Lincoln and religion

[Richard Lawrence Miller]

Persons who knew Lincoln in the Indiana years indicate that they were unclear about his religious thinking. He was so articulate, even about complicated things, that he must have deliberately left his friends and neighbors in the dark. Which suggests that there was something about his religious beliefs that would have upset residents of his community.

I think that Lincoln, as a young adult and into middle age, was a skeptic about Christianity and was instead a Deist, who believed that a Creator set the great clockwork of the universe in motion and then stood aside. Deism was surely an element in Lincoln's fatalism, that what will be will be. That every event is caused by previous events, and humans cannot (and God will not) change anything that will happen. His comment that he did not control events, but that events controlled him, can be read in that context. Lincoln did not seem to think freewill existed, though he certainly believed persons should take responsibility for their actions. Yes, such a stance has some paradox.

My study of Lincoln focuses on his pre-presidential years, but my impression is that during the White House years he became a Bible believer and a Christian even though he didn't join a church.