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Lincoln's Battle with God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
by
Stephen Mansfield
4.06 · Rating details · 726 ratings · 110 reviews
Abraham Lincoln is the most beloved of all U.S. presidents. He freed the slaves, gave the world some of its most beautiful phrases, and redefined the meaning of America. He did all of this with wisdom, compassion, and wit.
Yet, throughout his life, Lincoln fought with God. In his early years in Illinois, he rejected even the existence of God and became the village atheist. In time, this changed but still he wrestled with the truth of the Bible, preachers, doctrines, the will of God, the providence of God, and then, finally, God’s purposes in the Civil War. Still, on the day he was shot, Lincoln said he longed to go to Jerusalem to walk in the Savior’s steps.
What had happened? What was the journey that took Abraham Lincoln from outspoken atheist to a man who yearned to walk in the footsteps of Christ?
In this thrilling journey through a largely unknown part of American history, New York Times best-selling author Stephen Mansfield tells the richly textured story of Abraham Lincoln’s spiritual life and draws from it a meaning sure to inspire Americans today. (less)
Hardcover, 242 pages
Published November 12th 2012 by Thomas Nelson (first published August 21st 2012)
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Feb 19, 2013T.M. rated it it was ok
I like just about any book about Lincoln, so I can't say that I didn't like this book. It was just disappointing.
I felt as though Mansfield definitely leapt to conclusions too quickly and jumped through a lot of hoops to classify Lincoln's religious beliefs without concrete evidence. He will write something like, "historians doubt [X] is true" but then proceed to take [X] as fact.
At one point (152) he argues plainly that Lincoln believed in "God as creator, as ruler of the world...He believed in the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ as teacher, Savior of the world...He believed in heaven, in the resurrection of the dead, and what Christians call eternal life...in fasting and prayer as a means of urging God to change human affairs, in repentance of sins, in observing the Sabbath...etc." For some of these assertions we have no evidence to believe they are true, for others we have conflicting evidence, and for some we have evidence so that we know they definitely AREN'T true.
We know that Lincoln underwent a religious transformation. We know he began his political career as mostly, if not entirely, atheist. And we know that while in the White House, if not sooner, he became much more religious. But at no point can we be sure that Lincoln ever became the sort of perfect Christian that Mansfield seeks to paint.
Overall, the book was a fast, easy read but if you're looking to read only one Lincoln book, I would stick with "Lincoln's Melancholy" by Joshua Wolf Shenk. It covers everything that Mansfield covers in this volume (and more) creating a more concrete and nuanced portrait of America's best president. (less)
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May 21, 2020Julie Davis rated it it was amazing
Just as he is for many Americans, Abraham Lincoln is one of my heroes. Honest, steadfast, witty, and determined, he guided our nation through one of our most difficult times. I remember hearing several years ago that he was an atheist and that any language about faith in his speeches was just for political purposes. Ok, if that's who he was then that's who he was.
I was intrigued, therefore, when I saw this book and many positive reviews. The subtitle grabbed me — A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America — so I picked it up with a spare Audible credit. It is read by the author and is fairly short - around 5 hours.
I was pleased to find an even-handed telling of Lincoln's faith journey throughout his life. I especially appreciated the author taking care to bring up opposing points of view and objections when people's accounts of Lincoln's faith seem too easy or fabricated. This is done through using Lincoln's own letters, speeches, and other writing, as well as those of his contemporaries.
It is also a good, fairly short biography for anyone who'd like to get the gist without committing to thousands of pages which usually comprise a Lincoln biography. Lincoln's story is also very modern in many ways. His motives for his atheism ring true today. His personal journey rings true with my own experience.
Highly recommended. (less)
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Jan 29, 2013George P. rated it it was amazing
Lincoln’s Battle with God will disappoint two kinds of readers: secularists and Christian nationalists, both of whom want to claim America’s sixteenth president as wholly their own. He is neither, however. As Stephen Mansfield writes, “The silencing of Lincoln’s faith by the secular and the exaggerating of Lincoln’s faith by the religious have given us a less accurate and a less engaging Lincoln. We are poorer for the distortions.” Indeed we are, which is all the more reason to appreciate the accomplishment of Mansfield’s book.
