"USA should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy"

[TomPainesBones]

"The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy."
-George Washington

I've seen this quote all over the Net but never with an attributable source. Can anyone confirm where this quote is from and if it's legit?

[TomPainesBones]

1. Anyone?

Maybe it's not real after all.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Have you checked Snopes? Sometimes we can't really verify what

was said that long ago unless there is a book or a letter that is proven to be written by the figure in question.

[TomPainesBones]

4. Couldn't find anything

I can find sources for religious quotes from Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison, Allen, Paine and even Lincoln to a lesser degree.
But NOTHING confirming this quote.

I'll consider it fake (or at the very least useless) until proven otherwise.

Here's an example of some quotes that can be weilded like a sledgehammer against those who claim that the Founding Fathers were Christians:



JOHN ADAMS
John Adams letter to Charles Cushing, October 19, 1756:
“Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, ‘this would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.’”

Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11: Written during the Administration of George Washington and signed into law by John Adams.
“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”

John Adams letter to Thomas Jefferson, July 16, 1814:
"Cabalistic Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires."


THOMAS JEFFERSON
Thomas Jefferson letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800
“The clergy believe that any portion of power confided to me, will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”

Letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
“In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own”

Letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823
"One day the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in the United States will tear down the artificial scaffolding of Christianity. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His father, in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."


JAMES MADISON
Letter to William Bradford, April 1, 1774:
"Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise"

James Madison introducing the Bill of Rights at the First Federal Congress, Congressional Register, June 8, 1789:
"The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner or on any pretext infringed."


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
From Franklin’s autobiography:
“Scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself ” “...Some books against Deism fell into my hands....It happened that they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quote to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations, in short, I soon became a thorough Deist.”


ETHAN ALLEN
From Religion of the American Enlightenment:
“Denominated a Deist, the reality of which I have never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.”


THOMAS PAINE
Excerpts from The Age of Reason:
"My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."

"Whenever we read the obscene stores (of the Bible), the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the Word of God."

"...when I see throughout the greater part of this book (the Bible) scarcely anything but a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales, I cannot dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name."

"(The devout) despises the choicest gift of God to man, the Gift of Reason; and having endeavored to force upon himself the belief of a system against which reason revolts, he ungratefully calls if 'human reason' as if man could give reason to himself."

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself than this thing called Christianity”


ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Joseph Lewis quoting Lincoln in a 1924 speech in New York:
"The Bible is not my book nor Christianity my profession. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma."

Lincoln in a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield, after the death of Willie Lincoln:
"My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years, and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them."

[Igel]

3. Dunno.

http://www.truetruths.com/COMMUNITY.htm sources the quote to "2000 Years of Disbelief", James A. Haught. I don't have the book, or easy access to the book. One on-line quibbler pointed out to the author of a similar book that many such books of quotations poorly source their quotes, and the author defended the practice (he didn't have millions to pay people to verify the quotes); whether Haught was more scrupulous or not, I don't know.

http://etext.virginia.edu/washington/fitzpatrick/ has Washington's writings. I've tried searches for "foundation" and got too many hits; "foundation, free" and "foundation free" yield nothing. "Clergy" with a following space yields nothing; "clergy" with no space yields a plethora of references to "clergyman" and related words. You may want to try some searches.

On the other hand, it's not likely that every single word Washington ever wrote was faithfully compiled. Then there are the apocryphal sayings, like the Islamic "hadith": things that other people say that they heard GW say, or others that knew GW heard him say.