The Bible in American Law and Politics. John R. Vile
style of the Bible could be easily copied “without great affectation,” he observed,
But for pathos of narrative; for the selections of incidents that go directly to the heart; for the picturesque of character and manner; the selection of circumstances that mark the individuality of persons; for copiousness, grandeur, and sublimity of imagery; for unanswerable cogency and closeness of reasoning; and for irresistible force of persuasion: no book in the world deserves to be so unceasingly studied, and so profoundly meditated upon as the Bible. (Adams 1848, 118–19)
Again recommending the reading of the Bible, Adams warned, “Be careful of all not to let your reading make you a pedant, or a bigot; let it never puff you up with pride or a conceited opinion of your own knowledge, nor make you intolerant of 13the opinions which others draw from the same source, however different from your own” (121). He further hoped that “the merciful Creator, who gave the Scriptures for our instruction, bless your study of them, and make them to you ‘fruitful of good works’” (121).
After Adams successfully secured the freedom of the Mendi people aboard La Amistad, who had successfully revolted against their captors in a case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and were the subject of a movie by Steven Spielberg, they presented him with a Bible that is on display at the Old House at the Adams National Historic Park in Quincy, Massachusetts. It bears the following inscription:
We are about to go home to Africa. We go to Sierra Leone first, and then we reach Mendi very quick. When we get to Mendi we will tell the people of your great kindness. Good missionary will go with us. We shall take the Bible with us. It has been a precious book in prison, and we love to read it now we are free! Mr. Adams, we want to make you a present of a beautiful Bible! Will you please to accept it, and when you look at it or read it, remember your poor and grateful clients?...
For the Mendi people. CINQUE, KINNA, KALE.
Boston, Nov. 6, 1841. (Preble, “The Mendi Bible”)
See also Moses; Ten Commandments
For Reference and Further Reading
Adams, John Quincy. 1848. Letters of John Quincy Adams, to His Son, on the Bible and Its Teachings. Auburn, NY: Derby, Miller. PDF accessed through Google.
Cook, Jane Hampton. 2013. American Phoenix: John Quincy and Louisa Adams, the War of 1812, and the Exile That Saved American Independence. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.
Georgini, Sara. 2019. Household Gods: The Religious Lives of the Adams Family. New York: Oxford University Press.
Georgini, Sara. 2013. “John Quincy Adams at Prayer.” Church History 83 (September): 649–58.
Preble, Peter M. “The Mendi Bible.” http://www.frpeterpreble.com/2014/07/mendi-bible.html. Accessed May 23, 2019.
Presidential Inaugural Bibles: Catalogue of an Exhibition , November 17, 1968 through February 23, 1969. 1969. Washington, DC: Washington Cathedral.
Adams, Samuel
One of the firebrands of the American Revolution was Samuel Adams (1722–1803) of Massachusetts. The Harvard-educated journalist and agitator was an early advocate of independence. He was prominent in the Sons of Liberty and helped organize the so-called Boston Tea Party in protest against Parliament’s tax on tea, and committees of correspondence to communicate with other colonies. The British were actually seeking John Hancock and him when Americans and the British engaged in their first combat at Lexington and Concord.
Adams came from a long line of Puritan forbears but had come to put special value on both political and religious liberty. His sentiments were close to those that would today be identified as evangelical Christianity. As Mitt 14Romney would later note in explaining his own faith, however, when the First Continental Congress was meeting in 1774 and there was concern that the delegates were too religiously divided to invite a chaplain to pray, Adams broke the logjam by stating that he was willing for any man of piety who was a patriot (Romney 2007).
On August 1, 1776, Adams delivered a speech from the steps of the Pennsylvania State House (today’s Independence Hall), where he supported the Declaration of Independence that the delegates would sign the next day. His speech consisted in both appeals to common sense, to history, and to Scripture. Like many Protestants of his day, Adams associated “popery in religion” with “the popery of politics.” By contrast, he observed that America’s founding fathers “opened the Bible to all, and maintained the capacity of every man to judge for himself in religion.” If “Heaven hath trusted us with the management of things for eternity,” how much more should man have control over his own government? He referred to such a development as “the reign of political Protestantism.” Using the language of Hebrew prophets, Adams observed, “We have explored the temple of royalty, and found that the idol we have bowed down to, has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart like the nether millstone.” In language that reflected that of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, he further observed, “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds his subjects assuming that freedom of thought, and dignity of self-direction which He bestowed on them.” Paraphrasing both Psalm 113:3 and the Lord’s Prayer, he added, “From the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come.” Shortly thereafter, he utilized another common biblical theme by expressing pity for “those who are yet in darkness.”
Pointing to men’s “equal right to happiness,” Adams questioned why God would bestow greater value on tyrants than on those, identified in Micah 6:8, “who do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.” Professing that he had previously venerated the subjects of Britain “as branches of the same parental trunk, and partakers of the same religion and laws,” he believed that all that was left was a lifeless body. He went on to detail how the British had involved Americans in their wars, and how these had become destructive to “political right and public happiness.” He further detailed how it had been overcome with the corruption of “venality, luxury, and vice” at a time where America remained “an asylum on earth, for civil and religious liberty.” Using another biblical analogy from Isaiah 33:2 and 40:10–11, Adams proclaimed that “it is not our own arm which has saved us,” as he warned that we should not turn back to this “political Sodom,” lest like Lot’s wife (Genesis 19) (turned into a pillar of salt) “we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world!”
Much like Paine, Adams argued that it was impossible to “unite the supremacy of Great Britain and the liberty of America.” It was improper for an island to be governing a continent. It was time to escape the “convulsions of elective monarchies” and “hereditary succession.”
Returning to the theme of political popery, Adams accused English Protestant reformers of leaving the people “under the domination of human systems and 15decisions, usurping the infallibility which can be attributed to Revelation alone.” Instead of “possessing the pure religion of the gospel,” other nations are governed by “infidels who deny the truth, or politicians who make religion a stalking horse for their ambition, or professors, who walk in the trammels of orthodoxy, and are more attentive to traditions and ordinances of men than to the oracles of truth.” Support of “unbounding religious freedom . . . will bring with her in her train, industry, wisdom and commerce.”
Much as Jefferson had done in the Declaration of Independence, Adams went on to blame the English for a host of atrocities including releasing “the merciless savages to riot in the blood of their brethren—who have dared to establish popery triumphant in our land—who have taught treachery to your slaves, and courted them to assassinate your wives and children.” Having argued that America had adequate resources, and hopes of foreign aid, to defeat the British, he also believed that they “can look up to heaven for assistance.”
Quoting from another speech that Adams gave