Acknowledging Jesus as a “master workman” and gifted moral teacher, they grew fuzzy about his divinity.
According to biographer David McCullough, "as his family and friends knew, Adams was both a devout Christian, and an independent thinker, and he saw no conflict in that."[342] He believed that regular church service was beneficial to man's moral sense. Everett (1966) concludes that "Adams strove for a religion based on a common sense sort of reasonableness" and maintained that religion must change and evolve toward perfection.[343] Fielding (1940) argues that Adams's beliefs synthesized Puritan, deist, and humanist concepts. Adams at one point said that Christianity had originally been revelatory, but was being misinterpreted in the service of superstition, fraud, and unscrupulous power.[344]
Frazer (2004) notes that while he shared many perspectives with deists and often used deistic terminology, "Adams clearly was not a deist. Deism rejected any and all supernatural activity and intervention by God; consequently, deists did not believe in miracles or God's providence. ... Adams did believe in miracles, providence, and, to a certain extent, the Bible as revelation.