Household Gods

Georgini (series editor, The Papers of John Adams) researched seven generations of the Adams family for this religious history--from John Adams's great-grandparents who emigrated from England in 1638 to his youngest great-grandson, Brooks Adams (d. 1927). She reveals how American Protestant Christianity was integral to the founding and preservation of the republic and defines the family's lives as public servants struggling to reconcile the purposes of religion and government. Family characteristics included nonconformity, skepticism, religious experimentation, and an emphasis on practice above dogma. Their religious beliefs evolved during the socially and politically unsettled 1800s, both mirroring and influencing trends in American religious and national identity. Divine Providence helped Unitarians John Adams and Charles Quincy explain and cope with personal and national events. Great-grandson Henry, however, shunned religion, and his skeptical brother Brooks returned to Unitarianism but later converted to Catholicism. VERDICT This concise, well-written history helps address the role that Protestant Christianity played in guiding and shaping the Adams family and the country they served.--Margaret Kappanadze, Elmira Coll. Lib., NY

November 15, 2018
Readers will find this book inherently interesting, despite its rather odd title. Odd, because the Adamses, from John, the second U.S. president, to his youngest great-grandson, historical theorist Brooks, were Unitarian when not agnostic. Other gods in their houses were the fruits of their travels?John's, John Quincy's, and Charles Francis' as diplomats and brothers Henry and Brooks as heirs to the family fortune (though the prestigious best-sellers they wrote enabled them after Gilded Age recessions decimated their inheritance). Though without gods, the family's Puritan heritage imparted passions for religion and politics, and John and his descendants focused on how different religions affected the practical workings and the aesthetics of their societies. Even Henry, who ultimately would not enter a Universalist church, could not conceive of society without religion. Georgini is at her best analyzing Henry's and Brooks' books, especially Henry's novels, Democracy (1880) and Esther (1884). Perhaps the most intriguing thing about her consistently engrossing study is the near absence in it of the words Jesus and Christ.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)