Abraham Lincoln and Religion - Modern Views

Modern Views

Richard Carwardine of Oxford University has recently published Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (2006). Carwardine highlights Lincoln's considerable ability to rally evangelical Northern Protestants to the flag by nourishing the millennial belief that they were God's chosen people. The New York Times, on 19 February 2006, notes: "This was no mean feat, coming from a man who had been suspected of agnosticism or atheism for most of his life. Yet by the end, while still a religious skeptic, Lincoln, too, seemed to equate the preservation of the Union and the freeing of the slaves with some higher, mystical purpose."

Allen C. Guelzo, director of Civil War Era Studies at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, published Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President in 1999. Guelzo argues that Lincoln's boyhood inculcation of Calvinism was the dominant thread running through his adult life. He characterizes Lincoln's worldview as a kind of "Calvinized Deism".

These recent scholars expand on the mainstream views of the likes of G. Frederick Owen who wrote Abraham Lincoln: The Man and His Faith in 1976, William Wolf who wrote The Religion of Abraham Lincoln in 1963, and William Barton who wrote The Soul of Abraham Lincoln in 1920. These scholars maintain that Lincoln was a man of deep faith.