Mark A. Noll
Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian? In this article, excerpted from Books & Culture (one
of the magazines published by Christianity Today), former Wheaton
College historian and now Notre Dame historian Mark Noll probes the
complex character of Lincoln's faith.
Lincoln's religion has been
debated almost from the moment of his assassination 130 years ago. Even
today, conservative preachers and broadcasters who bemoan the decline
of Christian America repeat moving stories of Lincoln's deep piety,
while populist naysayers deny such claims. Both groups seem to feel that
if only Lincoln could be enlisted on their side—whether of evangelical
faith or naturalistic rationalism—it would amount to a great victory for
them. But what does the evidence show? The following are facts now well
established:
—Lincoln was exposed to Calvinistic
Baptist preaching as a child and to a clamor of competing Protestant
preachers as a young man. In a strange way, he seems to have been both
absorbed and repelled by these early influences.
—As a young man, Lincoln expressed
views that differed from Christian orthodoxy—perhaps a thorough
skepticism or maybe only the hypothesis of universal salvation.
—Lincoln only once wrote directly about
his faith. When opponents in a race for Congress in 1846 accused him of
lacking faith, Lincoln penned these careful, noncommittal words: "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."
—Lincoln knew and quoted the Bible.
Sometimes this quoting was only to find a striking metaphor, as in the
House Divided speech of 1858. Other times the quotations were integral
to the very substance of what he wanted to say. In 1864, Lincoln told a
group of African Americans who had presented him with a Bible: "All the
good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book.
But for it we could not know right from wrong."
—Lincoln valued prayer. Many instances
are recorded in diaries and letters written before Lincoln's death where
the president either allowed White House visitors to pray with him or
solicited their prayers. There are also several accounts, though less
securely based, of Lincoln himself praying.
—After the deaths of his young sons in
1850 and 1862, Lincoln was comforted by two thoroughly conservative
Presbyterian ministers (neither of whom was given to overstatement).
They testified that, after these traumatic experiences, they witnessed a
deepening of Lincoln's faith.
—In Washington, especially after the
death of his son, Lincoln regularly attended New York Avenue
Presbyterian Church. Sometimes he even came to the midweek prayer
service but remained in a side room out of view of the congregation.
—Lincoln did not practice what might be
called a "Christian lifestyle." Historian Philip Schaff lectured to
European audiences in 1865 on the meaning of the Civil War. He said that
when Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday at Ford's Theater,
European pietists were aghast that he was not observing the Holy
Festival (which, in their experience, only infidels neglected), while
American evangelicals were aghast that he was in a theater (which, in
their experience, was associated with licentiousness, secularism, and
prostitution).
If the above matters have proved factual, the following stories have proved bogus:
—Lincoln almost certainly was not converted in a Methodist camp meeting in 1839 as the organizer of the meeting claimed in 1897.
—Lincoln almost certainly did not write
to a certain judge during his White House years to affirm, "My earlier
views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the
human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them." This "document" was first produced in 1924 by Joseph Lewis at the annual banquet of New York's Freethinkers Society.
—An 1883 book includes an oft-quoted
testimony to Lincoln's personal faith. The author wrote that he had
taken the words from a newspaper, which in turn extracted them from a
letter Lincoln wrote to an old friend in Illinois sometime in 1864 or
early 1865. The quotation ran, "When I left Springfield I asked the
people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the
severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to
Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and
there consecrated myself to Christ. Yes, I do love Jesus." No
corroborative evidence has ever been found to legitimate this letter.
So, what was Lincoln's religion? When the solid have been separated
from the spurious, the stories show Lincoln's respect for God, his own
personal sense of living under the authority of divine providence, and
his eagerness to commit the Civil War to divine rule.
When it came to the war, Lincoln often displayed a higher, finer
theology than did the nation's professional Christian theologians.
Lincoln knew that God had not enlisted on either side. As early as 1862,
he would write in a private memorandum: "In the present civil war it is
quite possible that God's purpose is something different from the
purpose of either party."
Still, what this account and the other stories do not show is a clear-cut profession of orthodox
faith: his faith was genuine, but only partially Christian. That was
the testimony of those who knew Lincoln best, including his wife, who
said shortly after his death that he was "a religious man always" but
not "a technical Christian."
Copyright © 1998 Christianity Today.
No comments:
Post a Comment