That accomplishment is the mapping of Abraham Lincoln’s religious journey. The journey began in 1809 in Kentucky, whose frontier religion was shaped by the camp-meeting revivalism of Cane Ridge (1801). Lincoln’s parents, Thomas and Nancy, were Hard Shell Baptists. Their religion was primitive, emotional, and fervent. Lincoln loved his mother, who died when he was 10. Whatever spiritual sensitivity he had seems to have come from her. But when he was emancipated from his father at age 21, Lincoln disavowed both the man and his God.
As Lincoln struck out on his own in New Salem, Illinois, he fell in with a group of freethinkers, devotees of Paine, Volney, and Burns. He was known as an “infidel” who referred to Jesus Christ as a “bastard” and delighted to point out the Bible’s seeming contradictions in public debate. He went so far as to write a “little book on Infidelity” that his freethinking friends had the foresight to burn. This is the Lincoln secularists love and the religious loathe.
But infidelity was not Lincoln’s final take on religion. A change of view began when Lincoln moved to Springfield, the capital of Illinois. In 1846, in a hotly contested race against Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright for Illinois’s 7th Congressional District, Lincoln published a handbill dishonestly disavowing his earlier infidelity. “I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular,” he wrote, when in fact he had done precisely those things. His infidelity was softening, if for no other reason than political necessity. (Incidentally, he won the race.)
There may have been more going on, however. In 1849, having served his term in Congress, Lincoln moved briefly to Lexington, Kentucky, to settle the estate of his father-in-law, Robert Smith Todd. There, he came across The Christian’s Defence, a work of apologetics by Rev. James D. Smith, who happened to be the pastor of Springfield’s First Presbyterian Church. Upon returning to Springfield, Lincoln sought out Smith for conversation, and the Lincoln family began attending his church and supporting its ministries. When Thomas Lincoln lay dying, Lincoln wrote his stepbrother these words of comfort to convey to his father: “He [God] will not forget the dying man, who puts his trust in Him…but that if it be his lot to go now, he will soon have a joyous [meeting] with many loved ones gone before; and where [the rest] of us, through the help of God, hope ere-long [to join] them.” Whether this is a heartfelt, orthodox Christian faith is uncertain. That it is not infidelity is quite clear, however. Lincoln was on a journey.
That journey took him physically to Washington DC. Spiritually, however, it took him into uncharted territory. The Civil War did not bring out the best in America’s theologians, whose theologies predictably lined up with their respective political sympathies, whether Northern or Southern. Lincoln, of course, was for the Union, but his theology transcended his politics. In September 1862, Lincoln wrote himself this note:
The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party—and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say this is probably true—that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.
What was God’s will? Lincoln came to believe that God’s purpose for him was to expand his war aims beyond merely preserving the Union (the cause Lincoln articulated in his First Inaugural Address). Now the additional purpose was freeing the slaves. According to Salmon Chase, secretary of the Treasury, Lincoln told his Cabinet, “I determined, as soon as it [the Confederate army] should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a Proclamation of Emancipation such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself and (hesitating a little)—to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise.” In short, the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation was the fulfillment of a religious vow, as much as it was a military strategy or a war aim.
After Lincoln had been re-elected but before the Confederacy had been defeated, Lincoln declared his theological understanding of the war to the broadest possible audience in his Second Inaugural Address:
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh!” [Matthew 18:7] If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether” [Psalm 19:9].
An infidel doesn’t speak this way. Were he to mask his politics behind civil religion, he would speak the argot of his supporters and fellow partisans. He would not transcend their politicized religion with a critique aimed at both sides equally. Nor would he promise “malice toward none…charity for all” as government policy. But Abraham Lincoln did. He was no infidel. Then again, an orthodox Christian wouldn’t be caught dead in a theater on Good Friday, as Abraham Lincoln was on April 14, 1865, when felled by a single bullet to the back of his head. Lincoln was no orthodox Christian either.
