Gettysburg Address ... easy question? maybe

[Gene C]

Herndon's view on Lincoln's religious beliefs has been a source of much of the misunderstanding of Lincoln.

From what I can recall, the talk about his non-belief goes back to his New Salem days, a young man away from home and the influence of his parents and family.
He makes his own friends, some highly intelligent people who have different religious views than what he may have been accustom to. Supposedly influenced by his new acquaintances, his faith and understanding of God is challenged and changes away from what he had previously accepted.

For most of us, our knowledge and faith in God changes some over time as we have more life experiences. The difficulties and challenges of life can draw your closer, or push you further away, in your relationship with God. Lincoln was no different. The death of his mother, sister and her baby, and Ann Rutledge, certainly caused him to have questions not easily answered.

He seems to have been very frustrated with the moral issue of slavery (as he saw it) and the justification of a different viewpoint of the moral view of slavery taken by many of the religious leaders and preachers of his day. Many of them found what the felt were scriptural reasons to not interfere and to accept slavery as part of God's plan. This is given as one reason he was not known to have "officially" joined a specific church. That, and at an early age, he is known to have mocked the overly expressive and overly zealous presentations of many of the traveling preachers sermons, who he may have viewed as being hypocritical.