According to his biographer David McCullough, "as his family and friends knew, Adams was both a devout Christian, and an independent thinker". Everett said that "Adams strove for a religion based on a common sense sort of reasonableness." Adams maintained that religion must change and evolve toward perfection.
He felt that Christianity was being misinterpreted and misused in the service of superstition, fraud, and unscrupulous power. He believed evil came from within and was not the result of something external.
He recognized the large and small abuses that religious belief tried to justify, but he also believed that religion could be a force for good in individual lives and in society at large. He believed that this view did not only apply to Christianity, but to all religions.
John Adams was aware of and worried about the persecution of minorities and the waging of ‘holy’ wars that usually come with established religion.
