![]() In a diary entry towards the end of his life he wrote, “I have at all times been a sincere believer in the Supreme Creator of the world, of an immortal principle within myself, responsible to that Creator for my conduct upon earth, and of the divine mission of the crucified Saviour, proclaiming immortal life and preaching peace on earth, good will towards men, the natural equality of all mankind, and the law, `Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’”Īdams was a man of faith, but also a skeptic. Adams felt that the answer to this question was beyond the reach of human knowledge. What, then, did Adams believe? His father, John Adams, was a Unitarian, which is to say that he rejected the Trinitarian deity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. “With the most perfect deference and respect for the legislature of the college,” Adams wrote, “I must question their authority to require my subscription to a creed not recognized by the Constitution or the laws of the state.” (Harvard complied.) He read deeply in the theology of his day, but he favored liberal thinkers like Jean-Baptiste Massillon, much admired by Voltaire and d’Alembert, and John Tillotson, Dean of Canterbury in the last third of the 17 th century and a leading voice of religious tolerance.Īdams was so deeply committed to the principle of freedom of conscience that when Harvard made him the first Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, he asked to be excused from a required religious test. Yet for a man whose entire life was shaped by Christian faith and Christian duty, Adams was a remarkably non-dogmatic believer. He read the Bible virtually every morning of his life and went to church without fail on the Sabbath, often attending two services. ![]() ![]() Of all American presidents, John Quincy Adams was perhaps the most deeply immersed in Scripture and in Christian theology. What kind of Christian was John Quincy Adams?
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