What do we know about Lincoln's faith and religious beliefs?

[littlecanoe]

Well, the title sums it up.  What have you guys read that address this subject?  We've addressed Jackson and I believe Gen. Lee in the past but I don't remember touching on the specifics of Mr. Lincoln.

[SouthernByGrace]

Lincoln's parents were baptists. That is how he was raised, but not what molded his faith, which was almost non-existent. He never formally joined a church, which was unusual for a President. In a letter to Judge J.S. Wakefield following his son Willie's death, Lincoln wrote,

"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 explains it in a nutshell. He was NOT a Christian. He did not believe in God at all, but in fate.

In the book, Abraham Lincoln: Was He A Christian?, written by a Mr. Herndon, (a lifelong friend) Published in 1893, his private letters contained the following:

If he had been asked the plain question, "Do you know that a God exists?" he would have said: "I do not know that a God exists."

At one moment of his life I know that he was an Atheist. I was preparing a speech on Kansas, and in it, like nearly all reformers, I invoked God. He made me wipe out that word and substitute the word Maker, affirming that said Maker was a principle of the universe. When he went to Washington he did the same to a friend there.

Mr. Lincoln told me, over and over, that man has no freedom of the will, or, as he termed it, "No man has a freedom of mind." He was in one sense a fatalist, and so he died. He believed that he was under the thumb of Providence (which to him was but another name for fate). The longer he lived, the more firmly he believed it, and hence his oft invocation of God. But these invocations are no evidence to a rational mind that he adopted the blasphemy that God seduced his own daughter, begat a son on purpose to have mankind kill him, in order that he, God, might become reconciled to his own mistakes, according to the Christian view.

Lincoln would wait patiently on the flow and logic of events. He believed that conditions make the man and not man the conditions. Under his own hand he says: "I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me." He believed in the supreme reign of law. This law fated things, as he would express it. Now, how could a man be a Christian -- could believe that Jesus Christ was God -- could believe in the efficacy of prayer -- and entertain such a belief?

He did not believe in the efficacy of prayer, although he used that conventional language. He said in Washington, "God has his own purposes." If God has his own purposes, then prayer will not change God's purposes.

I have often said to you, and now repeat it, that Lincoln was a scientific materialist, i.e., that this was his tendency as opposed to the Spiritualistic idea. Lincoln always contended that general and universal laws ruled the Universe -- always did -- do now -- and ever will. He was an Agnostic generally, sometimes an Atheist.

That Mr. Lincoln was an Infidel from 1834 to 1861, I know, and that he remained one to the day of his death, I honestly believe. I always understood that he was an Infidel, sometimes bordering on Atheism. I never saw any change in the man, and the change could not have escaped my observation had it happened.

This from a man who knew Lincoln his entire life. I would tend to believe him before somebody writing a book a hundred years later... This tells me all I need to know. You can read this and more in its entirety at this link:
http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/steiner0.htm

SBG

[littlecanoe]

SBG,

The bit that I've read, articles, seem to have a bit of contradiction.  They reveal his early leanings while writing about some of the comments that he made in his last years as president, statements concerning God being sovereign and in control of the war. 
I just haven't seen reference to a conversion just counseling by the Presbyterian minister.

I'm not clear if there was a saving faith or an academic knowledge.

If this account is accurate he sounds to have been strongly influenced by the writers and philosophers of the age of reason.

[Ga.windbreak]

lc,

SBG is right, in fact Herndon who was Lincoln's law partner as well as friend who is the person who pushed Lincoln into running for President, said that Lincoln would laugh if he but knew how people were making a religious martyr of him. Also Mary Lincoln scoffed at the very idea that people thought him to believe in God. Remember they had mystics and séances in the White house invited by the Lincolns, now just how could the man allow that and still be said to believe in God, I ask you?  

[SouthernByGrace]

lc,

You're right about one thing. All the stories are Very contradictory. You can read one thing saying he was a believer, yet not a practitioner. The next article says he was more religious than not, and then you have Herndon, who knew and was close to Lincoln his entire life, saying he was an infidel and bordered on being atheist. It is obvious the man was a "fatist" and did not believe in prayer.
Gw is right about the seances Mary Lincoln had in the White House. That was pretty much common knowledge.
I'm gonna go with Herndon, since he knew Lincoln probably Longer and Better than anybody else alive. He was with him almost all the time, even throughout his presidency, so he would tend to have a lot more insight as to how the man felt about everything, especially religion. As I'm fond of saying... He was there. 

I can't help but wonder how all this affected his decision making during his presidency...

SBG

[littlecanoe]

I can't help but wonder how all this affected his decision making during his presidency...

Yep.  I was thinking of Dabney and his relationship with Jackson and Jackson's conversion and wondered about Lincoln. 
It's just hard to get at the truth when respectable people write opinion in these articles. 

The vagueness of the issue is troubling.

I'd really like to find a body of work out there that thoroughly documented this issue.  It just may not be there.

[Ga.windbreak]

lc,
I can understand your quandry in this matter but truly, as SBG says, you have to put the most stock in those who lived with and knew the man. You must remember Abe Lincoln had very few friends in his life, he played everything very close to the vest, he also changed his mind about government to suit him being able to win the election. Not saying that most politicans don't but the more I study Lincoln the more I'm convenced that he was a fatalist who did not believe in God in a christian way. In point of fact I don't believe Lincoln believed in anything deep down in his core.

As you know I'm reading "Lincoln, the Man" by Masters, and I'll try to give you an example of what I mean, ok. When Lincoln first left home and rode a river boat down the Mississippi during that trip is when he first became aware of the black man as a slave because he saw about 10 of them in chains (he and Speed were together on this trip). It is said that he felt a great sorrow for the slaves because of that trip yet I challage you to show me one act of human kindness that he ever did for a black person. If he cared so much as today's historians want us to believe where is the act and please don't bring up the EP because we all know that was a war move to hurt the South; He did NOT free one person (as I would say he talked the talk but he DIDN"T walk the walk). While on the other hand you can point to acts by Davis, Jackson, Lee, and so very many Southerners who truly cared for those around them no matter their color. I'm sorry to say IMHO Lincoln had no heart, had no soul, he was a very shallow man therefore there is no way that he believed in God.

he kept the world at bay with a screen of banter. Yet behind the laughs lay an almost bottomless sadness, and sympathy for those he saw as fellow sufferers. There were many Lincolns: the joker, the pol, the logician, the skeptical theologian. But the man of sorrows may be the most important. ''The president has a curious vein of sentiment running through his thought which is his most valuable mental attribute,'' as his secretary of state, William Seward,

taken from:

http://www.gayheroes.com/abe.htm

Do I believe as Stewart did; no I'm more of the opinion it was "oh poor me."

[Swampman]

Fifty Years in the Church of Rome, by Charles Chiniquy

Tells quite a bit about them.

[Ga.windbreak]

lc,
Some of Lincoln's friends that might help you solve your delema:

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/speed.htm

A letter to Joshua Speed

http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.4105:1.lincoln

Herndon to Ellis to Herndon on Ale Lincoln's Courtship and marrage. Notice that J. Speed played an important part.

http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/inside.asp?pageID=64&subjectID=5,

Joseph Gillespie

[littlecanoe]

GaW,

I haven't yet, but intend to read those sites that you linked.

I was talking to the pastor after services this morning.  I asked if he had ever studied the religious leanings of Lincoln, and to my surprise, he had and questioned just as I am.  That was interesting and we were able to have a good discussion on the subject.  I'd say that we are both leaning toward there being short or circumstantial evidence only and that slim.

Again, look forward to reading your links.

lc

[ironfoot]

http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

[SouthernByGrace]

ironfoot, you don't see the irony in that speech? The government of the people, by the people and for the people was DESTROYED by the very man speaking those words! Maybe you need to read a little more on the topic. Yeah, that's it.

