Washington's Baptism

Though biographies of George Washington have been written in abundance, many details of his life have not been widely known until this year, bicentenary of his birthday. More or less newsworthy have been the revelations that he did not smoke; ordered his wife's dresses; that he was a shrewd landowner who left an estate of $1,000,000; that a poem "On Christmas Day" which he was supposed to have composed was copied from an old book. A George Washington story known to few persons remained to be made current by Editor Charles Edward Thomas of The Delta, publication of Sigma Nu fraternity. This, made public last week, was how George Washington was baptized.

When he was almost two months old, Washington was sprinkled in the "orthodox Episcopal manner." At 33 he took oath to conform to the doctrine of the Church of England "as by law established." Throughout his life he was seen regularly in church though he did not often kneel in prayer or partake of communion. Washington's reputation, like that of such Deists as Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin, is one of coolness and moderation in religion. But through his time swept a hot blast of evangelism, chiefly in the Methodist and Baptist faiths. General Washington one day went to Rev. John Gano, chaplain in the Continental Army, and exclaimed: "I have been investigating the Scripture, and I believe immersion to be baptism taught in the Word of God, and I demand it at your hands. I do not wish any parade made or the army called out, but simply a quiet demonstration of the ordinance." In the presence of 42 witnesses George Washington was immersed in the Potomac; but he did not give "personal testimony" which would have made him a member of the Baptist Church. In 1908 Rev. E. T. Sanford of Manhattan's North Church commissioned a painting of Washington and Chaplain Gano waist-deep in the Potomac. The painting was taken to the Baptist Church at Asbury Park, N. J. where it hung until 1926. It was then presented by Chaplain Gano's great-granddaughter to William Jewell College (Baptist) in Liberty, Mo. for the dedication of a John Gano Memorial Chapel.

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