Vocal Point-Mark Tooley

Mark Tooley is the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. He recently wrote an article called “Removing George Washington”—which deals with the latest attack on statues and the like by today’s liberal iconoclasts. Tooley pens, “Christ Episcopal Church in Alexandria, Virginia, whose beautiful Christmas Eve services I traditionally attend, is one of the great places in America. Nearly 250 years old, George Washington as parish vestryman facilitated its construction and was later a regular worshiper. Later still, Robert E. Lee was a nearly lifelong parishioner. He was baptized and confirmed there in middle age after a personal religious rebirth. His daughter left the church a large endowment. Washington himself bequeathed the church a Bible.” But now the church is removing these marble plaques in order to be “welcoming” and not make anybody feel excluded. Mark Tooley joins Jerry Newcombe on Vocal Point to discuss the removal of our first president’s name from his own longtime church. www.theird.org

In about 2004, I began working in earnest on the book with Dr. Peter Lillback called, George Washington’s Sacred Fire. Included in that research, we made a trip to Christ Episcopal Church in Arlington. I took these photos at the time. Apparently, these marble plaques are on the chopping block: