I noted in my last post on the Steve Williams lawsuit that I had contacted a Washington scholar to confirm that the "George Washington Prayer Journal" was indeed known to be fraudulent. That scholar is Frank Grizzard of the University Virginia, a senior associate editor of the George Washington Papers collection housed there. Here is his response:
The so-called prayer journal is not in GW's writing, although I'm not sure it's actually a forgery. The manuscript dealer (Burk I think) who first sold it when it came to light in the 19th century printed a facsimile edition in which he admits that the Smithsonian rejected it as a non-GW document, but it did have Washington family provenance, so he said. Thus it apparently was a descendant's. Johnson's version is taken from Burk. The prayers are based on the English prayer book.
So at least one entire handout that Williams used was a document that is falsely attributed to one of the founding fathers. Along with several other fraudulent quotes used in other handouts, and the Easter assignment handout that is entirely inappropriate, I think the school district will have little trouble showing that the principal's requirement that the teacher get her pre-approval before using any supplemental handouts was entirely justified.
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Thanks. Yup this is another one of the "hooks" that the fundies rely upon to prove that Washington was a "Christian" in "their" sense.
I don't want to stereotype them; many fundies accept that Washington was anything but an orthodox Christian, and that his beliefs were closer to Deism than they were to orthodox Christianity (Gary North, Tom Fleming, and others).
But folks like Barton, Kennedy, LaHaye and others are just so desperate to prove that George Washington was one of them, they will put forth any lie to advance their claim. And this absurd prayer book is one of them that I have seen come up time and time again.
The more I investigate, I see that the more likely it is that Washington was a deist, albeit one who believed that the hand of Providence could interfere with human affairs. Certainly, there is no evidence that Washington believed in the Trinity or accepted Jesus as his personal savior.
To be fair, Washington respected how orthodox Christianity kept the masses moral--but there is no evidence that he himself was one. Washington kept his mouth shut about his beliefs. As a deist, he probably did this for two reasons: 1) Because he thought a religious citizenry to be superior to an irreligious one, he didn't want to harm orthodox Christianity by criticizing its irrationalities (Jefferson, on the other hand, wanted to see the public become Unitarian). And 2) by observing what happened to the public reputation of Paine, and to a lesser extent Jefferson, (who publicly criticized orthodox Christianity to a lesser extent than did Paine), we see that one could have his public reputation ruined back then by taking shots at sacred cows (over in England, it was a crime to publicly deny the Trinity, up until 1813).
To be fair, Washington respected how orthodox Christianity kept the masses moral
Sorry, Jon, Washington recgonized how orthodox christianity kept the masses in line. There is a difference--a big difference.