What America’s Founders Really Thought About the Bible

John Adams, in his retirement, was disheartened. What had his life in politics counted for? he wondered. The renewal in 1805 of a 30-year friendship with Doctor Benjamin Rush reinvigorated him. ... In one conversation about the “perfectibility of man” and religion’s role in making “men and nations happy,” both Rush and Adams lamented the moral decay they witnessed in the world around them. “By renouncing the Bible,” Rush interjected, “philosophers swing from their moorings upon all moral Subjects. . . . It is the only correct map of the human heart that ever has been published. It contains a...