Comments on: Lincoln and Religion

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:41:48 +0000

Yes, John, the abolition of the “twin relics of barbarism”: slavery and Mormon polygamy.

By: John C.

John C. — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:03:17 +0000

I could be wrong but I believe that the twin prongs of the first Republican convention were the eradication of slavery and Mormonism.

We’ve come a long way, baby!

By: agnes

agnes — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:44:03 +0000

Ahem, heteropraxy.

By: agnes

agnes — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:12:27 +0000

Sorry for the random typos. And for the heterodoxy, but at least I’m dressed modestly.

By: agnes

agnes — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:10:49 +0000

Lincoln was as exactly deist (note, not even Christian) as he needed to be to be elected in the US, a nation with rather a large number of Christians, as I’m sure we’ve all noticed. At the same time, he was the president to a nation of Christians, and did what was necessary. This doesn’t mean he had any feeling at all for the religion of his country, for better or worse.

What do I think? He was a deist. God got things spinning, and then exited, not unlike Lincoln himself.
“In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong.
Abraham Lincoln

“The Bible is not my Book and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long complicated statements of Christian dogma.” Abraham Lincoln

To speak to the post itself, just because Lincoln availed himself of the rhetorical tropes of the day doesn’t mean he did anything other than use the language that his audience understood.

If I sound a little miffed, it comes from a seminary teacher (or two?) that tried to convice me that Lincoln was totally Mormon. Totally. Not. Not that he wasn’t the friend of Mormons, as he didn’t care one way or the other as to how many wives a person had, unlike, say, random California Mormons of today who feel that one wife is too many for any given female. (Low blow, but with such a setup, what could I do?)

By: Chris Henrichsen

Chris Henrichsen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:18:04 +0000

Ummm, that should be Prairie Chuck.

For a nice intro to Kant’s moral theory:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/

By: Chris Henrichsen

Chris Henrichsen — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:10:44 +0000

danithew (#26),

I think prairie dog might give you a sense of what DKL has to say about Lincoln.

By: Mark Brown

Mark Brown — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:37:43 +0000

Lincoln allowed defeated opponents to retain their weapons. Moroni didn’t.

By: kevinf

kevinf — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:31:58 +0000

Prairie Chuck, # 45, some readings of antebellum history might disagree with your conclusions. The Southern states were viewed by the rest of the Union as wanting to usurp the power of the federal government by waving the banner of states rights, which primarily meant “leave our slavery alone”, and was also used as the basis for preventing federal interference with Indian Removal and other programs that Southern states and politicians viewed as meddling in their internal affairs. Most of those practices don’t look good in the light of later developments.

By: prairie chuck

prairie chuck — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:58:52 +0000

#37 There’s a huge difference between Captain Moroni and Lincoln. Moroni in his own words was fighting in defense of God, family, freedom and religion. Lincoln was fighting to keep the Southern States from seceding. Unlike the Kingmen, the South did not want to take over the gov, did not want to usurp power. The South merely wanted to leave a union of states that they willingly, freely joined. Regardless of the fact that many states’ Articles of Ratification of the Constitution included a provision to leave the union should they decide it was in their best interests to do so, Lincoln and the unionists would have none of it and used force to keep them in a union they no longer wanted to be part of.