SBG

[Ga.windbreak]

lc here is another link which I feel you will enjoy yet has about as much chance as a snowball in hades of answering your question. It seems as though if you listen to those who would have you believe that Lincoln was a christian man they are the people that only knew Lincoln from the outside looking in whereas I can find no exception among his few close friends who all strongly denigh Lincoln was anything other than a nonbeliever. What, to me, is truly ironic is that Stanton (Lincoln's Sec. of War and his political enemy) would be one of those who pushed this idea of Sainthood about Lincoln. Which makes me feel, all the more, this is nothing more than a political act to help give legality and a high moral ground to the Lincoln Government for the War. JMHO

http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2003/autumn/nelson-fighting-lincolns-soul/

. . Let us here every one, with uplifted hand, declare before Almighty God that the precious gift of this great heritage, consecrated in the blood of our soldiers, shall never perish from the earth. Now all hands to God"—Stanton lifted his hands—"I SWEAR IT!"

Lincoln in October 1860. "I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it and Christ is God," Lincoln reportedly said, clasping a Bible and calling it "this rock on which I stand." Holland's book concluded with a kind of prayer to Saint Abraham: "Humble child of the backwoods. . .we receive thy life and its immeasurably great results, as the choicest gifts that a mortal has ever bestowed on us; grateful to thee for thy truth to thyself, to us, and to God; and grateful to that ministry of Providence and grace which endowed thee so richly, and bestowed thee upon the nation and mankind."

Outraged by this pious account, Lincoln's law partner in his adopted hometown of Springfield, Illinois, the freethinking William Herndon, wrote that Lincoln "held many of the Christian ideas in abhorrence. . . . I never heard him use the name of. . .Jesus but to confute the idea that he was the Christ." Another Lincoln associate, Ward Hill Lamon, wrote in his own Life of Abraham Lincoln that Lincoln "was never a member of any church, nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ, or the inspiration of the Scriptures." This was so not just during Lincoln's youth, when if "he went to church at all, he went to mock," but also in his later years, however discreet about his irreligion he may have become for professional and political purposes.

And then there is this report of hie youth:

Dragged to church on Sundays, he would regale his siblings afterward by mounting a tree stump and mimicking the minister's overwrought style. More disturbing to Lincoln was the doctrine that underlay the histrionics—namely, the belief that a God worth praising would create people with the intention of condemning them to hell for all eternity. One of Lincoln's favorite poems was "Holy Willie's Prayer," a satirical verse monolog written by the Scottish poet Robert Burns (like Lincoln, the estranged, bookish son of an intensely religious farmer).

In the poem, Willie begins his ramblings on a complacently Calvinist note:

O Thou, that in the heavens does dwell,
Wha, as it please best Thysel',
Sends ane to heaven an' to hell,
A' for Thy Glory,
And no for onie guid or ill,
They've done afore Thee!

Being a firm beliver in our Lord and savior Jesus Christ I can not but hope/pray that every person is saved. Yet those who would mock God by using the Bible or one's belief (or lack there of) for nothing more than political gain is no Christian in my book.

[Swampman]

Maybe he was like myself.  I'm a Christian but I hate religion.

[littlecanoe]

Expediency does seem to be a strong factor in his comments concerning "The Almighty".
From what I've read here, on other sites, the scant evidence offered by Lincoln apologists, the
opinion of people that I respect concerning this issue; all lead me to doubt any depth of commitment
to our Lord.

GaW,  you said it well. 

Being a firm beliver in our Lord and savior Jesus Christ I can not but hope/pray that every person is saved. Yet those who would mock God by using the Bible or one's belief (or lack there of) for nothing more than political gain is no Christian in my book.

[Ga.windbreak]

Maybe he was like myself.  I'm a Christian but I hate religion.

You and I think alike, I think, if true there is no way Lincoln is one of us. From my 20's on I have distrusted the organized church yet my belief in our Lord has never been stronger.
Bless you.

Ron