Abraham Lincoln and Religion - Early Years

Early Years

Lincoln's parents were Hard-shell Baptists, joining the Little Pigeon Baptist Church near Lincoln City, Indiana, in 1823. In 1831, Lincoln moved to New Salem, which had no churches. However, historian Mark Noll states that "Lincoln never joined a church nor ever made a clear profession of standard Christian belief." Noll quotes Lincoln's friend Jesse Fell:

that the president "seldom communicated to anyone his views" on religion, and he went on to suggest that those views were not orthodox: "on the innate depravity of man, the character and office of the great head of the Church, the Atonement, the infallibility of the written revelation, the performance of miracles, the nature and design of...future rewards and punishments...and many other subjects, he held opinions utterly at variance with what are usually taught in the church."

Noll argues Lincoln was turned against organized Christianity by his experiences as a young man witnessing how excessive emotion and bitter sectarian quarrels marked yearly camp meetings and the ministry of traveling preachers. As a young man, Lincoln enjoyed reading the works of deists such as Thomas Paine. He drafted a pamphlet incorporating such ideas. Nonetheless, after charges of hostility to Christianity almost cost him a congressional bid, he kept his unorthodox interests private. The one aspect of his parents' Calvinist religion that Lincoln apparently embraced wholeheartedly throughout his life was the "doctrine of necessity", also known as predestination, determinism, or fatalism. It was almost always through these lenses that Lincoln assessed the meaning of the Civil War.

James Adams labeled Lincoln as a deist. It has been reported that in 1834 he wrote a manuscript essay challenging orthodox Christianity modeled on Paine's book The Age of Reason, which a friend supposedly burned to protect him from ridicule. According to biographer Rev. William Barton, Lincoln likely had written an essay something of this character, but it was not likely that it was burned in such a manner.

Lincoln was often perplexed by the attacks on his character by way of his religious choices. In a letter written to Martin M. Morris in 1843, Lincoln wrote:

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 and had talked of fighting a duel.

In 1846, when Lincoln ran for congress against Peter Cartwright, the 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, without denying that specific charge, by publishing a hand-bill in which he stated:

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.

As Carl Sandburg recounts in Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, Lincoln attended one of Cartwright's revival meetings. At the conclusion of the service, 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."

William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, stated that Lincoln admired deists Thomas Paine and Voltaire, and had read and knew of Charles Darwin before most. "He soon grew into a belief of a universal law, evolution, and from this he never deviated."

During the White House years, Lincoln and his family often attended the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, where the family pew he rented is marked by a plaque.