Pastor of my dreams - Baptist Bible Tribune

Photographer Alexander Gardner capturedthis image of President Lincoln deliveringhis inaugural address on the east portico ofthe U.S. Capitol, March 4, 1865.Lincoln’s father, Thomas Lincoln, was amember of a Primitive Baptist church inKentucky when Lincoln was born, andwhen the Lincoln family moved to Indianain 1816, the family attended the LittlePigeon Baptist Church, another PrimitiveBaptist congregation. Primitive Baptistswere strongly Calvinistic in theology, antislavein political outlook, and because ofthe lack of educated clergy on the frontier,susceptible to emotionalism in preaching.Lincoln recoiled against the emotionalismand uneducated nature of the clergywho apparently graced the pulpit of theLittle Pigeon church. On one occasion,Thomas Lincoln angrily disciplined his sonafter catching him after a Sunday servicebehind the church mocking and mimickingthe preacher’s sermon to the delight ofthe other teenage boys who were Lincoln’saudience. When Lincoln moved with hisfamily to Illinois in 1830, there is no recordof him joining as an adult with the PrimitiveBaptist congregations in New Salem orSpringfield.He had a distant relationship with hisfather. Thomas Lincoln was not a welleducatedman and Lincoln was apparentlyembarrassed by him as he began his ownrise in Illinois politics. He did, however,carry vestiges of his father’s worldview ashe developed in adulthood. Lincoln, as ayoung man, maintained a belief in someunknown power or force that compelleda person to a certain action or result apartfrom free will, which Lincoln labeled “theDoctrine of Necessity.” He credited his upbringingwith instilling within him a strongaversion to slavery. Thomas Lincoln’santi-slavery beliefs, springing from hischurch’s teaching, were one factor in thefamily’s move from Kentucky to Indianain 1816. Lincoln, like most Americans ofhis generation, had a deep knowledgeof the Bible as a book. He memorizedlarge portions of the Bible, along withJohn Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, ParsonWeem’s Life of Washington, and portionsof Aesop’s Fables.Well liked and a good storyteller, theambitious young Lincoln embarked on acareer of politics and the law. He beganhis political rise in New Salem, Illinois, andthen in the state capital, Springfield. Alongthe way, Lincoln dealt with, as he calledit, “this sad world of ours.” His first love,Ann Rutledge, died before they could bemarried. His eventual wife, Mary ToddLincoln, had a temper and haughty disposition,and as the tragedies that envelopedLincoln also affected her, she turned tospiritualism, and eventually became mentallyimbalanced. Lincoln was never closeto his first son, Robert. Their second son,Edward, died at four years of age in 1850.Lincoln was deeply troubled by the loss,but at the time did not attempt to rationalizehis death as part of any divine plan.After Edward’s death, the Lincolns hadtwo more children, William, nicknamedWillie, who Lincoln doted on, and Thomas,named after Abraham’s father.Lincoln also confronted political setbacks.While he served as a successful statelegislator, he only served one lone term inCongress. It was during this race for Congress,in 1846, that Lincoln had to confrontquestions about his faith. Lincoln’s Democraticopponent, the Methodist circuit-ridingpreacher Peter Cartwright, had stirredup ugly rumors about Lincoln’s lack of faith,intimating he was a “scoffer” of Christianity.To confront this potentially ruinouscharge, Lincoln issued an open letter to thevoters of his congressional district statingthat while he was “not a member of anyChristian church” he had “never deniedthe truth of the Scriptures.” In the letter,Lincoln further defined his belief in the“Doctrine of Necessity” as the ideathe “human mind is impelled to action,or held in rest by some power,over which the mind itself has nocontrol,” again a more dressed-upversion of the Calvinism Lincolnhad been exposed to as a child.Lincoln was passed over forthe United States Senatetwice, in 1856, and morefamously, to Steve Douglasin 1858. While he was asuccessful and prosperousattorney, politicalsuccess seemed toelude him. Lincoln became depressed atthe losses and wrote in 1856 that for him“the race of ambition has been a failure —a flat failure.”During these times of growth, trial,and political maturity, apart from his letterdescribing the “Doctrine of Necessity” in1846, Lincoln did not evidence any deepreligious impulse or thought. Lincoln’s lawpartner, William Herndon, openly disgustedwith the post-assassination portrayal ofLincoln as an overtly religious man, statedthat Lincoln had lived and died as “anunbeliever.” Herndon can be somewhatdiscounted as an unreliable witness, himselfbeing an occasional ally of the 19thcentury agnostic Robert Ingersoll in attemptingto turn Lincoln into an AmericanVoltaire rejecting traditional Christianity.President Lincoln sat for this portrait byAlexander Gardner on February 5, 1865.Baptist Bible Tribune [ February 2009 ] 11