So Many Books; So little Time

John Adams

John Adams

by David McCullough

c.2001

Much has been said and written about this work and many others of McCullough’s works. But how much has been said of this work as it delves into the faith of one of our founding fathers? And John Adams DID in fact consider himself to be a founding father of our great nation. He felt it was his duty to be a founding father of this country. He felt he would be failing his own family, and indeed his fellow man, if he failed to help create a nation under God, independent from King George III and England.

Certainly McCullough spends much of his time in this work detailing the life of John Adams and not his faith journey, and it is not his intention to detail the faith of Adams and his wife, but, as it should be with all of us, it is impossible to discuss the man without discussing his faith in God. In fact, looking at the index, you find neither God nor Bible nor faith listed and only a few references for Christianity and many of those in regards to Thomas Jefferson. Yet you come out of this work with a regard for Adams belief that, regardless of his own desires which were to remain home and be a farmer, he was called to serve. And serve he did.

Adams was a delegate to the Continental Congresses, an ambassador to France, as well as President of the United States. In perhaps his most ironic roll, he was the United States first ambassador to England. Ironic because before John Adams left for France, a last opportunity was given by the British Army for the rebels to surrender–however, surrender or not, John Adams was scheduled to hang. It perhaps shows not only the power but the sense of humor of a God who will send to be received by the King of England, the one man that king wanted dead.

Adams never wavered in the faith he adopted as a young man. And McCullough reveals it in every chapter as John Adams lived it. Adams is revealed to be a man above reproach, a true patriot, not just to the United States but to our, and his, God. In the end you feel the hand of God letting him enter heaven on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence as a reward to a good, and faithful servant who served both God and man.

This book review was challenged and I found myself adding more to the review and modifying my conclusions some what:

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 11:30 pm

I would like to explain where I have been since you posted your welcome reply to my review. I have been going back over, page by page, John Adams some of it more than once. I was looking for what I originally used to back to make my conclusions about John Adams. I have come to several new conclusions. One is that I wanted very much for Adams and his wife to be a Christian of the same sort of salvation as myself that I willed it into my memory. A second is that I read this work some time ago before reading American Jezebel (see previous post on this thread but another page) and wasn’t as familiar with beliefs of the times as I am now. A third is that I read John Adams and followed it immediately with Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams by Lynne Withey which I then followed with Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson while also reading at Our Sacred Honor: Words of Advice from the Founders in Stories, Letters, Poems, and Speeches edited with commentary by William J. Bennett. I allowed that perhaps I had read into the McCullough book words from one of the other three and so I went back over all of Dearest Friend and selected portions of the other two. (I also served on a two-day jury which slowed the process considerably.)

What I did find in all the works about many of our finding fathers is this:

John Adams observed under his father’s roof “ecclesiastial councils” that led him to this conclusion of becoming a minister himself: (John Adams page 37 paragraph 2)

“I saw such a spirit of dogmatism and bigotry in clergy and laity, that if I should be a priest I must take my side, and pronounce as positively as any of them, or never get a parish, or getting it must soon leave it.”

John Adams page 590 paragraph last and page 591 paragraph first:

He wrote of his renewed enjoyment of Shakespeare–Adams would read Shakespeare twice through again in 1805–and in his continued devotion to Cicero and the Bible. And he dwelt much on ideas. The ideal of the perfectibility of man as expounded by eighteenth-century philosophers–perfectibility “abstracted from all divine authority”–was unacceptable, he declared.

“It is an idea of the Christian religion, and ever has been of all believers of the immortality of the soul, that the intellectual part of man in capable of progressive improvement for ever. Where then is the sense of calling the perfectibility of man an original idea or modern discovery….I consider the perfectibility of man as used by modern philosophers to be mere words without a meaning, that is mere nonsense.”

John Adams page 625 paragraph 4:

“I believe in God and in his wisdom and benevolence [he continued], and I cannot conceive that such a Being could make such a species as the human merely to lie and die on this earth. If I did not believe in a future state, I should believe in no God. This universe, this all, this ** *** [”totality”] would appear with all its swelling pomp, a boyish firework.”

And finally: John Adams page 650 paragraph last:

His faith in God and the hereafter remained unshaken. His fundamental creed, he had reduced to a single sentence: “He who loves the Workman and his work, and does what he can to preserve and improve it, shall be accepted of Him.”

From Dearest Friend page 32 paragraph last:

“The Brattle Street Church, for years the center of the liberal, less Calvinistic brand of Congregationalism that Abigail and John espoused, was just across the way.”

