New books explore religious values of patriotic Americans

"The Spiritual Journey of George Washington" by Janice Connell and "Grace Under Fire," edited by Andrew Carroll, deal with the religious values of patriotic Americans. The first focuses on George Washington and the second on armed services personnel during wartime.

Connell presents Washington as a man of profound spiritual depth. She devotes 13 pages to the exact text of "The Rules of Civility," which he copied by hand when he was 13. The rules include directives against coughing loudly, dozing during conversations, killing lice in public and spitting into the fireplace. Although Connell compares the rules to "Ignatian discipline designed to form the authentic spiritual man," the injunctions actually focus on manners expected in the 18th century.

The author also devotes 16 full pages to quoting a set of handwritten prayers believed to be in Washington's handwriting, surmising that he used the text for daily prayer.

Although the first president always referred to God as "Providence," Connell claims that "God's only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, was the light of his (Washington's) life." When the Founding Father on rare occasions used the word "Christian," it was in the context of either decency or morality. The author, however, suggests that Washington was so deeply imbued with Catholic/Anglican imagery that he would have readily accepted a vision of Mary, who, according to oral tradition, appeared to him, accompanied by a angel who foretold that the Union would last as long as "the stars remain and the heavens send down dew upon the earth."

Throughout the book, Connell reads her own interpretations into the factual and quasi-factual material presented as evidence of Washington's ongoing religious depth and development. Admittedly, George Washington was a brave, admirable, Christian man, but the author confuses Catholic belief and spirituality with the ideals of stoicism, Promethean deeds, honor and reputation -- clearly the values of an 18th-century gentleman.

Carroll, the editor of "Grace Under Fire," began the Legacy Project, an organization that collects personal wartime correspondence, in 1998. The book contains letters from the Revolutionary War to the war on terrorism. Carroll's intent is to reveal the devotion, courage, honor, faith and resilience of individual combatants who have borne the "burdens of Job" and are models of perseverance for all of us who face smaller daily battles against "despair, sin and doubt."

Many men feel like cogs in a huge wheel and express shock over the death of friends, and terrible guilt over killing enemies. A pilot writes how hard it was to sing about "peace on earth" when he might kill thousands the next day. However, most letters reveal great trust in God and show energetic chaplains holding services all hours of the day. A sailor describes men of different faiths joining him in the Seder meal and of his hope that the United Nations would some day achieve peace.

The most striking aspect of the letters is the transformation of many combatants through the experience of war: spiritual growth resulting from long periods of reflection, near-death experiences, confrontations with fear and even captivity. One chaplain reports that soldiers facing death "lose all the trivia of modern society," and "face to face with the bare essentials of what is human," are humanized by suffering.

In one letter, a soldier flying over Iraq realizes that he is looking at the birthplace of civilization. Readers might be led to wonder if the fate of civilization might now be threatened at its very place of origin and also to reflect throughout the book on how many wars and casualties our country has experienced in its relatively short history.

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Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops