Fear of God — Or Man? <br>High Court Could Find <br>Wisdom in Washington’s <br>Letter to the Jews
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Sometime before June, if things go true to form, President Obama is going to issue a warning to the Supreme Court to look after its reputation and refrain from outlawing the birth-control mandate of ObamaCare. He tried that stunt the last time ObamaCare was before the Nine, and Chief Justice Roberts switched his vote.
Was the chief justice afraid? That is the word I keep thinking of. It is the word at the heart of perhaps the most famous utterance on religious freedom in American history — George Washington’s letter to the Jews.
Our first president sent it in 1790, replying to the warm greeting addressed to him by the members of the Touro Synagogue when Washington had visited Rhode Island.
No one mentioned Washington’s letter during Tuesday’s oral arguments before the high court. Yet the case against the birth-control mandate of ObamaCare is being brought by two families of religious Christians — the Greens and the Hahns — who are just the sort of pious persons Washington welcomed to the new republic.
Washington wrote of the “days of difficulty and danger” of the Revolution. He wrote about how, if we could find wisdom, we “cannot fail, under the just administration of a good government, to become a great and happy people.”
Americans had “given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy,” Washington wrote.
“All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship,” the president wrote. No longer, he added, was toleration “spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights.”
The reason was that “happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Washington made a point of avowing that he was pleased that the members of the Touro Synagogue had a favorable opinion of his administration and had expressed “fervent wishes for my felicity.” It was formal, even a bit awkward, but in any event a touching note of appreciation.
And then came the famous words . . . . to read the remainder of this column, please click here.
