What was john adams religion

Throughout his childhood, he went to meetinghouse services every Sunday, and, in his own words, read the Bible "in daily stints from cover to cover. In a s national radio broadcast he elaborated: "Our discoveries in science have proved that all the way from the galaxies in the heavens to the constitution of the atom, the universe is controlled by inflexible law. Somewhere a supreme power created these laws. At some period, man was differentiated from the beast, and was endowed with a spirit from which springs conscience, idealism and spiritual yearnings.

It is impossible to believe that there is not here a divine touch and a purpose from the creator of the universe. I believe we can express these things only in religious faith. Hoover's work as a civil engineer led him to travel abroad extensively, making it difficult for him to attend church regularly, but when he returned to the United States, he attended informal Quaker meetings.

Religion was a primary issue in the presidential election, which saw Hoover easily triumph over Democratic candidate Al Smith, a Roman Catholic. Perhaps because of his own unorthodox religious background, Hoover never attempted to exploit many Americans' unease over Smith's faith. In his Aug. I come of Quaker stock. My ancestors were persecuted for their beliefs. Here they sought and found religious freedom. By blood and conviction I stand for religious tolerance both in act and in spirit.

The glory of our American ideals is the right of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. Smith's religion, however, was likely a deciding factor in Hoover's landslide victory; Hoover received electoral votes to Smith's 87 and carried all but eight states. Because his Quaker faith prevented him from swearing the inaugural oath of office, Hoover elected to take an affirmation of office instead.

He is one of only two U. During his presidency, Hoover helped organize the building of a Quaker meetinghouse in Washington, D. He remained relatively private regarding his own religious practice but did not hesitate to invoke religious imagery during his speeches. In an Oct. He wrote of the Bible: "As a nation we are indebted to the Book of Books for our national ideals and representative institutions.

Their preservation rests in adhering to its principles. Roosevelt was born on Jan. Roosevelt would remain a communicant in the Episcopal Church his entire life, and would later be elected a vestryman and eventually senior warden. As a teenager he participated in missionary work organized by his boarding school, including on multiple occasions playing organ at rural church services.

In his adult life, however, Roosevelt seldom attended church -- a source of aggravation to his wife, Eleanor. In a diary entry, she noted that his recent attendance two weeks in a row was surely a "great sacrifice to please me. Despite his lack of church attendance, Roosevelt maintained a personal inner faith. According to Eleanor, he "had a strong religious feeling and his religion was a very personal one.

I think he actually felt he could ask God for guidance and receive it. He never talked about his religion or his beliefs and never seemed to have any intellectual difficulties about what he believed. He mentioned God in all four of his inaugural addresses, asking for divine guidance through difficult times. Roosevelt asserted the importance of the Bible in American history, declaring: "We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic.

Its teaching, as has been wisely suggested, is ploughed into the very heart of the race. A year later, in the State of the Union address, delivered less than one month after the United States entered World War II, Roosevelt framed the conflict in religious terms: "Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race.

We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: 'God created man in his own image. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God.

He would remain a member of the church his entire life, though his attendance at Sunday services became increasingly rare as he grew older. As president, Truman made frequent references to religion and Christianity in his public speeches. On April 16, , in a statement before a joint session of Congress, Truman asked God for guidance, saying, "I ask only to be a good and faithful servant of my Lord and my people.

You will see that our Founding Fathers believed that God created this nation. And I believe it, too. But Truman also believed in the importance of religious freedom and displayed respect for all faiths. In a letter written after his time as president, he stated: "Jews, Mohammedans, Buddhists and Confucians worship the same God as the Christians say they do.

He is all seeing, all hearing and all knowing. Nothing, not even the sparrow or the smallest bug escapes His notice. Truman viewed the Cold War, which escalated in intensity throughout his time as president, as essentially a moral conflict. He believed that communism was "a tyranny led by a small group who have abandoned their faith in God. These tyrants have forsaken ethical and moral beliefs.

I may send him to see the top Buddhist and the Grand Lama of Tibet. If I can mobilize the people who believe in a moral world against the Bolshevik materialists, who believe as Henry Wallace does 'that the end justifies the means' -- we can win this fight.

