What the Bible taught Lincoln about America

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, he was certainly not thought of as a man given to religious fervor. But over the next 4½ years, as hundreds of thousands of Americans died in the Civil War, the 16th president evolved into a theologian of the American idea, using the language and concepts of the Bible to reflect on the war’s larger meaning. This year on Presidents Day, Americans will observe the 211th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth. But in an age of declining biblical literacy, we are in danger of losing touch with a key source of his greatness.

Why, for instance, did Lincoln begin the Gettysburg Address with the words “fourscore and seven years ago?” It isn’t because he usually spoke that way, as many readers of the speech might now assume. Rather, he knew that his audience was deeply familiar with the King James Bible and would recognize the language of the Psalms: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years.” As Adam Gopnik has written, Lincoln “had mastered the sound of the King James Bible so completely that he could recast abstract issues of constitutional law in biblical terms.” …

Lincoln’s biblical reflections on America reached full flowering in his Second Inaugural Address, delivered in March 1865. More a sermon than a political speech, it is the most remarkable piece of oratory in American history. Lincoln called his country to repentance and described the Civil War as God’s punishment for American slavery, concluding with the Psalmist’s declaration that “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” The historian Paul Johnson has noted that it is impossible to imagine any other statesman of Lincoln’s time—Disraeli, Napoleon III, Bismarck—giving such a speech; only Americans were accustomed to seeing themselves in such biblical terms.