Most American historians and the majority of the American people regard Abraham Lincoln as our greatest president. There have been many biographies written about the great man who kept our country from being torn asunder by the issue of slavery, which caused the southern states to try to secede from the Union, and sparked the American Civil War. His Gettysburg Address still stands as one of the greatest speeches ever made.
Religious Freedom Day was established by Congress in 1992, and a presidential proclamation has announced its arrival on January 16th every year since. It celebrates the enactment in 1786 of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson, who asked that his tombstone recognize that he was the author of the bill, along with the Declaration of Independence and the founding of the University of Virginia, as one of the three things for which he wished to be remembered. He drafted the bill in 1777, but it took a decade to be finally pushed through by James Madison, who was at that time a member of the House of Delegates. It is regarded as the root of how the framers of the Constitution approached matters of religion and government. The bill not only disestablished the Anglican Church as the official state church, but it provided that no one can be compelled to attend any religious institution or to underwrite it with taxes; that individuals are free to believe as they will and that this "shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities." Late in his life, Jefferson wrote that it contained "within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination."
So what were the religious beliefs of Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president?
He was raised by parents who were “hard shell Baptists.” They joined the Little Pigeon Baptist Church in Indiana when Abraham Lincoln was 14 years old. This fundamentalist splinter group of Baptists refused to be involved in any activities beyond their church services, such as raising money for missionaries, Bible societies, Theological Seminaries, or membership in any fraternal organizations, especially the Masons. The majority of these inward-looking congregations were located in the American South.
Abraham Lincoln never joined a church, or made a clear profession of the commonly-held Christian beliefs of the day. His friend Jesse Fell said that the president "seldom communicated to anyone his views" on religion. After charges of hostility toward Christianity cost Lincoln a congressional bid, he kept whatever his beliefs were even more private. However, he was well-versed in scripture, and owned more than one copy of the Bible during his lifetime.
Lincoln wrote in a letter to Martin M. Morris in 1843, referring to his loss to Edward Dickinson Baker, for the Whig nomination to a U.S. Congressional seat. (Baker was an adherent of the beliefs of Thomas and Alexander Campbell of the Disciples of Christ):
“There was the strangest combination of church influence against me. Baker is a Campbellite; and therefore, as I suppose with few exceptions, got all of that Church. My wife had some relations in the Presbyterian churches, and some in the Episcopal churches; and therefore, wherever it would tell, I was set down as either one or the other, while it was everywhere contended that no Christian ought to vote for me because I belonged to no Church, and was suspected of being a Deist . . .”
In 1846, when Lincoln ran for congress against Peter Cartwright, a noted evangelist, Cartwright tried to make Lincoln's religion or lack of it a major issue of the campaign. Responding to accusations that he was an "infidel", Lincoln defended himself, publishing a hand-bill to "directly contradict" the charge made against him. The declaration was released as follows:
Handbill Replying to Charges of Infidelity
July 31, 1846
To the Voters of the Seventh Congressional District.
FELLOW CITIZENS:
A charge having got into circulation in some of the neighborhoods of this District, in substance that I am an open scoffer at Christianity, I have by the advice of some friends concluded to notice the subject in this form. That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular . . .
I do not think I could myself, be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live. If, then, I was guilty of such conduct, I should blame no man who should condemn me for it; but I do blame those, whoever they may be, who falsely put such a charge in circulation against me.
July 31, 1846. A. LINCOLN
Lincoln had attended one of Cartwright's revival meetings. The fiery pulpiteer called for all who intended to go to heaven to rise. Naturally, the response was heartening. Then, he called for all those who wished to go to hell to stand. Unsurprisingly there were not many takers. Lincoln had responded to neither option. Cartwright closed in. "Mr. Lincoln, you have not expressed an interest in going to either heaven or hell. May I enquire as to where you do plan to go?" Lincoln replied: "I did not come here with the idea of being singled out, but since you ask, I will reply with equal candor. I intend to go to Congress."
In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln said, "Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust in the best way all our present difficulty."
During the White House years, Lincoln and his family often attended the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where the family pew he rented is now marked by a plaque.
The years 1862 and 1863 were very hard for President Lincoln. Not only was the Civil War not going well for the Union, but in February 1862, his 11-year-old son Willie died in the White House. After the funeral, Lincoln was unable to return to his pressing duties for days.
Mary Todd Lincoln was even more devastated, and turned to Spiritualism, using mediums and spiritualists to try to contact their dead son. Lincoln allegedly attended at least one séance at the White House with his wife.
After Robert E. Lee's decisive victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Lincoln said, "I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."
In Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, he said:
Both [North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.
When a pious minister told Lincoln he "hoped the Lord is on our side," the president responded, "I am not at all concerned about that . . . But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord's side."
After the tide turned for the Union at Gettysburg, Lincoln was prompted by a letter from Sarah Josepha Hale to declare the first federally mandated Thanksgiving Day, to be kept on the last Thursday in November:
“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States . . . to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”
In September 1864, Lincoln wrote in a letter to a member of the Society of Friends,
“. . . We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise . . . we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us . . . Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay."
When Bishop Matthew Simpson gave the address at Lincoln's funeral, he quoted the president as asking a soldier "Do you ever find yourself talking with the dead? Since Willie's death, I catch myself every day, involuntarily talking with him as if he were with me."
Following Lincoln’s assassination, there were competing biographies, some claiming he was a Christian, and others insisting that he had been a non-believer. Many of his long-time friends held that he would never have professed a belief in the divinity of Christ, but their opinions were split on what Lincoln may have believed concerning the nature of God.
In Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (2006), Richard Carwardine of Oxford University highlights Lincoln's considerable ability to rally evangelical Northern Protestants to the flag by nourishing the millennial belief that they were God's chosen people. Historian Allen C. Guelzo notes: "This was no mean feat, coming from a man who had been suspected of agnosticism or atheism for most of his life. Yet by the end, while still a religious skeptic, Lincoln, too, seemed to equate the preservation of the Union and the freeing of the slaves with some higher, mystical purpose."
So what are we to take away from this look at the conflicting reports of Abraham Lincoln’s spiritual beliefs?
Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom provided that individuals are free to believe as they will and that this "shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities."
Abraham Lincoln’s ability to appeal to the “better angels of our nature,” to hold together the states that did not secede from the Union during a long and terrible war, with so many set-backs and disasters, whether divinely inspired or not, is a testament to his remarkable “civil capacity” and his faith that good would ultimately prevail.
For more about Religious Freedom Day:
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