Privately, Truman's views on religion were somewhat idiosyncratic. In a letter to his wife, he wrote that Baptists "do not want a person to go to shows or dance or do anything for a good time. Well, I like to do all those things and play cards besides. So you see I am not very strong as a Baptist. I believe in people living what they believe and talking afterwards. Truman once stated outright that he was "not a religious man. Billy Graham in , he cut the meeting short in response to being told by Graham that he needed "faith in Christ and His death on the Cross.

Born into a Baptist family in Lamar, Mo. He later claimed to have read the entire Bible twice through before starting school. He was baptized at age That doesn't mean that I adhere to any sect. A democracy cannot exist without a religious base. I believe in democracy. Deeply religious, Eisenhower's mother and father were both members of the Brethren in Christ Church, a Mennonite offshoot in Kansas, and were later involved in the "Bible Student" movement, a forerunner of Jehovah's Witnesses.

Eisenhower recalled that his parents "believed the admonition 'the fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. Eisenhower wrote of his childhood hometown, Abilene, Kan. From memory alone I can identify seven and everybody I knew went to church. The only exception were people we thought of as the toughs -- poolroom sharks, we called them.

Social life was centered around the churches. Church picnics, usually held on the riverbank, were an opportunity to gorge on fried chicken, potato salad, and apple pie. The men pitched horseshoes, the women knitted and talked, the youngsters fished, and everyone recovered from the meal. Though Eisenhower was not a member of a church when elected president in , he became the first and only president to write and read his own prayer at his inaugural ceremony in I wanted, then, to make this faith clear without creating the impression that I intended, as the political leader of the United States, to avoid my own responsibilities in an effort to pass them on to the Deity.

I was seeking a way to point out that we were getting too secular. As the Cold War loomed, Christian leaders encouraged Americans to turn to God and away from secularism. Eisenhower agreed, saying, "Our form of government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious belief, and I don't care what it is. He became the first president to be baptized while in office. The following year, Eisenhower went further, signing a bill to add the phrase "under God" to the Pledge of Allegiance.

At the bill-signing ceremony on Flag Day in , he said, "From this day forward, the millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural school house, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty. To anyone who truly loves America, nothing could be more inspiring than to contemplate this rededication of our youth, on each school morning, to our country's true meaning. Especially is this meaningful as we regard today's world.

Over the globe, mankind has been cruelly torn by violence and brutality and, by the millions, deadened in mind and soul by a materialistic philosophy of life. Man everywhere is appalled by the prospect of atomic war. In this somber setting, this law and its effects today have profound meaning. In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America's heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country's most powerful resource, in peace or in war.

In , John F. Kennedy became the second Roman Catholic to run for the presidency. The first, New York Gov. Al Smith, ran in and was the target of anti-Catholic bigotry. By , nativist and anti-Catholic sentiments in America had tempered somewhat, though a special committee, the Fair Campaign Practices Committee, met to issue a "Special Statement on Religion in the Campaign. Kennedy agreed: "Whatever one's religion in his private life may be, for the officeholder nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts -- including the First Amendment and the strict separation of church and state," he told Look magazine.

But the controversy swirling around his religion forced him to confront the issue head-on in a speech in Houston: "I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish -- where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source -- where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials -- and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

He continued: "If I should lose on the real issues, I shall return to my seat in the Senate, satisfied that I had tried my best and was fairly judged. But if this election is decided on the basis that 40 million Americans lost their chance of being president on the day they were baptized, then it is the whole nation that will be the loser, in the eyes of Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, in the eyes of history, and in the eyes of our own people.

After being sworn in Johnson addressed the nation: "I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help -- and God's. Johnson was born into a family that had deep Baptist roots on one side and a mixture of various beliefs on the other. His father's religious beliefs varied over time, as his brother Sam recalled: "He was deeply committed to certain ideas that you might consider religious.

