At the time of the American Revolution, Wethersfield, a significant center of agriculture and commerce, was also a center of support for the American cause. In May 1781, George Washington was in Wethersfield to meet with French General Rochambeau to plan what turned out to be the American victory at Yorktown. Today, you can visit both the Webb House, where General Washington stayed, and our own Meetinghouse, where the General joined in a Sunday worship service and where he also attended a concert given in his honor. It is said that he was greatly impressed by the singing of our choir.

There is a tendency today to dispute the central role of Christianity in the lives and thinking of the American Revolutionary leaders. For instance, since the 1930s, many historians have denied that George Washington was a Christian. Some have described him as a Deist-someone who believes in a God who created the universe but has exerted no control over life or nature and given no supernatural revelation, suggesting that the Bible and prayer are irrelevant. However, as clearly demonstrated by evidence presented in the book George Washington's Sacred Fire by Peter A. Lillback, Washington was, indeed, a committed Christian and a man of prayer both in church and out.

Washington often credited "Divine Providence" (meaning God, in the language of the day) with America's success in the Revolutionary War and in framing and adopting its Constitution. It probably was Washington's Christian worldview that kept him twice from becoming our nation's first leader for life-once when he resigned from his position as the nation's top military leader and the second time when he retired after two terms as the nation's first President.