Perhaps John Adams was not the way I originally portrayed him earlier. For me to come to the same conclusion would mean re-reading the work which I do not choose to do at this time. Much more is waiting including Art Jaggard’s latest work. Whether he was or not, I chose to endorse him because the book I had on George Washington (whose actual birthday was closer to being celebrated) didn’t deal with his faith and I had already reviewed works on Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. I also did not want to review a book on Benjamin Franklin or any other non-president for President’s Day.

On Benjamin Franklin I will say that I won’t endorse him as a Christian leader due to what I believe to be his all inclusive beliefs. From one of Franklin’s writings quoted in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life page 371 paragraph 2 and last:

The bagatelle that most enchanted his French friends, entitled “Conte,” was a parable about religious tolerance. A French officer who is about to die recounts a dream in which he arrives at the gates of heaven and watches St. Peter ask people about thier religion. The first replies that he is a Catholic, and St Peter says, “Take your place there among the Catholics.” A smiliar procedure follows for an Anglican and a Quaker. When the officer confesses that he has no religion, St. Peter is indulgent: “You can come in anyway; just find a place for yourself wherever you can.” (Franklin seems to have revised the manuscript a few times to make his point about tolerance clear, and in one version expressed it more forcefully as: “Enter anyway and take any place you wish.”)

The tale echoes many of Franklin’s previous light writings advocating religious tolerance. Although Franklin’s belief in a benevolent God was becoming stronger as he grew older, the French intellectuals admired the fact that he did not embrace any religious sect. “Our free-thinkers have adroitly sounded him on his religion,” one acquaintance wrote, “and they maintain that they have discovered he is one of their own, that is that he had none at all.”

Also from all I read in all three works I would not endorse Thomas Jefferson as a Christian believer. The Franklin book shows Thomas Paine to attack Christianity or at least organized religion (pg. 468 paragraph first and footnote).

In all, I thank you Roger for pointing out to me mistakes I made in my haste. I should have spent more time reviewing the Adams book before writing the review instead of after and I should have chosen my words more carefully. I hope that John and Abigail Adams are in heaven and that my conclusions after reading these works is correct. However, at this time, it is only for me to know “Christ and Him crucified.”

The Faith of George W. Bush

The Faith of George W. Bush

by Stephen Mansfield

c. 2003 published by Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, NY

Stephen Mansfield follows the president from the presidency back to his defeat of Ann Richards to the War of 1812 and the California Gold Rush. Confusing? Not really. His point is in the Christian heritage George W. Bush received from the family that has nurtured him through the death of a sister, wild years at Yale and and a marriage that could have failed but instead is grounded in a faith in God. By the end of the book you don’t just have a good sense of what sort of relationship our president has with our Lord and Savior but also what sort of relationship his wife, mother, father and friends have as well.

This book doesn’t pretend to tell all about the president of the United States. It only attempts to show the pathway this one president led to become the Christian he is. A pathway paved by love and guidance from family. A pathway strewn with the litter of rebelliousness. A pathway not unnlike our own. It will, if nothing else, inspire all who read it to hold this man up in prayer daily and recognize that no matter what liberals may charge, this president listens to only one voice–God’s.

My copy is paperback from the clearance rack.

God and Ronald Reagan

God and Ronald Reagan–A Spiritual Life

by Paul Kengor

c.2004 Published by HarperCollins Publishers Inc., NY

Paul Kengor started out writing a biography of a president and ended up with so much material on Ronald Reagan’s relationship with God that he had to write a second book first. He doesn’t just tell the story of one man, however, but of a mother who influenced her son to walk with God no matter where He led. He tells the story of a father with faults that could have caused a son to turn his back and walk away but instead led that son to love and understand better the love of God for man.

Kengor follows the Reagan family from the meeting Jack and Nell Reagan through all their moves (several houses in few years) and how Nell’s devotion to her God and her church shaped young Dutch. He goes with Ronnie to college, a Christian school which helped shape his future and on into radio. He shows how the faith of Ronald Reagan led him into the political arena at nearly the same time as it led him to Hollywood.

Most of all throughout the entire work, Kengor relates Reagan’s life and walk with God with one act which changed the world–The Evil Empire Speech. Kengor spends the entire work showing how one man came to walk so closely with God that in no way, shape or form would he be afraid to speak the truth no matter who or what entity was present in the room. It was that closeness with God that led Ronald Reagan to become president and demand the removal of the Berlin Wall. Reagan’s walk with God led him to support God’s work and do God’s work not because it was popular but because it was right. Regardless of your politics or your feelings about Ronald Reagan, it’s obvious that something other that lust for power led him to be the leader he came to be.

Would that all of us walked as closely with God as the fourtieth president of the United States. If we did, the world would surely be a better place.