John Adams

“The general principles upon which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity…I will avow that I believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and the attributes of God.”
[June 28, 1813; Letter to Thomas Jefferson]
“We recognize no Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!”
[April 18, 1775, on the eve of the Revolutionary War after a British major ordered John Adams, John Hancock, and those with them to disperse in “the name of George the Sovereign King of England." ]
• “[July 4th] ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty.”
[letter written to Abigail on the day the Declaration was approved by Congress]
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." --October 11, 1798
"I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means, and my busy life, would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen." December 25, 1813 letter to Thomas Jefferson
"Without Religion this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite Company, I mean Hell." [John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817]


John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams had a firm faith. If Christianity is proven by character, Adams was surely a Christian. This stubborn man whose motto was "Watch and Pray," spoke openly of his trust in God: but not for that did he win his nickname "Old Eloquence." Rather, it was for championing principle and attacking the institution of slavery.
He was an unyielding patriarch, tough as the granite of his native New England. Every day he read two to five chapters of the Bible in the original Hebrew and Greek and drew strength from them. He prayed daily. Not content merely to read, he acted on what he read. So often did he put principle before party he became highly unpopular with his followers.
John Quincy did not let their disapproval alter his course. "The Sermon on the Mount commends me to lay up for myself treasures, not on earth, but in Heaven. My hopes of a future life are all founded upon the Gospel of Christ..." he had written his father. After his single term as President, he returned to Congress.
Christ was central to John's theology. When Unitarianism emerged, denying the divinity of Christ, Adams flirted with it, but the Bible soon convinced him the doctrine was false. Either Jesus is God incarnate and our path to salvation or we have none. With characteristic rectitude John wrote as much to his parents.
"I find in the New Testament, Jesus Christ accosted in His own presence by one of his disciples as God, without disclaiming the appellation...I see him named in the great prophecy of Isaiah concerning him to be the mighty God."

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