He was certainly a believer in the dignity of all human beings regardless of race or creed, and some of that rubbed off on all of us. Johnson chose to join the Disciples of Christ Church, which emphasized good works. Though Johnson is not remembered for his personal piety, he made clear in his commitment to expanding civil rights and creating welfare programs that he believed that Christian duty required following Christ's message of compassion and mercy.

In , he said, "From our Jewish and Christian heritage, we draw the image of the God of all mankind, who will judge his children not by their prayers and by their pretensions, but by their mercy to the poor and their understanding of the weak. We cannot cancel that strain and then claim to speak as a Christian society. Johnson's belief in helping the weak shaped how he viewed the war in Vietnam, which became a drain on his popularity as president, and his vision of building a "Great Society.

While he was still in office, Johnson asked the Rev. Billy Graham to preach at his funeral; Graham did so, officiating at Johnson's burial in Nixon was born into a devoutly religious Quaker family in Yorba Linda, Calif. His family attended an evangelical Quaker meetinghouse every Sunday, prayed silently before each meal, and observed strict prohibitions on drinking, gambling and swearing.

While in middle school, Nixon played piano for Sunday school services and sang in the church choir. He taught Sunday school services throughout the majority of his undergraduate years in college. According to Nixon, in his youth he accepted the "literal correctness of the Bible, the miracles, even the whale story. In , while an undergraduate at Whittier College, which was founded by Quakers at the turn of the 20th century, Nixon attended lectures on "The Philosophy of Christian Construction" by Dr.

Herschel Coffin. The course -- and the death of Nixon's elder brother, Harold, that same year -- had a profound effect on the young man's religious beliefs. In a series of essays written for the class, he declared that many of his childhood religious ideas had been "destroyed but there are some which I cannot bring myself to drop.

I still believe that God is the creator. I still believe that He lives today, in some form, directing the destinies of the cosmos. For the time being I shall accept the solution offered by Kant, that man can only go so far in his research and explanations; from that point on we must accept God. Haldeman, his chief of staff, that he prayed every night.

Nixon also maintained a close relationship with the Rev. Billy Graham. The evangelical preacher acted as Nixon's spiritual adviser and became a White House regular, preaching on several occasions at White House worship services instituted by the president. Nixon would occasionally mention God and religion in his public speeches, although not with the same frequency as some of his successors.

In a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, Nixon discussed the necessity of tolerance, stating that it was imperative to "recognize the right of people in the world to be different from what we are. Even some may have different religions. Even some, we must accept, may not have a religious belief, as we understand a religious belief, to believe.

Despite this appeal, Nixon himself has been accused of intolerance. Since , the National Archives has periodically released taped conversations between Nixon and his aides in which the president is heard making a variety of anti-Semitic remarks. Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Mich. He would retain this affiliation throughout his life. Although his family attended Sunday worship services, Ford's religious upbringing was not particularly strict.

He later noted that on Sundays he would "just go out and play baseball," something many of his friends in the more conservative Dutch Calvinist Church were not allowed to do. While serving as a member of Congress, Ford attended weekly Bible study meetings with colleagues in the House of Representatives. There he met Billy Zeoli, the head of a large evangelical organization, and the two quickly became good friends.

Starting in , when Ford was serving as vice president under Richard Nixon, Zeoli began sending him weekly devotional notes, each containing a Bible verse and a short prayer. Zeoli acted as Ford's spiritual mentor throughout his time in the White House, and the two met frequently for Bible study. Ford framed the contentious pardon in religious terms, declaring: "The Constitution is the supreme law of our land, and it governs our actions as citizens.

Only the laws of God, who governs our consciences, are superior to it. I do believe, with all my heart and mind and spirit, that I, not as president but as a humble servant of God, will receive justice without mercy if I fail to show mercy. Although Ford considered himself a religious man, he avoided using his spiritual convictions as a political tool.

In the presidential election, which pitted Ford against the self-declared "born-again" Christian Jimmy Carter, Ford refused Billy Zeoli's advice to publish a book on his faith.

He later stated: "I have always felt a closeness to God and have looked to a higher being for guidance and support, but I didn't think it was appropriate to advertise my religious beliefs. In the 16 years after John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, asked the American public to disregard the personal religious preferences of political candidates, the voting public had shown a general indifference to the religious beliefs of the presidential candidates.

