President Abraham Lincoln had a unique relationship with religion.
According to historian Joshua Zeitz, author of Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation, Lincoln was the first president to court religious voters, which is ironic, because up until his son died, he wasn’t very religious at all.
“Lincoln gets to the White House, and he is almost certainly a lifelong non-believer. He had been dogged early in his political career by charges that he was a religious scoffer. He had at one point penned some sort of infidel tract to denying the divinity of Christ, which would’ve been a big no-no in 1840-something,” Zeitz shares on the latest episode of The New Abnormal politics podcast.
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Zeitz joins The New Abnormal to talk through some of the findings about Abe in his book, including the kind of spirituality the president practiced. And although he connects to religion eventually, it wasn’t the same kind of Christianity that other political figures prescribed to.
In other words, Abe had questions, especially when people evoked God, and what they thought he wanted, during the war.
“He thinks there’s just no way you can know, his God is unknowable and distant,” Zeitz tells TNA co-host, Danielle Moodie.
He also tells Danielle about the connection that Lincoln’s religion had to his decision to emancipate the enslaved and what people get wrong about him.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
