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':4s
1understand the
Christian religion, it was,
and
is,
a revelation.
But how has it happened
that millions of fabies,
tales, legends , have been
blended with both
Jewish and Christian
revelation that have made
them the most
bloody religion that
ever e:risted?"
22
JohnAdams
The second President of the United States was perhaps more of a Puritan anda
fundamentalist than the others, though it is difficult to hang a hard·and fast label on
him. He was " ... called a Puritan, Deist, Orthodox Ch ristian [fundamentallst] , and
Humanist in one lifetime ... "
(In God We Trust,
p. 75).
Famous American historian Page Smith wrote : "John Adams was as determined
to hold to
the reality of a personal God and lite beyond death
as he was to eschew
Calvinism' s insistence on predestination, infant damnatton, election , and other
tenets held in stríctest observance by his Braintree [Massachusetts] forebears"
(John Adams,
vol.
1,
p.
29).
Presiden! Adams knew that churchianity could not resist blending "paganism
with the Bíble." He wrote: "As
1
understand the Christian religion ,
il
was, and
is,
a
revelation.
But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have
been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them
the
most bloody religion that ever existed?" (In God We Trust,
p.
75).
Adams asked the churches of his day some very hard questions: "Where do we
find a precept in the Gospel requiríng Ecclesiastical Synods? Convocations?
Councils? Decrees? Creeds? Confessions? Oaths? Subscriptions? and whole cart–
loads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in these days?"
(The
Adams Papers,
vol. 1, p. 8.)
The
PLAIN TRUTH July 1976