Abigail Adams was wife of John Adams, the second president of the United States. Her mother was of the distinguished Quincy family, and her father was one of a line of prominent Congregational ministers. She bore John five children and raised them largely in his absence, since he was often away in service to their emerging nation. Their extraordinary correspondence sustained their love and common purposes. In this selection from a November 5, 1775, letter, Abigail addressed the importance of godliness in a public servant. Without it, he or she provides a damaging example and is easy prey for compromising behavior, dangerous to the state. True patriotism is grounded in devotion to and fear of God.

[A] true patriot must be a religious man. I have been led to think from a late defection, that he who neglects his duty to his Maker may well be expected to be deficient and insincere in his duty towards the public. Even suppose him to possess a large share of what is called honor and public spirit, yet do not these men, by their bad example, by a loose, immoral conduct, corrupt the minds of youth and vitiate the morals of the age, and thus injure the public more than they can compensate by intrepidity, generosity, and honor? Let revenge or ambition, pride, lust, or profit, tempt these men to a base and vile action, you may as well hope to bind up a hungry tiger with a cobweb, as to hold such debauched patriots in the visionary chains of decency, or to charm them with the intellectual beauty of truth and reason.1
Footnotes:
1

Abigail Adams, Letter to John Adams, November 5, 1775, in The Letters of John and Abigail Adams, ed. Frank Shuffelton (New York: Penguin, 2004), 120-121.

article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located on Rt. 40 across from Principio Health Center.