John and John Quincy Adams and Their Relationship Status with Free Exercise: It's Complicated
Recently, I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time with the Aldens.
That is an understatement. John and Priscilla (Mullins) Alden are my 12th great grandparents, through their daughter Elizabeth (Alden) Pabodie. I work with the Alden Historic Site in Duxbury, and somewhere along the way the people who lived in that house stopped being names conveniently arranged on a pedigree chart and started being people whose lives I actually want to understand.
Each October, I wrangle my little family – little because I have two children unlike my ancestor, Priscilla who had more than ten – and we head to Duxbury for a Halloween event where we play historic characters in a scripted haunt. We scare visitors who are many layers of aunts, uncles, and cousins, many times removed, because that is humanity. We are all aunts, uncles, and cousins, many times removed, whether we know it or not. Local to Plymouth County, we just happen to be a little more likely to know it.
Spending time in seventeenth and eighteenth-century Massachusetts has a way of changing the way we perceive American history. The Pilgrim Separatists, the Puritans, and the Founding Fathers are typically presented as distinct groups of people belonging to separate periods of history. In Massachusetts, particularly when tracing families across generations, those divisions fade. The people of the Revolution were the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the people who built the early communities of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay Colony. John Adams was himself a descendant of John and Priscilla Alden through his mother, Abigail (Smith) Adams. The Aldens belonged to his family history in the same way that they belong to mine.
When my first child was born, I frequented Abigail Adams State Park. Baby in a carrier, I walked the perimeter and read the quotes of First Lady Abigail Adams (also an Alden descendant), found etched on plaques and set on boulders. That decade ago, I remember thinking, “I would have liked her. I wonder if we would have been friends.” Probably not. I likely would have said something uncouth or embarrassing. Favorite quotes include:
“If we mean to have Heroes, Statesmen, and Philosophers, we should have learned women.”
“May the foundation of our new constitution, be Justice, Truth and Righteousness. Like the wise Mans house may it be founded upon a Rock and its pillars reach to Heaven...”
“In the new Code of Laws, which I suppose, it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands.”
As distant, and still as close as I am to my distant Adams cousins, I’m often faced with the question of whether our founding fathers truly intended to form a secular nation or if they desired Christianity to be an assumed building block. For this reason, I developed an interest in the religious lives of John Adams and John Quincy Adams. To others, the question is often reduced to whether the Founders were ‘Christian,’ usually for the purpose of making a political argument. That question becomes less useful when their writings are considered. John Adams and John Quincy Adams both believed in God, specifically Jesus. Both considered their obligations to God throughout their lives. Neither accepted religious doctrine simply because someone else told him that he should.
Our Adams presidents’ relationship with God was considerably more interesting than a denominational label. However, understanding them requires a deep dive into religious labeling itself through the eyes of both Colonial and contemporary New England faiths. For example, many parts of Massachusetts have become predominantly Roman Catholic since the days of the Adams presidents. The language used by those of the Catholic faith is vastly different from what it would be to Protestant and other Christian denominations. While many faith traditions were and are present, some were more predominant during certain eras.