That changed when Jimmy Carter proclaimed himself a "born-again" Christian in the presidential primaries in North Carolina. A combination of disillusionment with public morality during the Nixon and Ford years and a kinship they felt with a candidate who spoke their language led millions of evangelical Christians to vote for Carter in Describing his beliefs at the National Prayer Breakfast, Carter said, "For those of us who share the Christian faith, the words 'born again' have a very simple meaning -- that through a personal experience, we recommit our lives as humble children of God, which makes us in the realest possible sense brothers and sisters of one another.

As an year-old growing up in Plains, Ga. He later recalled that being born again was a process, not a moment: "Rather than a sudden flash of light or a sudden vision of God speaking, it involved a series of steps that have brought me steadily closer to Christ.

Thirty years later, when Carter's pastor preached a sermon in which he asked the congregation, "if you were arrested for being a Christian, Though he'd begun what would be a lifelong study of Christian theology after the death of his father, he felt he had drifted from his personal relationship to Christ.

This sermon led him to recommit his life to Christ. Following his presidency, Carter returned home to Georgia, resumed teaching Sunday school classes and wrote two books explaining his religious beliefs. When the Southern Baptist Convention, to which he belonged, came to espouse an increasingly conservative Christianity, Carter said, "I feel a threat in my own church from Baptist fundamentalists.

Though divorced and not a regular churchgoer, Reagan, not his born-again opponent Jimmy Carter, received the support of the newly mobilized religious right in the presidential campaign. Christian conservatives responded enthusiastically to Reagan's belief, expressed in a rally, that "the First Amendment was written not to protect the people and their laws from religious values, but to protect those values from government tyranny. Raised and baptized in the Disciples of Christ Church, Reagan did not shy away from encouraging Christianity as president.

Early in his presidency, he wrote a letter saying: "My daily prayer is that God will help me to use this position so as to serve Him. Teddy Roosevelt once called the presidency a bully pulpit. I intend to use it to the best of my ability to serve the Lord. An unsuccessful assassination attempt caused Reagan to re-evaluate and deepen his faith. God wanted that assassination attempt to happen. He gave me a wake-up call. Everything I do from now on, I owe to God.

In , Reagan supported a constitutional amendment to allow voluntary school prayer. A year later he awarded the Rev. Reagan disappointed some leaders of the religious right by putting domestic social issues on the back burner to economic initiatives and foreign affairs. As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims], — and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

President John Adams added his endorsement:. Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof.

And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed, and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof.

Clearly, those who constituted the government in the early years of the new nation — the executive and legislative branches — had no quarrel with the statement that the United States was not founded on Christianity. Context is always important. The second argument from the Christian nationalists centers on the renewal of tensions between the United States and the Barbary States — in part because Thomas Jefferson, as president, refused to continue payments to the Barbary States.

The discrepancy between the two treaties, the Christian nationalists argue, is somehow significant. Article 11 reads as follows: As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, — as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims], — and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

President John Adams added his endorsement: Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. Adams, J. Adams eds. Adams to Rev. Bancroft, 21 Jan. Campbell ed. Waldstreicher ed.

Adams to N. Webb, 1 Sep. Adams to S. Quincy, 22 Apr. Locke and J. Yolton eds. Burleigh, John Adams New York, , p. Adams to A. Adams, 6 Jul. Hogan and C. Adams, 3 Jul. Adams to T. Jefferson, 24 Sep. Cappon ed.

Fea in Waldstreicher ed. Ferling, John Adams Oxford, , p. Gaustad, Faith of our Fathers London, , p. About time somebody got it right!!! Refer more in depth to the work of Richard Allen Ryerson for this belief of Adams, as he shows it was a core tenet in his philosophy [cf. I wonder, therefor, how you came to the conclusion that Adams was in any way a similar philosopher to Thomas More who created the idea of utopia.

An excellent and well researched and written paper. Quite revealing. In my research of Adams I never could agree that he was a Unitarian.