To Bigotry No Sanction

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George Washington & Religious Liberty

By Paul F. Boller, Jr.
Foreword by Alonzo L. McDonald
(1997)

Discussion Guide Included.

Excerpts from George Washington and Religion. Most people don’t realize how powerfully and persuasively George Washington wrote on the subject of religious freedom and persecution, desiring “a Government which to bigotry gives no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”

In what Swedenborgian writers regard as a “rational” and “manly” reply, Washington paid tribute to freedom of religion and then added significantly: “In this enlightened age & in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining & holding the highest offices that are known in the United States.” It was Washington’s final public insistence upon “real Equality” rather than “mere Toleration” for citizens of every faith in the young republic.

Category: Readings (No. 18)

So important is humor in our effort to understand the mystery of existence that we have reason to doubt the excellence of a philosopher who does not exhibit, at some point, a humorous vein. Particularly should we doubt the philosopher who takes himself so seriously that he cannot laugh at his own pretensions. It is not sacrilegious to call humor the “jovial.” To laugh is to see beyond the transitoriness of events, and thus to be Olympian or Jovelike.

D. Elton Trueblood, The Humor of Christ