linguistic:paraphrasing
Religious views

According to biographer David McCullough, "Adams was both a devout Christian, and an independent thinker, and he saw no conflict in that." He believed that regular church service was beneficial to man's moral sense. Adams was raised in the Congregational church. In Quincy, the Unitarian faction was dominant and included Adams and his father. It was a new force in the colonies and denied the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus Christ. It was opposed by the Calvinist faction. In 1825, the Unitarians split off as a separate denomination that included John Adams.

Adams' family was descended from Puritans. Strict Puritanism had profoundly shaped New England's culture, laws, and traditions, and Adams praised the historical Puritans as "bearers of freedom, a cause that still had a holy urgency". Adams recalled that his parents "held every Species of Libertinage in... Contempt and horror".

Fielding argues that Adams's beliefs synthesized Puritan, deist, and humanist concepts. Frazer notes that while he shared many perspectives with deists and often used deistic terminology, "Adams clearly was not a deist... Adams did believe in miracles, providence, and, to a certain extent, the Bible as revelation." In 1796, Adams denounced Thomas Paine 's deistic criticisms of Christianity in The Age of Reason, saying, "The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard Paine say what he will." Gordon S. Wood writes, "Although both Jefferson and Adams denied the miracles of the Bible and the divinity of Christ, Adams always retained a respect for the religiosity of people that Jefferson never had". In his retirement years, Adams moved closer to more mainstream Enlightenment religious ideals. He blamed institutional Christianity and established churches in Britain and France for causing much suffering but insisted that religion was necessary for society.