Adams Family Legacy

Thanks to George Grant of King's Meadow for the idea and several of the quotes:

When you read quotes or passages or documents from America's founding era, certain words mean different things to us Moderns (or post Moderns) than they did to our Founding Fathers. One example is "religion". When they used the word "religion", most of the time, if not all, they meant Christianity. When they spoke of freedom of religion, they meant that one Christian denomination or sect was not to have national status or prominence over another, as Anglicanism was in England. In fact, the states were allowed and did indeed have official state religions: Virginia-Anglican, Maryland-Catholic, Pennsylvania-Quaker, etc. Other sects or denominations often had to get permission from the state government to set up shop.

Below are quotes from John Adams, his wife Abigail, his son John Quincy and his cousin Samuel, which, if you agree with the principles espoused, speak to the current and escalating degradation of America today. They also accentuate the utter frustration facing Iraq and other countries around the world trying to make a go of a Constitutional Republic apart from biblical law as contained in God's Word and from biblical principles to be lived out in obedience to Jesus Christ.

"Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand." John Adams

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passion unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams

"The only sure and permanent foundation of virtue is religion. Let this important truth be engraven upon your heart." Abigail Adams"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected in one indissoluble bond, the principles of the civil government with the principles of Christianity. From the day of the Declaration the American people were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct." John Quincy Adams

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt....The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people." Samuel Adams

"I conceive we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the world....that the confusions that are and have been among the nations may be overruled by promoting and speedily bringing in the holy and happy period when the kingdoms of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and the people willingly bow to the sceptre of Him who is the Prince of Peace." Samuel Adams