"Remember, it was you who brought up the issue of the difference between how people are characterized and how they are in actuality.
"If you can cite me actual words from John Adams himself that he repudiated Christ and the Holy Spirit, I would consider that as dispositive of the matter. Short of that, I'm not willing to "speculate." "
A little googling can produce a lot of quotes. You might begin here:
John Adams quotes against religion
Or, go back to my original link, and read this:
"John and Abigail Adams were active members of the First Parish Church in Quincy, which was already unitarian in doctrine by 1753.
"Although she did not sign the membership book (John did), she attended the church, supported it, and showed active concern and care for its ministry. She is a celebrated figure in her congregation's tradition.
"Abigail's theology is clearly stated in her correspondence. Writing to her son, John Quincy Adams, on May 5, 1816, she said, "I acknowledge myself a unitarian -- Believing that the Father alone, is the supreme God, and that Jesus Christ derived his Being, and all his powers and honors from the Father." "There is not any reasoning which can convince me, contrary to my senses, that three is one, and one three."
Now, just consider that Abigail Adams was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister, this shows the whole family had moved a long way from it's roots, I'd say.
Do you disagree?
In this, she and Isaac Newton would be in accord — both Christians, and yet "monotheists," not Trinitarians. To an empiricist mindset, Abigail Adam's observation makes perfect sense.
If it is true that John and Abigail moved "away" from Congregationalism to Unitarianism, do you consider this to be some kind of "improvement" in the status of their religious beliefs? Or as a dilution or weakening of them, in response to the spirit of the age? Just wondering where you stand on this....
YHAOS's link from the other day is a treasure trove of the writings of Thomas Jefferson. In it, there's a fascinating exchange of letters between TJ and John Adams having to do with their religious beliefs. It's interesting that both men had little use either for Platonists or Roman Catholics (and they didn't recognize much, if any, difference between the two). In many of the quotes from Adams found at your link, we find him seemingly railing "against religion" in general, when he was much more likely actually railing against the Roman Church. In this, he had all the "correct" prejudices of an old-time, Bible-based Protestant (whether Congregationalist or Unitarian).
But as you can clearly see from the Declaration of Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Adams regarded religious belief, instruction, and practice (preferably Protestant) as both a "right" and a "duty" of the citizen.
For evidently Adams regarded atheism as monstrously destructive, both to the person and to civil society. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson (November 13, 1815), he wrote:
I have received Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Price, by William Morgan, F.R.S. In pages 151 and 155 Mr. Morgan says: “So well assured was Dr. Price of the establishment of a free Constitution in France, and of the subsequent overthrow of despotism throughout Europe, as the consequence of it, that he never failed to express his gratitude to heaven for having extended his life to the present happy period, in which after sharing the benefits of one revolution, he has been spared to be a witness to two other revolutions, both glorious. But some of his correspondents were not quite so sanguine in their expectations from the last of the revolutions; and among these, the late American Ambassador, Mr. John Adams. In a long letter which he wrote to Dr. Price at this time, so far from congratulating him on the occasion, he expresses himself in terms of contempt, in regard to the French Revolution; and after asking rather too severely what good was to be expected from a nation of Atheists, he concluded with foretelling the destruction of a million of human beings as the probable consequence of it. These harsh censures and gloomy predictions were particularly ungrateful to Dr. Price, nor can it be denied that they must have then appeared as the effusions of a splenetic mind, rather than as the sober reflections of an unbiased understanding.”Of course, Adams was exactly right about this.
A catalog of quotations taken out of context really can't tell you all that much, BroJoeK.
Thanks so very much for writing!