John Adams Confronts Quakers and Baptists during the Revolution: A Paradox of the Quest for Liberty

Abstract

Although John Adams (1735–1826) played a significant role in the struggle for independence (1765–1783) and in creating a free, sovereign national government thereafter, his attitudes toward religious belief were more complex and perhaps less admirable. In the sphere of freedom of religion, John Witte Jr., a leading scholar and admirer of Adams, observes that Adams upheld something similar to an American “civil religion.” Quoting mainly from letters that Adams wrote after 1808, Witte concludes that Adams believed that “every state and society had to find a way to balance the freedom of many private religions with the establishment of one public Christian religion.” To promote public order, governments must establish a “public religion,” a kind of primus inter pares, to which all other faiths would be subordinate. In Witte's words, Adams considered it a “philosophical fiction” to think that a state could be neutral between religions. Nonetheless, Witte's work leaves the impression that Adams invariably upheld equal treatment for all religions and that the “mild and equitable [religious] establishment” he envisaged would never condone the persecution of weaker faiths.1 Although that may be true of the later Adams, such an interpretation overlooks several of his actions during the Revolutionary period itself, specifically his conduct toward Quakers and Baptists.