Tradition | Protestant / Catholic / Other | Dominant Dates | Position / Doctrine | Current (General) |
Separatist | Protestant | 1620–17th c. | Plymouth Colony tradition. Separatists withdrew from the Church of England. Calvinist and Trinitarian. Distinct from the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. | No major denomination retains “Separatist” today; tradition fed into Congregationalism. |
Puritan / Congregational | Protestant | 1630s–18th c. | Massachusetts Bay tradition. Calvinist, Trinitarian, and Congregational. Local churches were autonomous constituted by covenant. | Historical form extinct. Descendant Congregational bodies vary in theology. |
Anglican / Episcopal | Protestant | 16th c.–1780s | Church of England. Trinitarian and Episcopal. Anglican congregations became increasingly established. | Reorganized after independence as the Episcopal Church. |
Quaker / Society of Friends | Protestant | 1650s–present | Rejects a professional clergy and emphasizes the Inner Light. | Small continuing tradition. |
Baptist | Protestant | 1660s–present | Early Baptists included Calvinistic theology. Rejects infant baptism and the Congregational system. | Current tradition |
Roman Catholic | Catholic | Colonial presence; growth from 1780s; | Present marginally in colonial Massachusetts. Massive 19th century immigration transformed presence. | Large tradition in Massachusetts |
Nondenominational | Other | Primarily 20th c.–present | Identify outside standard structures. Theology varies; many evangelical, although the label does not establish theology. Not Protestant nor Catholic. | Current tradition |
Definitions used hereafter are based on terms used by Congregational churches of the Adams’ time and place. Some examples of differences follow. The comparison provided is between Congregational, Catholic, and Baptist:
Term | Congregational[i] | Baptist[ii] | Catholic[iii] | |
Baptism | Water baptism of believers and children; a sign of God's covenant | Submersion baptism of believers. Follows a profession of faith; infants and young children are not baptized. | A sacrament of regeneration that removes original sin and incorporates the baptized person into Christ and the Church. Infants are baptized. | |
Covenant | God’s binding promises through Christ. A church covenant is a voluntary commitment as a body of believers. | God's relationship with humanity through the biblical covenants, culminating in the New Covenant in Christ. | ||
Church | The body of believers in Jesus. Used for both the local church and the universal body of believers. | The apostolic Church founded by Christ, possessing sacramental authority through a hierarchy in communion with Rome. | ||
Communion | Communion | The Lord's Supper or Communion | Eucharist. Bread and wine become Christ's Body and Blood through transubstantiation while retaining their appearances. | |
Rejects transubstantiation while understanding it as a sign through which believers spiritually commune with Christ and each other. | ||||
Salvation | Calvinist: salvation through God's grace rather than human merit. Congregational: emphasizes election, justification by faith demonstrated through works. | Salvation is through God's grace by personal faith in Jesus Christ alone. | Salvation comes through God's grace in Christ. Justification involves forgiveness renewal, with the Christian responding to and cooperating with grace through works. | |
Saint | A Christian believer. | A believer. Baptists do not canonize, invoke intercession, or recognize a separate class of Christians possessing the ability to mediate in prayer. | A deceased Christian formally recognized as being in heaven and worthy of public veneration. Saints may be asked to intercede. | |
A Church Without Walls
The story of First Church in Quincy begins in 1636, almost a century before John Adams was born, when the area was still part of Braintree. Its settlers organized as a Congregational church. This term carried considerably more meaning in seventeenth-century Massachusetts than it does today. There was no Congregational denomination for them to join, for in this faith tradition the congregation itself is the church. In an emerging nation, where buildings did not come prefabricated, the understanding of ‘church’ was human in nature.
This was one of the defining features of New England Puritanism. Unlike the hierarchical Church of England they had left behind where authority descending through bishops and an established ecclesiastical structure, Congregationalists believed that a local body of believers could gather together and constitute a church. Each congregation governed its own affairs, determined membership, and accepted responsibility for maintaining the community it created.
When the people of Braintree gathered their church, they were both constructing a place to worship and agreeing to become a community by accepting obligations to God and each other. John Adams was born into this tradition. By this time, nearly a century had passed since the congregation first gathered and the theology within New England Congregationalism was shifting.[i] The structure of the church remained Congregational, but the beliefs expressed within it were no longer strictly those of the Puritans. This distinction became pivotal to the religious life of the Adams family.
The Almighty and the Independent Mind
Where First Parish was gathered in 1636, its history spans the period between the establishment of the Massachusetts Bay settlements and early America. During that time, its theology changed considerably and the Adams family changed with it. The congregation that began within the Calvinist tradition of Puritanism moved toward a more liberal position: Unitarianism.[ii]
John Adams grew up in a culture that placed God at its center. Adams grew increasingly unwilling to accept theological claims inconsistent with reason. Ultimately, he rejected Calvinist predestination, among other teachings.[iii] Adams believed in providence, in a creator, in accountability, and in Christianity as a source of ethics. He disagreed with what humans claimed about God but not with the existence of God. Recent discussions treat his rejection of doctrine as evidence that his beliefs were ceremonial, but his own writings do not support such a simple conclusion and Adams argued that theology was worth comprehensive discussion.