This, then, is the outline of Abraham Lincoln’s religious journey that Stephen Mansfield traces in Lincoln’s Battle with God. There is much more, of course, especially regarding how religion soothed Lincoln’s lifelong melancholy and helped him grieve the death of two sons. But the journey is there: from infidelity to something short of orthodox Christianity. Mansfield’s book will disappoint secular and religious partisans. Those less interested in partisan (mis)uses of history will delight in the honesty and ambiguity of the story it tells. (less)
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Dec 20, 2014Grandpa rated it really liked it
Shelves: 19th-century, abraham-lincoln, american-history, god
Mr. Mansfield's argument in this very well written book can be summed up using his own words found on page 186 "...He had hated God, had felt tortured and rejected by him, like Job of old. Utimately and through a process of years, Lincoln came to see God as good and just. He learned to rely on his comfort, trust in his guidance, and stand in awe of his perfect judgments. He may even have learned to love God as a heavenly Father far beyond any earthly father he had known."
In my opinion Mr. Mansfield made his case using what has been accepted as true by most Lincoln scholars of the events in Lincoln's life and comparing those events with Lincoln's own words. I didn't give the 5 stars (but would rate it 4.5) because at times I felt that Mr. Mansfield was perhaps reaching a bit too far in his statements of what Lincoln "believed." Having said that though I would highly recommend this book to anyone studying Lincoln because his religious journey from non-believer to the man placing his faith in the judgment of God cannot and must not be excluded in any understanding of America's greatest president. (less)
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Oct 07, 2016A.L. Buehrer rated it really liked it
Shelves: non-fiction, tough-christian
I've always known that Lincoln was our best president, and this book only further confirmed it. Lincoln was a great character--very complex, conflicted, and even contradictory at times.
This book had a very speculative feeling to it. A lot of different arguments were presented. But I think this reflects in a very honest way, how Lincoln research is. And this in turn says something about the man himself, who never really stated anything outright about his inner self.
I learned a lot of things I didn't know about Abraham Lincoln's family, and the complicated and tumultuous journey he took from apparently radical atheist, to apparently Christian. Even with the question of exactly what kind of Christian he became, if a genuine Christian at all left hanging, I think this book shed a great deal of light on a subject I rarely even hear discussed. (less)
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Jul 18, 2017David Steele rated it really liked it
Shelves: history, biography
The sixteenth president of the United States is dearly beloved by conservatives and liberals alike. He is known for his exemplary leadership, uncompromising character, and love for liberty. Yet his approach to God and the Christian life is something that is either assumed or neglected altogether. Either option shows a certain amount of naivety and must be challenged. Stephen Mansfield’s book, Lincoln’s Battle With God: A President’s Struggle With Faith and What it Meant for America addresses thi ...more
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Mar 04, 2022John Waldrip rated it it was amazing
An insightful history of Lincoln's spiritual background and personal struggles with sin, salvation, and the things of God. Written with clarity and an appreciation for the conventions of Lincoln's day, the author is careful to avoid projecting modern mores and conventions to those living in the past. A great read. (less)
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Mar 29, 2017Literary Chic rated it really liked it
Shelves: civil-war
I found this book interesting without being confrontational. It was nice to hear Lincoln's varied opinions of a god. The most interesting thing I noticed was that in all of the quotes Mr. Mansfield sourced, Lincoln never referred to Jesus Christ. He referred to a deity in many ways but not by any name in this book.
The author was thought provoking and and truly seemed to give a fair analysis of Lincoln's beliefs.
"When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That is my religion." - Abraham Lincoln (less)
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Nov 23, 2012Luke rated it it was amazing
Shelves: luke-s-favorite-books
A marvelous book focusing on the spiritual journey of Abraham Lincoln, from an athiest to a skeptic to a believer, whose developing faith affected the nation and helped his understanding of the Civil War. Lincoln is such a complicated subject but this appears to be a honest and unbiased portrait.
