Abraham Lincoln’s Religious Transformation Mirrored Larger Revival Trends of 1860s America

History Unplugged Podcast · Apr 27, 2023 · 36m

Abraham Lincoln, unlike most of his political brethren, kept organized Christianity at arm’s length. He never joined a church and only sometimes attended Sunday services with his wife. But over the course of his life, the erstwhile skeptic effectively evolved into the nation’s first evangelical president. The Civil War, he told Americans, was divine retribution for the sin of slavery.

“Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation” by today’s guest Joshua Zeitz, is the story of that transformation, the role Lincoln’s conversion played in the war, and the way it in turn…