Statement of Values

Commitment to Freedom

The George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom is committed to promoting freedom of religious belief, freedom of religious observance, religious equality and separation of church and state in the United States and around the world. It bases this commitment on President George Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790.

Education and Respect

The goal of the George Washington Institute for Religious Freedom is to help students, teachers and public leaders, through a reading of Washington’s Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport in 1790, to transcend merely tolerating our religious differences and, instead, sincerely to respect each other’s beliefs and observances. Our position reflects Washington’s words: each of us must give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” We must show respect for each other’s religious beliefs, even those most different from our own – so long as those ideas are lawful and contribute to a peaceful society.

The Letter to the Hebrew Congregation

In his Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Washington committed the newly formed United States to religious freedom and religious equality:

“The citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy—a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were 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 as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Washington and the First Amendment

Washington made his 1790 visit to Newport to encourage the state legislature to adopt the proposed bill of rights, which was added to the constitution the following year. The bill of rights begins with the words “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”