vestryman and Lifelong Anglican
George Washington was born into a deeply Anglican family and remained a faithful Anglican layman for his entire life. He was baptized in the church as an infant, married a pious Anglican woman, and was buried with the burial office from the 1789 Book of Common Prayer.
In between these sacramental milestones, Washington served as the victorious General of the American Revolution and the first President of the United States. As a public figure, Washington did not write specifically of his Anglican heritage, preferring to encourage Christianity in general as a bulwark for a free people. But in his practice, both before and during his public service, Washington was a devoted member and servant of the church, revealing his religion through his deeds.
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Washington’s most remarkable service to the church was as a vestryman. Beginning in 1762 and continuing until 1784, he served on the vestry of Truro Parish, in which capacity he took the leading role in constructing a new building for Pohick Church. He also formed important friendships with other members of the vestry, including George Mason and Rev. Lee Massey, which would subsequently shape the American Revolution.
The imprint of Washington’s Anglicanism also came through in his conduct in public office, especially in the profound humility of his subservience to higher authority. As a General and a President, he always retained a mindset of service to the people of America, to their elected representatives, and to God above all. Such Christian humility is the ultimate explanation for Washington’s epochal decision, on two separate occasions, to resign the highest office in the land.
Here are the final words of Washington’s service as general, delivered to the Continental Congress on the occasion of his first resignation:
I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in his holy protection…and finally, that he would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all, to do Justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind, which were the Characteristicks of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things, we can never hope to be a happy Nation.
Circular to the States: June 8, 1783
The Washingtons: A Deeply Anglican Family
George Washington was born into a family with a long history of service to the Anglican Church. As far back as the 12th century, the family had a distinct relationship with the Bishop of Durham and lived in the Washington Old Hall in northeast England. For our purposes, it will also be helpful to mention the four generations before George.
- Lawrence Washington (1602–1652) served as an Oxford don and Anglican priest under Charles I and Archbishop Laud. During the English Civil War, he was deprived of his livelihood and died in poverty.
- John Washington (1633–1677) emigrated to Virginia after the death of his father. He arrived in 1657, married the daughter of a wealthy planter in 1659, and became a Vestryman of Appomattox Parish in 1661. In 1664, the parish was renamed Washington Parish, reflecting John’s growing leadership role. Though details of the next decade are scarce, John likely helped call the parish rector, to whom he bequeathed significant funds in his will.
- Lawrence Washington (1659–1698) was named after his priestly grandfather. He died young, but not before a consequential marriage that enlarged the family’s land holdings and produced three children, including George’s father, Augustine.
- Augustine Washington (1694–1743) became a vestryman of Truro Parish in 1735, when his son George was three years old. The following year, he nominated Charles Green to become the parish’s first rector. When Augustine died, George was 11.
Though George never met his grandfather, he would have grown up with the stories of all these generations, deeply aware of the family legacy of service to the church. While he was a boy, he attended services with his vestryman father, and once his father died, the church would remain a constant reminder of his father and the Washington legacy.
Military Service and Divine Providence
George’s religiosity was refined by his early experience as an officer in the French and Indian War. The defining moment was the Battle of the Monongahela in 1755, when Washington was 23. Serving as an aide to British General Braddock, Washington provided gallant service in the midst of a rout of the British forces. Braddock was killed, alongside more than 800 casualties, in a force of 1300.
That George survived seemed to him, and to many others in the field that day, to be a kind of miracle. George attributed his survival to Providence, as he wrote to his brother:
I am still in the land of the living by the miraculous care of Providence, that protected me beyond all human expectation; I had 4 Bullets through my Coat, and two Horses shot under me yet escaped unhurt.
Letter to John Augustine Washington, July 18 1755
Subsequently, Washington was appointed the commander of the Virginia Regiment, in which capacity he repeatedly lobbied the governor and legislature to appoint a chaplain to the regiment. When a new acting governor was appointed, Washington renewed his request:
Common decency, Sir, in a camp calls for the services of a Divine; and which ought not to be dispensed with, altho’ the world should be so uncharitable as to think us void of Religion, & incapable of good Instructions.
Letter to Acting Governing John Blair, April 17, 1758
George Washington as a Vestryman
Refined by this early experience and newly married to Martha Custis, George returned to civilian life in the pattern of his father. In 1762, he was selected to serve as a vestryman in Truro Parish, the same parish in which his father served. The historical record even preserves a signed resubscription document, dated from 1765, in which Washington swore the customary oath:
I, AB, do declare that I will be conformable to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England, as by law established.
As cited by Lossing, in the Pictorial Field Book of the Revolution, p. 215
By 1765, Washington was also serving as Warden, or one of the Vestry’s leaders. In this role, George administered the church’s business, including payment of church staff salaries, maintenance of church property, and distribution of charitable funds. At the end of the year, parish rector Charles Green died. Following in his father’s footsteps, one of George’s earliest actions was to nominate Lee Massey as the new rector of the parish; Massey sailed for England in 1766, where he was ordained, and returned to serve the parish in 1767.
According to Massey (as recorded later by Bishop Meade), Washington was not only a reliable Vestryman, but also a good example of piety to his fellow parishioners:
I never knew so constant an attendant in church as Washington. And his behaviour in the house of God was ever so deeply reverential that it produced the happiest effects on my congregation, and greatly assisted me in my pulpit labours. No company ever withheld him from church.
Rev. Lee Massey, as recorded by Bishop Meade in Old Churches, Ministers and Families of Virginia (1857)
Massey (or Meade) may have been exaggerating a bit here, since Washington’s own diaries do record many Sundays when he was not able to make the seven-mile journey on horseback to church. But the general impression of Washington’s consistent piety is right. On Sundays, when he did not attend church, he would still set aside time to read prayers and sermons to the family at home. Later, when Washington served as President and lived in a city with churches nearby, he made a point of attending weekly.
The Construction of Pohick Church
The most significant project Washington undertook as a vestryman and churchwarden was the construction of a new building at Pohick. The vestry decided to build in 1767, but there was disagreement on which location to use. Washington personally surveyed a new plot of land and successfully advocated for it in the vestry. Construction began in 1769 under Daniel French, a member of the congregation.
Here, it is important to note that much of the labor for the construction of Pohick Church would have been provided by African-American slaves. This is not only because slaves were often involved in such projects, but also because Washington himself and multiple other members of the church owned slaves and could make them available for parts of the project. It must also be frankly acknowledged that Washington’s ownership of slaves, however conventional for the time, and even though he did manumit his slaves in his will, remains a stain upon his legacy.
Though we do not know all the details of the slaves who worked on the project, the beautiful building that still stands is a testament to their skill and their good work, even under unjust exploitation. They are known to God and will be rewarded by him.
The Architecture of Pohick Church
Designed by James Wren, the building is a two-story Georgian in brick with carved sandstone detailing. The structure reflected the restrained elegance of colonial Anglican architecture. The interior was furnished with an elevated pulpit and commandment boards, both reflecting the twin reformed emphases on scripture and catechesis. Visitors today might be most taken with the box pews, which families would rent to provide the necessary funds for the church’s ongoing ministry (Washington rented two box pews, his larger contribution reflecting his economic and social standing).
Pohick Church was completed in 1774, but Washington barely had any time to enjoy it. Almost immediately, he was caught up in the revolution and required to live far away. But Washington always wanted to come home to Mount Vernon and to Pohick Church. Both as a General and as a President, he would frequently cite his favorite verse from Micah:
[The Lord] shall judge between many peoples and shall decide disputes for strong nations far away; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
Micah 4:3-4
The Vestry and the Revolution
We don’t have space to consider every aspect of Washington’s religiosity during his service as a general and then as President. However, it is striking to consider the way the relationships Washington forged on the Truro vestry fed into the development of the American Revolution.
The key detail here is that one of Washington’s fellow vestrymen was George Mason, a brilliant mind who helped to develop the intellectual framework for the revolution. In 1774, Washington commissioned Mason to draft a set of resolutions in response to England’s Coercive Acts, also called the Intolerable Acts, which punished the colonies for the Boston Tea Party. Mason brought a first draft to Mount Vernon, and after revision, the two men went to Alexandria, where a larger group of landowners, including rector Lee Massey, received and signed them together.
The resulting document, called the Fairfax Resolves, became deeply influential in Virginia and one of the most important precedents for Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence in 1776. Moreover, Washington and Mason forged an alliance that would continue for more than a decade, until it broke down during the Constitutional Convention. Mason refused to support the Constitution because it didn’t include a Bill of Rights. Washington broke with Mason to support the Constitution, but then, as President, made it a first order of business to adopt a Bill of Rights after all.
In Conclusion: Washington’s Providential King
While it is certainly true that Washington never saw himself as a pastor or a Christian evangelist, it is also not possible to consider him a deist in the model of Thomas Jefferson. Contrary to the deist idea of a God who creates but then abandons the field of history, Washington repeatedly referred to God as a Providential King who governs in the affairs of man. Washington was able to reject the King of England because he believed in the King of the Universe. Even more powerfully, Washington was able to resist the call to make himself King because he knew he had one in heaven.
At his first inauguration as President, it was Washington who added “so help me God” to the oath of office. And in his first inaugural address, Washington insisted that the only proper way to begin his service to the nation was with prayer to “the Great Author of every public and private good.” As Washington put it:
It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official Act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the Councils of Nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the People of the United States.
First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789
I dedicate this article to the members of the vestry of Trinity Lafayette, especially those who have assisted in the construction of our new church building. May it encourage you to follow in the footsteps of George Washington and take comfort in the fact that his building project took seven years!
Image: George Washington painting by William Winstanley (ca.1803) from incamerastock via Alamy and Canva. Pohick Church postcard from Boston Public Library, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons 2.0). Digital collage by Jacob Davis.
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