His son, John Quincy Adams inherited that trait. His diaries contain decades of religious thought.[iv] He poured over scripture, attended services, recorded sermons, and considered theological arguments. He did not always agree with his parents and was at times more receptive to traditional Christian doctrine than either John or Abigail.[v] His faith was deeply personal.
In 1814, while involved in negotiations that would contribute to ending the War of 1812, John Quincy Adams wrote, “on the providence of God alone is my reliance.”[vi] He prayed for judgment, vigilance, and strength sufficient to meet the responsibilities before him and believed those responsibilities encompassed family, country, and the interests of humanity. His was not a detached god associated with a broad characterization of the Founders as deists. He believed in a God he could rely upon and to whom he remained accountable.
The combination of belief and examination makes considerably more sense when both men are placed within the history of First Parish Church. The congregation itself has been questioning and changing for generations. Its movement away from Calvinism did not occur because its members suddenly stopped prioritizing religion. They cared enough to disagree about the nature of deity, humanity, salvation, and the authority of inherited doctrine.
A concept prevailed through those changes: Covenant.
Divine Social Contract
The modern concept of Covenant is so familiar within Christianity that its original meaning is easy to overlook. Covenant entered English through the Old French convenant, meaning an agreement or pact, with deeper roots in the Latin convenire: to come together, agree, or assemble.
For early New England Congregationalists, this was broader than etymology and described what actions took place.
They came together.
The word covenant was not incidental to the organization of First Church. It described the relationship upon which the church was founded. A covenant was a binding agreement carrying mutual obligation. For Puritans, the model was biblical. God remains in covenant with his people, and believers enter into covenant with God and with one another. Members assume duties to the community they join and to the God they worship.
This concept was biblical long before it reached New England. Hebrew Scripture
describes covenants involving Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Israel. Christianity understands Christ through the language of a new covenant. The Puritans carried that understanding into the organization of their churches and communities. John Adams inherited this religious culture even as he rejected significant portions of its theology. John Quincy Adams nevertheless saw a connection between them. On April 13, 1837, he recorded a conversation with Charles Follen concerning the covenants of the Old and New Testaments. During that discussion, he considered whether the biblical concept of covenant had political implications. He wrote that it appeared to support the principle that, “by the Law of Nature all legitimate Government is founded in compact.” He considered whether biblical covenant had influenced the development of human rights and, “the foundations of Government.”[vii] Adams recognized within biblical covenant a familiar political principle: legitimate authority could be created through compact.
John Adams described rulers as, “trustees for the people.” A trustee possesses authority, but that authority has been entrusted for a purpose. It carries obligations and remains subject to accountability. Covenant worked in much the same way. It does not eliminate authority but establishes the relationship within which authority operates. The connection also explains a seemingly contradictory aspect of their character. Both men were willing to reject theological claims, challenge ministers, and depart from the beliefs of prior generations. Neither seems to have understood that intellectual independence as rebellion against God. They distinguished between God and the institutions that claimed to speak for him.
John Quincy Adams returned repeatedly to the question of what God required of him rather than what a church required him to believe. His beliefs, public service, citizenship, and liberty carried obligations. In 1835, Adams listened to the Reverend William Parsons Lunt preach about the purpose of Christianity. Adams later recorded his own understanding. The relationship could be reduced, in his view, to two principles:
God is the Father of humanity, and human beings are therefore brothers to one another.
Duty to God required the affection and obedience of a child toward a parent. Duty toward humanity required brotherly love.
He called the idea “simple, comprehensive and sublime.”[viii] He was interested in doctrine, sometimes intensely so, but his faith ultimately returned to relationship.
