Worship in Washington

[Karen S. Campbell]

Abraham Lincoln never officially joined a church, although after his death many churches wanted to claim him as a member. There is an apocryphal story that he was planning on being baptized at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington on Easter of 1865, but there is no evidence that this is true. When he attended church with Mary, it was always a Presbyterian Church in both Springfield and in Washington. Mary was raised a member of the Episcopalian Church but joined the First Presbyterian Church in Springfield after ministered to by its pastor Dr. James Smith after Eddie's death.

Even though he never joined a church, Lincoln liked to discuss theological issues with ministers and he didn't seem to have a problem with Tad being Baptized. Sadly, Lincoln never detailed his beliefs in God. Mary said when asked about her husband's faith that he was not a conventional Christian. I think Lincoln may have been put off by the absolutism of the Baptist Predestinarian church of his parents and by the emotional and doctrinal excesses of the 2nd Great Awakening Revival of his youth. I think he rejected doctrine and dogma (similar to Quakers and Unitarian/Universalists) but maintained a belief in God rooted in his profound knowledge and love of the Bible. It's pretty clear, I think, that he rejected the doctrine of Predestination espoused by John Calvin because he loved so the poetry of Robert Burns whose poem "Holy Willie's Prayer." is an indictment of Predestination. It could be that Lincoln internalized Robert Burns negative attitude toward institutional religion (for Burns, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland) but not faith itself.

Lincoln seems to have developed a more positive but still realistic view of human nature. It could be that Mary was the one with the negative, perhaps Predestinational, view of people because of the tragedies in her life.