Turns out that The Perfect Master has already addressed this very thing. How’d we miss that?
There is certainly legitimate evidence for this view, and no serious historian would dismiss it out of hand.
But you seem to be uncritically accepting of it, and confident in dismissing, out of hand, the other side - the contempoary and modern biographies that aver he was a Christian, if, admittedly, not one of a specific brand.
Why is that?
Well, see, this was kind of my point. Actually I could understand the impulse a bit more from homosexuals when there’s a tendency to deny that any (admirable) historical figure was gay. I think matt has some posts on the subject currently. I just found it funny that Xians (no, they’re not mine, or they would be better behaved) would disparage homosexuals for seeking said vaildation and in the same sentence seek the same validation themselves.
It’s ironic (and I believe I’m using that term correctly :)).
(And for what it’s worth, I’m not a Betty or a he…just for the record.)
Alistair Cooke pointed out it was very bad taste in America to talk common sense about Abraham Lincoln.
What am I dismossing? Where are the quotes where he said he was a Christian? What exactly is the evidence for the other side? I’m not aware of any.
Most of the Christians in the entire world, including all the Catholics, would not “pass muster” as Christians according to the contemporary fundamentalist conception.
Come on people! Everyone knows Linclon wasn’t a Christian. He was a Jew. After all, he was shot in the temple. ;j 
Ow. Ow ow ow. Stop hitting me.
I think it’s the fact that until/even after proven otherwise, all historical figures are white/straight/chritian, as per numerous cites in children’s illustrated books of history.
Quite true. Part of the reason I object to them cherrypicking in their quest for historical validation…Abraham Lincoln? Goodguy…therefore One Of Us. Slaveholders using the Bible to justify slavery? No, see, here’s why they’re not really Chrisitian…
When it’s pretty clear that whether or not you can count him as Christian he was certainly no fundamentalist…and if he were alive today and in politics he’d be pissing them all off (well, now, there’s a cheerful thought )
Heh heh heh . . . good one. Too bad he was actually shot behind the ear.
You’ve not read G. Frederick Owen’s biography, I take it? According to Owen, Lincoln was a Christian, although not public about his beliefs and greatly disturbed by the disunity that existed among Christian denominations.
The very first biography following Mr. Lincoln’s death was written by Joseph Gilbert Holland in 1866. It characterized Mr. Lincoln as a model Christian gentleman.
Most of the “Lincoln was NOT a Christian” works spend much of their time recounting, and purportedly debunking, the stories that show Lincoln a Christian.
No. What did I write that gave any weight whatsoever to that idea?
My provenance is from Holland and Owen’s works, among others.
This is a good example of a strawman. No one but you has advanced the children’s book idea. It’s easy to discredit the opposition’s ideas if you’re the one crafting them in the first place, I know, but perhaps you can actually address the real arguments, rather than the ones spawned by your fevered, limited imagination.
Well since Lincoln himself claimed that he was NOT a Christian, since he proudly proclaimed himself an “infidel,” since he specifically denied the Divinity of Jesus and all Christian miracles, I think I’ll have to take the word of Lincoln over Lincoln biographers (and I would not have expected comtemporary biographers to write about, or even have known about Lincoln’s true beliefs) and assume he meant what he said when he said he wasn’t a Christian.
If you can actually show me a quote where Abe himself, in his own words, proclaims his own Christian faith (and I don’t mean vague platititudes about God, I mean a specific expression of a belief in Christian doctrine) then that would be helpful. As it stands, I think the quotations that we already have from him would make such an expression unlikely.
Cite?
“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.”
[url=http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin141344.html-Abraham Lincoln
You can also scroll up to my first post in this thread where I cited extensively from a letter written by a close friend about Lincoln’s beliefs. Don’t miss the fact that Lincoln wrote a book debunking Christianity which was burned by a friend to prevent its ppublication.
Also don’t miss this part which I will post again:
<hijack>
Mary Todd Lincoln might have been odd, but she also suffered from having a bit of a bad rap. She, like Abe, was from the Midwest, which was the barbaric frontier back then. She didn’t fit into the Washington old-money crowd; she knew it, and they knew it, and she was quite insecure about her place.
</hijack>
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
“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.”
[OK:
[url=“http://www.eadshome.com/Lincoln.htm”]From here.](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/abrahamlin141344.html-Abraham Lincoln[/url)
So we don’t have the book. It was burned. But you’re confident that it existed, and it was anti-Christian?
Well, I acknowledge that those allegations exist.
But I ALSO acknowledge a different view.
You are simply discarding any evidence you don’t like.
“Foreskin and seven inches ago…”
If you really read the quote, it does not amount to a personal confession of Christian faith by Lincoln, but a polite expression of praise for the bible as a source of ethical teaching. I see the statement as being more or less diplomatic and political, carefully parsed, almost Clintonian in how it conceals more than it reveals. As a politician, Lincoln had to say nice things about the bible, and this seems to have been a way to do that without betraying his own skepticism about Christian theology.
What evidence have I discarded? I’m asking to see what the evidence is. I’d like to see any quote by Lincoln in which he professes a personal belief in the divinity of Christ.