"We want conclusions rather than processes, and we want conversions rather than religious journeys. The search for Abraham Lincoln's faith disappoints only if we begin that journey assuming there will be a dramatic resolution, that at some point in the story Abraham Lincoln will kneel at an altar and satisfy us with a verifiable spiritual experience."
"The silencing of Lincoln's faith by the secular and the exaggerating of Lincoln's faith by the religious have given us a less accurate and a less engaging Lincoln. We are poorer for the distortions." (less)
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Jul 18, 2017Amanda rated it liked it · review of another edition
Shelves: 2017-vt-reading-challenge, i-own-this-book-on-kindle, nonfiction, history, biographies, american-history
Mansfield's book on Abraham Lincoln's faith is an interesting read. Following Lincoln's faith from his rejection of God in his youth to his final words about walking in the footsteps of Christ, this book looks at Lincoln's spiritual journey and makes some informed guesses at what the president was thinking and how he changed in his beliefs about God. While I was not convinced (and I'm unsure whether or not the author was convinced) that Lincoln was a Christian at his death, based on this book I also would not be able to say that he was not. My only objection to the book is that it seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time on Lincoln's time before the presidency and almost gloss over the Civil War. The appendix with all Lincoln's speeches from his presidency was very helpful, as the book often uses short quotes from these speeches that a reader may not be able to remember in context. (less)
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Jan 22, 2017Mary rated it liked it
Relying on excerpts from Lincoln's speeches, letters, and conversations recounted by Lincoln's friends and associates, Mansfield makes a case for President Lincoln's transition from a nonbeliever into a man who puts his faith in God and the teachings of the Bible.
Mansfield's writing reminds me of reading a graduate thesis, very workman like and documented. All in all an interesting read. Lincoln's personal experiences with death and the burden of the Civil War support Mansfield's conclusion that Lincoln was a man of faith in God. I have never doubted this about Lincoln. Although I was surprised to learn, that he did pretended to believe to help him get elected as a young man. I would have never suspected such duplicity from Honest Abe. (less)
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May 24, 2016Ben Denison rated it really liked it · review of another edition
A fascinating book. I've heard/read a lot about Lincoln, but little about his faith (or lack there-of). Although non-Christians and Christians alike claim him for their side, he seemed really conflicted most of his life. His early life was one of rebellion as he was brought up in a very strict Christian home with a very domineering father that Lincoln did not like. "I'm chosen and you're not!". This soured him toward religion.
His early adulthood was one of avowed atheist and mocked religion and God every chance he got. He also struggled with depression most his life. In early politics he realized he had to lie about his lack of faith and was often blasted by opponents for his earlier writings. We've heard he lost many elections before being elected president, but i'd never heard/seen his anti-religious views as being one of the reasons. However, you do start to see his views slowly changed, and by the time he was elected president, his writings, friends, and speeches seem to have a different tone and direction toward God and faith.
By the time of his presidency, he was attending church regularly, had the Bible near him and was reading and quoting it throughout his presidency. Many of his friends and colleagues said he was a man of faith late in his life. (less)
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Jun 30, 2021Brett Milam rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
I’ve been on a bit of a presidential history kick lately, as the two primary areas of history I find most interesting are presidential history and military history in the United States, and I’ve also been trying to get back into absorbing as much about the American Civil War as I can. There’s no better place to turn than that of Abraham Lincoln to accomplish all of those goals. Admittedly, while at the library, I was in search of two other Lincoln books, neither of which were available in audiobook form. However, I did come across Stephen Mansfield’s book, Lincoln’s Battle with God: A President’s Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America.
Now, for those who know me and know that I’m not religious, a book centered on a president’s faith might seem an odd choice for me. But it’s not in the slightest. You don’t have to be religious to study religion and to be familiar with it, particularly because, as the title points out, a president’s faith is influential on the course the country can take or not take. And I’m pretty convinced by Mansfield’s argument that Lincoln’s evolution over time on religion influenced the kind of president he was. It also influenced Lincoln’s view of the Civil War as being a righteous cause for the Union to persist within, even when the war seemed lost at times.