In God We Trust. Terms and Conditions Apply
In 1779, Adams was selected to draft the Massachusetts constitution. The resulting document, ratified in 1780, became an important model for the federal Constitution that followed seven years later. It also reflects the complicated religious inheritance of a state whose political institutions developed alongside its Congregational churches.
MA Constitution
In the MA Constitution[ix], Article II protected the right to worship according to individual conscience. Article III, however, authorized public funding for Protestant religious instruction and worship. It also permitted the government to require attendance at religious instruction under specified conditions. The constitution promised equal legal protection to peaceful Christian denominations, but its protections did not amount to religious equality as Americans understand it today. Chapter VI also required certain elected officials to declare their belief in Christianity before assuming office. Massachusetts had not abandoned the idea that religious belief could be a qualification for public authority.
Although Adams drafted most of the constitution, he later explained that Article III, concerning public religion, was the one article he had deliberately left to others. He could not produce language that satisfied his judgment while also appearing likely to win public acceptance. The question of public financial support for religion was among the most contentious issues confronting the constitutional convention and was not a minor disagreement. The Massachusetts Constitution therefore cannot be presented as a document establishing modern separation of church and state, nor can Adams be credited with rejecting every religious qualification it contained. His own draft included Christian requirements for public office.
Federal Constitution
The Federal Constitution[x] of 1787 presented a different choice. Adams was serving in London and did not participate in its drafting, and the contrast is striking. Article VI prohibited religious tests for federal office, reversing the approach Massachusetts had taken. The First Amendment subsequently prohibits Congress from establishing religion and protects its free exercise. These were different constitutional arrangements, established by different bodies of people exercising different governmental powers. They also demonstrate why it is dangerous to describe the Founders as though they held a single, settled position on religion.
Treaty of Tripoli
In 1797, Adams ratified The Treaty of Tripoli[xi] which declared that the United States government was not founded upon Christianity. The declaration appeared in a diplomatic agreement with Tripoli, a Muslim state in current day Libya, where the distinction between religious identity and governmental authority had immediate practical importance. The treaty's English Article 11 has no corresponding passage in the surviving Arabic text, and there is no evidence that Adams personally drafted the statement. Nevertheless, he ratified the treaty containing it, following the Senate's unanimous consent among those present.
We are left with three documents that resist an easy modern classification:
The Faith of Their Fathers
The documents do not prove that Adams underwent a conversion from religious establishment to modern secularism, nor do they establish that he believed government should be indifferent to religion. His later writings and presidential proclamations make that interpretation difficult to sustain. They demonstrate that religious conviction, constitutional authority, and national religious identity were not necessarily understood as the same thing. Adams could participate in a state constitutional system that supported religion while accepting a federal constitutional that imposed no religious test and believe that religion was indispensable to morality while ratifying a treaty denying that the federal government was founded upon Christianity.
The historical record permits for the inconsistency of these records. The religious covenant of their New England ancestors and the political compact of the American republic shared an understanding that authority carried obligations, but they did not establish identical relationships. The former bound a community through commitment to God and each other; the latter established civil authority through the consent of the governed. The Adamses inherited both traditions, and their writings reveal how deeply each informed their understanding of duty. Their history reveals that recognizing the obligations of government does not require treating it as a religious institution.
Today, the history of the Adams Family occupies the same physical space. John Adams lies beneath the church of a congregation founded almost a century before his birth and erected two years after he died. John Quincy Adams lies near him, beneath the church in which he worshipped, listened to sermons, and considered his relationship with God well into old age.
Following this family forward eventually leads into the same world. They carry shared ancestry while the religious communities established by the first generations of New Englanders continued to shape the questions their descendants ask long after the original settlements had disappeared. The theology changed dramatically between Separatist generations and John Quincy Adams's. The relationship with God remained a question that each generation had to answer for itself. Perhaps that is why the concept of covenant remains.
[x] https://www.primarysourcecoop.org/publications/jqa/document/jqadiaries-v33-1837-04-p231--entry13
[xi] https://www.primarysourcecoop.org/publications/jqa/document/jqadiaries-v40-1835-06-p001--entry28
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