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The U.S. Constitution Only Works for a Moral and Religious People
That’s according to John Adams. Was he right?
Do Americans need religion and morality to thrive, perhaps even survive, as a constitutional republic? Does the Constitution only work if the people of the United States are moral and religious?
John Adams certainly seemed to think so.
In a 1798 letter to the Massachusetts Militia, President John Adams declared the following:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
The Internet (including Medium) is full of people hostile to religion. So this sentiment is as popular to them as a mosquito at a nudist colony!
This reflexive resistance to any favorable mention of religion is unfortunate — and unwarranted.
Indeed, knee-jerk hostility to religion mirrors the very kind of rigid fundamentalism that proponents of more secular and “enlightened” thinking claim to oppose.
Whatever your feelings may be concerning organized religion, you must understand Adams’s point before you decide to agree or disagree with it.