Also, Lincoln has always struck me as a sort of sermon-like president in the way he writes his speeches. They feel steeped in a grander vision of the country and humanity itself.
As any book about a president and his faith is going to do, Mansfield has to offer a quasi-biographical look at Lincoln and I found all of that fascinating. I’m particularly fascinated by the idea of how rampantly self-educated not only Lincoln basically was, but the colonists in general were. Mansfield makes the argument that the colonists were so ardently self-educated to prove that they could create a culture of their own separate from England.
It’s interesting. There’s a sense in which people of today automatically assume they are better educated and smarter than the people of yesteryear. In some ways, particularly moral ways, perhaps so. But in a fundamental educated way? I don’t know if that holds as much water as we egotistically like to think. Consider again, the notion of being self-taught in a plethora of subjects. Or scale it back further: Being self-taught into literacy itself. Or that many of the leading men of that day spoke multiple languages.
That Lincoln was able to emerge from a life of abject poverty and the brutishness in general of 19th century life to be as well-read, well-spoken and such a poetic writer as he is is a remarkable reflection upon the man himself.
I also didn’t know that Lincoln in his younger days kept an arm’s length from God and religion, particularly it seems as a manifestation of the fraught relationship he had with his father, who was religious. And not just an arm’s length, but as many people who are younger and still developing their ideologies and worldviews, he was vociferously and boisterously against the notion of religion. So much so that townsfolk where he lived thought of him as an infidel (an unbeliever). That makes it even more remarkable that Lincoln was able to rise in the ranks of political office, including to the highest office in the land. I’m not sure an open atheist could win the presidency today and it would have seemed a bigger ask of yesteryear. Sure, the skeptic and cynic in you could, as I did, initially think he achieved high office because Lincoln altered his views on God to better align with the voting public, but I believe Mansfield makes a convincing case that Lincoln’s views on God and religion genuinely evolved over his lifetime. At minimum, Lincoln went from being a vocal hater of religion to someone who spoke about God’s influence.
So, I came for Mansfield’s examination of Lincoln’s relationship with God and I stayed for that, but also, I was most fascinated by Mansfield’s details on Lincoln’s bouts with clinical depression or, as Lincoln called it, “hypo.” And yes, you guessed it, yet again, 19th century medicine enters the room with the catch-all solution to any ailment, including Lincoln’s depression: Bloodletting.
Anyhow, Lincoln went through a lot. Not that one needs to “go through a lot” to be clinically depressed, but it certainly doesn’t help the depression issues when your mother dies at nine-years-old, your father thinks academics are dumb and your son dies at a young age, too. At various times, Lincoln even contemplated suicide, so much so that his closest friends and family hid razors from him.
The only area where I had some eyebrow-raising skepticism was actually the beginning of the book when Mansfield recounted Lincoln’s purported last words before being assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Those final words, which had to do with visiting the Holy Land, came from Lincoln’s wife and first lady, Mary Todd Lincoln. The only issue there is she recounted it nearly two decades after the assassination. Later, Mansfield will dismiss an accounting of Lincoln’s life that was told decades later. So, such an inconsistency bugged me.
Nonetheless, again, I thought Mansfield presented a compelling book about the life of Lincoln. I fully believe that someone could start out hostile to God and religion and then through time and experience, come back to a better relationship with each. After all, we’re not just talking about God, but I think a lot of Lincoln’s hostilities were for the institution of religion; the hustlers and grifters of his day.
I didn’t take notes on this audiobook, as I didn’t want to burden myself with that, as I had with previous audiobooks and television reviews. But I did jot down one particular line Mansfield uses to describe purported atheists like Lincoln, “There is no God and I hate him.” I feel that perfectly describes Lincoln’s relationship. He didn’t disbelief God; he hated him for the way he (Lincoln) was and the way the world was.
If you’re also into presidential history or history in general or obviously, religion, then I would recommend this book. I’m certain you will walk away learning something new about Lincoln. Lincoln’s oratory skills, his desire to save the Union, and his freeing of the slaves via the Emancipation Proclamation, as well as his assassination, are the well-known highlights, but as Mansfield rightly points out, Lincoln’s relationship to God is not as well-known or taught.
Mansfield’s book is a nice contribution to making that relationship more known. (less)
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Nov 19, 2013Cheryl rated it it was amazing
Excellent book about the struggles and life of Abraham Lincoln. I feel I've gotten to know our 16th president better, and have a greater admiration, respect, and appreciation for all he did for our country. I do not agree with those who feel Mr Lincoln was not a christian, simply because he did not profess it and was not baptized. Mr. Lincoln certainly "walked the walk". Many profess to know Christ, they "talk the talk" - but that is as far as it goes. It was these Christians who turned Abraham Lincoln away from the faith in the beginning. Abraham Lincoln had a heart of gold and grew ever closer to his Lord, Jesus Christ. No, he may not have started out as a Christian, but he grew close to the Lord in his short journey on this earth, especially as he suffered in the valleys of his life and with the loss of two of his sons. I admire Lincoln for his love of education, how he was able to succeed with such little formal training, yet pushed himself to learn. Excellent read about a man we were very blessed to have serve this country. (less)
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Feb 10, 2017James P rated it it was amazing
Interesting approach to religious biography. Does a masterful job of marshaling the evidence for Lincoln's progressing from religious skeptic to man of faith. Also contains some interesting facts about period revivals and the popularity of spiritism. Paints a clear picture of Lincoln as a brilliant, but compassionate human being. (less)
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Aug 24, 2014Jay rated it liked it
Shelves: lincoln
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Like many other facets of the 16th President's life, Mansfield argues that Lincoln's religious views evolved over time. The author maintains that Lincoln moves from being an outright skeptic early in his life, to a more modest point of view after his 3 year old son Eddie died in Springfield, to being a full-fledged believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ by the time of his Presidency. Most scholars concur that his views evolved, though very few would agree to the extent Mansfield insists, and even the author acknowledges, "We will never know." (less)
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Jan 27, 2020Tom Hardman rated it it was amazing
I’ve shared some thoughts about this book in a talk that I gave in church, which you can read here on my blog:
Some Thoughts on the Book of Mormon
(The talk is about the Book of Mormon, but I also discuss some of the things that I learned from this book about Abraham Lincoln's spiritual journey.) (less)
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Feb 16, 2013Vic rated it it was amazing
Shelves: non-fiction
Wow! This is a must read and perhaps I should rate it 5 stars. I wished the book was longer. Did you know that Abraham Lincoln was an atheist at one point in his life? His spiritual growth and development are fascinating; his character is amazing. I think it is important to know how his faith and prayer moved the course of the nation. I love him with all my heart.
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Apr 23, 2016William Monaco rated it really liked it
Shelves: historical-non-fiction, lincoln, civil-war
Very good discussion about the role religion played into Lincoln's life and how it shaped his time in Springfield and Washington, DC. A great read for anyone who wants a unique take on Lincoln's life! (less)
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Nov 21, 2017Melissa Embry rated it really liked it
Shelves: nonfiction, biography, history, religion
Americans have a strange relationship with thanksgiving. Make that, Thanksgiving, with a capital T. Prior to Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of October 3, 1863, public observances of thanksgiving were intended to mark specific events – a military victory, a good harvest, perhaps sheer survival in a new land. Lincoln’s proclamation was made in the middle of the most horrific war our country had known up to that time – and has yet known. It’s a contradiction Stephen Mansfield captures movingly in Lincoln’s Battle with God.
I listened to this relatively short book on audio. Although I usually prefer audio books read by professional voice actors, there’s an undeniable earnestness to having an author read his own words. And Mansfield, a popular speaker and author of several books on public aspects of religion, reads those words well. Better still, after listening to Lincoln’s Battle with God, check out the print version for an appendix of Lincoln’s presidential proclamations referencing religious language, strikingly different from those of a younger Lincoln who had proclaimed himself an atheist.
It was an attitude that seems almost natural in Mansfield’s telling. In his early life on the American frontier, Lincoln had experiences of tragedy shocking to 21st century readers. Even before the death of his adored mother Nancy when he was nine and she was only in her 30’s, he had known the death of a younger brother. Soon after Nancy Lincoln’s death, her widower, Thomas, abandoned his two surviving children to the doubtful care of a young relative and disappeared for months, seeking a new wife. The children had given Thomas up for dead also before he finally reappeared, bringing them a stepmother.
Although Abraham Lincoln would later speak affectionately of both his mother and stepmother, his relationship with his father was painful. Thomas Lincoln belittled his son, and especially that son’s love of learning – a love Abraham would cling to more tenaciously as the legacy of his dead mother’s love of poetry, song and story. A difficult relationship between father and son, as another Christian writer, C.S. Lewis would later note, can cause difficulties for the acceptance of Christianity, a religion which puts so much emphasis on the role of divine fatherhood.
In his rebellion against Thomas, Abraham Lincoln lavished affection on his own children, only to lose two of them to death – one before, and one during his presidency. Each death sent the children’s mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, into despondency for which she sought the aid of the then-current fad of spiritualism.
Struggling lifelong with bouts of depression, with a nation that had split in two even before his first inauguration, and a war that brought unprecedented death to that nation, Lincoln had cause to wonder how a beneficient God could allow such things to happen.
And yet, according to Mary, her husband’s last words as they sat together in Ford’s Theater, “in the sacred seconds that remained” before an assassin’s bullet penetrated his brain, Lincoln continued a conversation he had begun earlier that day. “We will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footsteps of the Savior. There is no place I so much desire to see as Jerusalem.”
Was Mary’s recollection, made to a minister nearly two decades after her husband’s death, accurate? Could a Lincoln who never joined a church (although in later life he attended fairly regularly with his family), who most likely had never been baptized, have become a believer?
Mansfield makes a case for the possibility as he charts the change in Lincoln’s behavior and his words, moving from avowed atheism to public words such as his Thanksgiving proclamation of late 1863: “The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessing of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties. . . other have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.”
Author Stephen Mansfield became a bestselling author with books about public religion, including the faiths of George W. Bush and Barak Obama. In view of these earlier works, it seems a little odd that he chose not to trace changes in public manifestations of presidential religion in this book. And, as he readily admits, his premise – presumably his hope – that Lincoln experienced a conversion of the heart, is impossible to prove. The only person who could confirm it has been dead for a century and a half. However, even without ultimate proof, Lincoln’s Battle with God remains, a thoughtful and intimate story of the emotional struggle of one of America’s greatest leaders. (less)
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Sep 19, 2019Ryan rated it really liked it
Having read at least half a dozen other biographies on Abraham Lincoln, this was an excellent supplement on an aspect of Abraham Lincoln's life and character that is frequently underemphasized, downplayed, neglected, or ignored entirely. Mansfield's work explores the "tidbits" found in other biographies and, without overplaying or making more than there is from actual evidence, provides a balanced and moderate interpretation of Lincoln's spiritual journey throughout his life. His basic approach is to not make too little or too much of anything, without having significant corroborating evidence. I was very glad to see this, given my previous experience with a book by the same author that I reviewed much less than favorably (see my review of "The Mormonizing of America"). Everything I read here seemed to fit nicely with everything I read in all of the other biographies without making Lincoln's struggle with faith overblown or overshadow the rest of what we know about this great American leader.
Given Mansfield's previous (unsuccessful) foray into "Mormonism" (published the same year as this book, incidentally) I would have liked to see him say something about Lincoln's interactions with the "Mormons." Ron Anderson has made much of Lincoln's interactions and possibly inner theological sympathies with the "Mormons" in Illinois (2009, 2014), and Timothy Ballard has made too much (in my opinion) of Lincoln's possible interaction with the Book of Mormon (2014). But since two of those books came out after this book by Mansfield that can hardly be expected. Still, I'd like to see them all in the same room together one day.
All in all, Mansfield does an excellent job chronicling Lincoln's personal spiritual journey, and he offers a decent conclusion to how this affects religiosity and spirituality in America via the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural, but he could have done more with that. For example, he might have tried to contextualize all of this about Lincoln's spiritual journey in the context of the work of Frank Lambert, or someone like that. But this is still definitely worth reading and filled in some important gaps in the complex character of one of America's most important figures. (less)
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Jun 15, 2018W. Derek Atkins rated it it was amazing · review of another edition
Abraham Lincoln has always been one of my heroes, together with William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This book did not disappoint. I learned many new things about Abraham Lincoln, including a few unsavory details such as the fact that he visited a number of prostitutes during his bachelor days. But what I really appreciate the most about this book was that Stephen Mansfield did an outstanding job of researching and tracing out the trajectory of Abraham Lincoln's spiritual life.
At the end of this book, Mansfield observes that among Lincoln scholars, debates about Abraham Lincoln's religious beliefs almost always degenerate into a duel of quotes, which rarely sheds much light on this vital question. Instead, Mansfield attempts to look at the progression of Abraham's spiritual journey, making a very good case that he was "the village atheist" during his twenties, but later came very close - at the least - toward becoming a bona fide Christian. The difficulty with studying Lincoln's spirituality, as Mansfield notes, is that Abraham Lincoln never had a moment when he "got down on his knees" or prayed the Sinner's Prayer, or did any of the other acts or markers that most Evangelicals would identify as signs of a genuine conversion to the Christian faith.
In my opinion, Mansfield does an excellent job of researching and sifting through all the evidence concerning Abraham Lincoln's spiritual journey. There are points in his narrative when Mansfield clearly indulges in speculation, but they are generally easily identifiable, usually by Mansfield use of phrases such as "Perhaps he [Lincoln] thought..." Otherwise, this is a work of careful scholarship.
I heartily recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Abraham Lincoln's fascinating and consequential life, and especially those who seek greater understanding on the vexed question of Abraham Lincoln's religious beliefs.
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Feb 23, 2018Angela Sangalang rated it really liked it
I don't normally like biographies or history or anything remotely close to nonfiction books on political figures. But I had "Lincoln's Battle with God" in ebook format, untouched, and after watching "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" (spoiler: he was not a vampire hunter in real life), I was looking for a book to read and was pulled to this one. I loved it mainly because I learned so much about Lincoln in an engaging way. I expected dry historical material - not because of the author, it was just a prejudice - but I was very wrong.
Lincoln had a very interesting life, and the way Stephen Mansfield presented it kept me wanting to read. Mansfield's focus was on Lincoln's faith journey. I didn't know much about Lincoln or how his faith was a topic of debate and contention among historians, but I felt that Mansfield did his research and was objective. He presented Lincoln as a man on a spiritual journey, while not romanticizing his life and faith. It's like he took in every piece of research with a grain of salt, and basically told the readers to do the same because there's simply a lot we do not and will never know about Abraham Lincoln. (less)
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Jun 02, 2017Andrew Neveils rated it really liked it
Mansfield provides. Plethora of sources and writes clearly, concisely, and shows a mastery of the subject. I appreciate that he leaves you to draw your own conclusion, which isn't a spoiler because he more or less points to this in his introduction. But he lays out sufficient evidence that you can think of Lincoln's faith what you want -- at least now you have more data to think that way.
My only qualm is with the layout/format. I blame the publisher on this, but Mansfield does his best to keep the evidence in chronological order, keeping in step with Lincoln's faith journey. But the editor/publisher organized the chapters that splits the journey into different fragments, seemingly to separate the primary influences, but ultimately taking away from the cohesion for which the author aimed.
But you, dear reader, may not care about that. The information is clearly laid out and explained where necessary. Mansfield presents a balanced and reasoned case to the faith of President Abraham Lincoln. (less)
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