Every American president has been a member of a church, except for one: Abraham Lincoln.
Famous for his opacity on matters of religion, Lincoln’s personal faith was something that even his closest friends said they could not understand. Lincoln rented pews for his family at the First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois, and the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., but never officially joined either. And although he became more interested in religious issues toward the end of his life, “Honest Abe” never directly identified himself as a Christian, even after realizing that doing so could harm him politically.
“He once explained that the absence of any notable religious profile had given him what he called a tax on his popularity with voters,” says Allen Guelzo, professor of civil war studies at Gettysburg College and author of Abraham Lincoln: redeeming president. “It was something he was aware of, something he was trying to cope with, and yet he wouldn’t go so far as to pretend he was something he wasn’t.”
Lincoln’s religious views changed throughout his life, as do most people. He grew up in a Baptist family but was never baptized as a child or adult, and in his early twenties he openly expressed his religious skepticism.
“He would actually be aggressive about disbelief,” Guelzo says. “More than one observer who knew him in those days said that Lincoln could shock people.” For example, he might say that the Bible was just an ordinary book or that Jesus Christ was an illegitimate child. “By the time he gets to his late 20s and early 30s, he’s started to tone that down because he realizes that it doesn’t get him very far politically.”
During his failed campaign to be a Whig candidate for the United States House of Representatives in 1843, Lincoln observed that his lack of religious affiliation hurt him. “It was argued everywhere that no Christian should support me because I did not belong to any church,” he wrote. Three years later, after securing the Whig nomination for the House, he faced further accusations about his faith from his opponent, a revivalist preacher named Peter Cartwright. Lincoln then learned not to ignore his skepticism and knew he had to respond to his critics.
The front and back of a Bible belonging to Lincoln.
“It is true that I am not a member of any Christian Church,” he replied in a prospectus; “but I never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect about religion in general, or any Christian denomination in particular.
Yet Lincoln did not actually say whether he believed in the Christian faith. Instead, “he vigorously denies the accusations that were not actually made against him,” Guelzo says. “It just deflects.”
Lincoln won that election and continued to remain secretive about his personal faith well into his fifties. However, a series of traumatic events: the death of his son Edward Baker in 1850, the outbreak of the Civil war in 1861 and the death of his son William Wallace in 1862 – pushed him into a period of religious reflection, during which he seriously considered what a hypothetical God might want for the United States and the institution of slavery.
“In the current civil war, it is entirely possible that God’s design is different from that of both sides. » Lincoln wrote in his personal papers in September 1862. “(God) could have saved or destroyed the Union without human assistance. And yet the competition has begun. And, having started, he could give final victory to either side at any time. However, the competition continues.
Lincoln told his friend, Senator Orville Hickman Browning, that he believed God would not favor the Union cause unless it sought to end slavery – which he did not. not initially sought to do when the war began. He only mentioned his idea that God wanted to end the slavery of a few people, and they were generally shocked to hear him say it because he did not regularly attend church, pray, or talk about her faith. One such instance occurred during a cabinet meeting in which he stated that he wanted to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
“When asked why he does this,” Guelzo said, “the answer is this: I made a vow, a covenant, with my creator, that if the Union army defeated the Confederate army in Maryland – what she did to Battle of Antietam“I would send a proclamation after them…And it was so astonishing to his cabinet that a cabinet member asked him to repeat himself.”
After Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, Mary Todd Lincoln defended her late husband when faced with questions about his faith while giving conflicting accounts of what he actually believed or when he started believing it. Despite his later assertion that it was God’s will to end slavery, some of his close friends admitted that they had no idea of Lincoln’s broader religious views because he was so secretive About them.
More than 150 years later, it is even more difficult to say what Lincoln believed. Yet his Bibles are among the most famous of any president. Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump used the “Lincoln Bible” from his inauguration during their own swearing-in ceremonies. Ironically, Lincoln didn’t actually acquire this Bible until he showed up to his first inauguration in the middle of the night. A Supreme Court clerk brought him a Bible on which he could take an oath, and it is the one that is most associated with him today.