In the ear­ly Unit­ed States, devout Chris­tians who would impose their beliefs on oth­ers were in the minor­i­ty among the country’s founders. Thomas Jefferson’s views on the sub­ject are well-known. Much more con­ser­v­a­tive than Jef­fer­son, fel­low Vir­gin­ian George Wash­ing­ton made fre­quent state­ments on reli­gion as part of the essen­tial tex­ture of pub­lic life. But while Wash­ing­ton dis­cussed reli­gion as a com­mu­nal affair with impor­tant social and polit­i­cal dimen­sions, like Jef­fer­son he endorsed reli­gious lib­er­ty and free­dom of con­science and belief.

Wash­ing­ton went fur­ther in defense of reli­gious minori­ties than the huge­ly influ­en­tial the­o­rist of reli­gious tol­er­a­tion, John Locke. The prin­ci­ple of tol­er­a­tion was unique in Europe and Eng­land, where “state-spon­sored reli­gion was the norm,” as New­port, Rhode Island’s his­toric Touro Syn­a­gogue explains.

But the idea was usu­al­ly tak­en to mean that “non-Chris­tians were to be ‘tol­er­at­ed’ for their beliefs” in a pater­nal­ist sense, “with the hope that ‘Jews, Turks, and Infi­dels” would become Chris­t­ian.” Wash­ing­ton, how­ev­er, declared:

It is now no more that tol­er­a­tion is spo­ken of, as if it was by the indul­gence of one class of peo­ple, that anoth­er enjoyed the exer­cise of their inher­ent nat­ur­al rights. For 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 good cit­i­zens, in giv­ing it on all occa­sions their effec­tu­al sup­port.

These words come from Washington’s short 1790 let­ter to the “the Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tion in New­port, Rhode Island,” the first in a series of let­ters writ­ten to cit­i­zens of New­port after he and then-sec­re­tary of state Jef­fer­son made a vis­it. The address responds direct­ly to a let­ter of wel­come read to him on his arrival in the city by Moses Seixas, an offi­cial of the first Jew­ish con­gre­ga­tion in New­port, which states:

Deprived as we hereto­fore have been of the invalu­able rights of free Cit­i­zens, we now (with a deep sense of grat­i­tude to the Almighty dis­pos­er of all events) behold a Gov­ern­ment, erect­ed by the Majesty of the People—a Gov­ern­ment, which to big­otry gives no sanc­tion, to per­se­cu­tion no assistance—but gen­er­ous­ly afford­ing to All lib­er­ty of con­science, and immu­ni­ties of Cit­i­zen­ship: deem­ing every one, of what­ev­er Nation, tongue, or lan­guage, equal parts of the great gov­ern­men­tal Machine….

As did many such procla­ma­tions, the doc­u­ment gloss­es the bru­tal con­tra­dic­tion of slav­ery, indige­nous slaugh­ter, and actu­al dis­crim­i­na­tion reli­gious minori­ties faced. Nonethe­less, the demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples Seixas out­lined so accord­ed with Washington’s ideals that the first pres­i­dent repeat­ed key phras­es ver­ba­tim. This is no mere pan­der­ing. When Wash­ing­ton arrived in New­port in 1790, state leg­is­la­tures were in the process of rat­i­fy­ing what was then the Third Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion, which we know as the First, pro­hibit­ing the estab­lish­ment of state reli­gion and grant­i­ng free­dom of the press.

Argu­ments over reli­gious lib­er­ty were fierce, and tol­er­a­tion had strict lim­its. In some states “the rights of minor­i­ty groups such as Bap­tists, Pres­by­te­ri­ans, Catholics and Quak­ers were restrict­ed,” notes Touro. “In most states, non-Chris­tians were denied the rights of full cit­i­zen­ship, such as hold­ing pub­lic office. Even in reli­gious­ly lib­er­al Rhode Island, Jews were not allowed to vote.” While the First Amend­ment “did lit­tle to erase these injus­tices,” Washington’s let­ter set out ide­al con­di­tions in which the country’s “enlarged and lib­er­al pol­i­cy” grant­ed “lib­er­ty of con­science and immu­ni­ties of cit­i­zen­ship” to all.

That Wash­ing­ton would make such claims in Rhode Island bears par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance giv­en that the state is “most not­ed as the place where reli­gious free­dom was actu­al­ly born,” writes for­mer Ambas­sador and UN Del­e­gate John Loeb. The colony’s 1663 char­ter “set forth the first polit­i­cal enti­ty in the world to sep­a­rate the church from the state.” Washington’s state­ment one hun­dred and twen­ty-sev­en years lat­er “applied—and con­tin­ues to apply—to every Amer­i­can,” Loeb argues, despite its spe­cif­ic address “to a small group of Jew­ish cit­i­zens.” But that spe­cif­ic address mat­ters. It promised inclu­sion and pro­tec­tion to a com­mu­ni­ty that had faced cen­turies of ter­ror.

As his­to­ri­an Melvin Urof­sky writes, the let­ter “to the Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tion,” like many oth­er such state­ments made by the founders, “is a trea­sure to the entire nation”—a nation that “rec­og­nized,” at least in words, “diver­si­ty for what it was, one of the country’s great­est assets, and took as its mot­to E Pluribus Unum—Out of Many, One. The sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, and with it the free­dom of reli­gion enshrined in the First Amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion, has made the Unit­ed States a bea­con of hope to oppressed peo­ples every­where.”

Read Wash­ing­ton’s con­cise “Let­ter to the Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tion in New­port, Rhode Island” here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civil­i­ty”: The Code of Decen­cy That Guid­ed America’s First Pres­i­dent

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

Har­vard Launch­es a Free Online Course to Pro­mote Reli­gious Tol­er­ance & Under­stand­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness