Hall of Faith: Abraham Lincoln

It is NOT up to me to figure out whether President Lincoln a Christian or not. This is between God and him.

Lincoln's relationship with God is a subject highly debated by historians. Some say Lincoln was an unbeliever while many say he was a "deeply religious" man that daily sought God's guidance. Lincoln grew up in a poor dirt-farming family in the upper South and lower Midwest without privilege, position, or much formal education. The world of his upbringing was much closer to the culture of Puritanism than the culture of narcissism. Lincoln had very few books when he was growing up so he read the Bible with great care. His later speeches and ordinary conversation were peppered with biblical quotations and allusions.

When one reads Lincoln's presidential speeches, filled with his pleas to the American people to seek God's aid and guidance, and demonstrative of his own dependence on God's mercy, it is difficult to comprehend any scholar that would see Lincoln as anything but a man that sincerely depended on God. In that day, "born again" was not a commonly used, or understood, phrase and it is likely that his relationship with God lacking due to his reluctance to join any specific church or denomination. It is true that Lincoln never did join a church, although he attended church services regularly while President. The reason he gave for never joining a church was that he could never be satisfied with all the dogmas and creeds that the denominational churches of his day required. He found the harsh infighting among Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples, and others repulsive. As a consequence, Lincoln several times professed willingness to join a church that required nothing of its members but heartfelt love to God and to one's neighbors. The competing creeds of the churches were not for him.

Here are some of Lincoln's quotes:

"When any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior's condensed statement of the substance of both law and Gospel, 'Thou shalt love the lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul and thy neighbor as thyself' that church will I join with all my heart and all my soul."

He also said

"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, or scoffer at, religion."

The Christian character of President Lincoln is an American enigma. A lifelong non-churchgoer, Lincoln has been the subject of numerous speculations concerning his faith. He was more intensely spiritual than almost any other American President, yet the confusion about the genuineness of Lincoln's Christianity arises from the ambiguities of his early life. The very first Republican President was Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party was established in 1854 by a coalition of former Whigs, Northern Democrats, and Free-Soilers who opposed the expansion of slavery and held a vision for modernizing the United States. On Monday, September 22, 1862, in a meeting of his Cabinet on the second floor of the White House, Lincoln seemed a bit embarrassed. He was trying to explain the timing of the Emancipation Proclamation, but was not sure anyone else would understand. Lincoln's words were an honest, even brutal acknowledgment that man is not always able to arrange the world as he would like. Lincoln intuitively understood the drama of sin and redemption better than most traditional believers.

“If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?”

Lincoln saying that it was on a God who is attentive to history and has it in his power to affect our course. The bad events are circumscribed by a loving providence that there is a verse in the Bible that God promises that there won’t be anything so bad happen to us that we are not able to bear it. God does everything--He governs everything. Faith is accepting God's Will. God is adjusting our history to His purposes. He knows what He's doing. We have to learn to trust His will, His power to do His will, and His timing to do it when the time is right--and not until then. That's the essence of real faith. God carries out His will in His perfect power and timing. Reading the book of Esther show how God controls history through providence. There isn't a miracle in the book and the name of God isn't mentioned but at the same time, without anyone realizing that God is always in control of every single event in this world. The king mentioned in Esther favored Esther and Mordecai, spared all the Jewish people, made Mordecai the Prime Minister and hanged Haman on the gallows he build himself for the Jewish people and preserved the nation Israel. Hadassah, "myrtle" in Hebrew (Esther 2:7), or Esther, "star" or "Ishtar" in Persian. One of the greatest and most essential attributes of God is His sovereignty, God rules over all things and controls all things. God also uses providence to accomplish His will in the world. You won't find the word providence in the Bible. It's like the word Trinity. God directs and uses events to accomplish His own Will which meant: "the providence of God." Romans 8:28 says, "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."

Lincoln's faith have revealed when tough circumstances drove him to deeper contemplation of God and the divine will even when he was casual about Christian observance. He was a man of profound morality, an almost unbearable God-consciousness, and a deep belief in the freedom of God to transcend the limited vision of humanity. Therefore, Abraham is listed as one of my "Hall of Faiths".