The First Liberty: Religion and the American Republic

Abstract

In Northern Virginia, south of Alexandria, at a point equidistant from George Washington's home, Mount Vernon, and George Mason's home, Gunston Hall, stands the beautiful red brick Pohick Episcopal Church. From the founding period to the present it has remained an active church, keeping alive by oral tradition and church record the worship habits of two famous neighbors, the Washingtons and the Masons. It identifies Washington, the founder of the Republic, and Mason, the father of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, as members of an Anglican vestry responsible for oversight of church properties and the physical care of needy communicants. Pohick Church was built as a result of Washington and Mason's joint collaboration, combining Washington's surveying skills to select the site convenient to both families with the work of Mason's British architect. According to the oral tradition that has preserved the memory of Washington's religious practices, the first President attended church faithfully when he was at home, giving attendance at worship precedence over his domestic duty of offering hospitality to visiting dignitaries. Washington and Mason were sometime political allies, as when Washington carried the Fairfax Resolves, authored by Mason, to Williamsburg in 1774. Yet they profoundly disagreed on the propriety of state ratification of the federal Constitution absent a Bill of Rights. But Pohick Church is still a reminder that these two political stalwarts shared religious duties and exercised their religion together, reflecting what it meant to be orthodox Anglican churchmen in the colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, but being neither enlightenment deists nor evangelical enthusiasts. Perceptions of the religious character of historical figures are often preserved by the memory of the community of which a person was a member, rather than in written records or other materials that historians typically consult. Washington is an important example of