Mike Griffith
Sergeant
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2014
For the first time in a long time, I just finished reading a book that has single-handedly caused me to change my mind on a major issue relating to the Civil War, in this case the issue of Lincoln's religious beliefs. I'm talking about Stephen Mansfield's book Lincoln's Battle with God (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012).
Until I read Mansfield's book, I believed, based on reading many other books on the subject, that Lincoln was an anti-Christian deist, or even an atheist, until the end of his life or almost the end of his life, and that whatever conversion he might have experienced shortly before he died did not involve an acceptance of Christ's divinity and the inspiration of the Bible. Mansfield presents an enormous amount of evidence that this is not true. Mansfield makes a strong case that Lincoln began to reject his earlier skepticism/atheism in the early 1850s; that by the time Lincoln reached the White House, he had embraced God, Christianity, and the Bible; and that during his White House years Lincoln's Christian faith grew stronger and deeper.
Mansfield also shows that the scholars who have portrayed Lincoln as a deist or atheist have been very selective in their use of evidence and have ignored or dismissed dozens of credible accounts that document Lincoln's rejection of atheism and his embrace of biblical Christianity.
During the last year or so, before I read Mansfield's book over the last five days, I had stumbled across a few statements attributed to Lincoln that indicated a genuine belief in God and the Bible, but, influenced by all the books I'd read that had seemed to show he was a skeptic or an atheist, I dismissed them as aberrations or as the result of errant recollections. Mansfield presents a veritable mountain of such statements, some of them written by Lincoln, that leave no reasonable room for doubting that Lincoln did in fact believe in biblical Christianity by the time he was elected and that his faith deepened and matured during his White House years.
Until I read Mansfield's book, I believed, based on reading many other books on the subject, that Lincoln was an anti-Christian deist, or even an atheist, until the end of his life or almost the end of his life, and that whatever conversion he might have experienced shortly before he died did not involve an acceptance of Christ's divinity and the inspiration of the Bible. Mansfield presents an enormous amount of evidence that this is not true. Mansfield makes a strong case that Lincoln began to reject his earlier skepticism/atheism in the early 1850s; that by the time Lincoln reached the White House, he had embraced God, Christianity, and the Bible; and that during his White House years Lincoln's Christian faith grew stronger and deeper.
Mansfield also shows that the scholars who have portrayed Lincoln as a deist or atheist have been very selective in their use of evidence and have ignored or dismissed dozens of credible accounts that document Lincoln's rejection of atheism and his embrace of biblical Christianity.
During the last year or so, before I read Mansfield's book over the last five days, I had stumbled across a few statements attributed to Lincoln that indicated a genuine belief in God and the Bible, but, influenced by all the books I'd read that had seemed to show he was a skeptic or an atheist, I dismissed them as aberrations or as the result of errant recollections. Mansfield presents a veritable mountain of such statements, some of them written by Lincoln, that leave no reasonable room for doubting that Lincoln did in fact believe in biblical Christianity by the time he was elected and that his faith deepened and matured during his White House years.