May 8, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, did Lincoln believe in God? Yes—but his faith walk was more complicated and messier than you probably know. Here to tell the story of Lincoln's faith is Richard Carwardine, a Lincoln Prize-winning historian and Emeritus Rhodes Professor of American History at Oxford University in England. We'd like to thank the Bill of Rights Institute for allowing us to use this audio, originally a part of their Scholar Talks series on YouTube.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Up next, the story of the complicated
faith of Abraham Lincoln. And here to tell it is
Richard Carradine, a Lincoln Prize winning historian an emeritus Rhodes
(00:34):
Professor of American History at Oxford University in England. Let's
get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Lincoln's religious views before the Civil War are a matter
of controversy or a matter of uncertainty. He had certainly
been attracted to the ideas of Tom Paine. He had
an inquiring mind. He was an intellectual. He knew his
Bible as well as an other book, with the possible
exception of Shakespeare. They were the two staples of his reading.
(01:05):
He attended the First Presbyterian Church in Springfield with his
wife Mary. They were pew holders. She was a member,
he was not a member. He was an adherent. He attended,
and I think probably by the late eighteen fifties we
can say that he was broadly in tune with what
we would say today in Unitarian theology. It could be
summed up in a belief in the fatherhood of God
(01:26):
and the brotherhood of man. One thing we do know
is that he had no time for pro slavery theology.
And I just say a little bit about that. The
South in the immediate post Revolutionary early Republic period thought
that slavery would gradually disappear. They regarded it as a
(01:49):
necessary evil. But by the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties,
more and more Southerners were standing up for the principle
of slavery and the goodness of slavery, and they developed
pro slavery theology, and their position is that slavery is
scripturally sound. The Old Testament prophets owned slaves. Nowhere in
the New Testament does Christ declare slavery to be unsinful
(02:13):
or unlawful or wrong. Major churches split over the issue
of slavery. The biggest church, Methodism, split in the eighteen forties,
and it was a really important step on the way
to civil war because the breakdown of these national institutions
had implications for politics. When we look at the secession movement,
it's quite clear that it's being driven as much by
(02:36):
the preachers and the pulpit as it is by the
political conventions. Lincoln was deeply unimpressed with this theology, as
indeed were very many other Northerners. Lincoln was not a Methodist,
he was not a Baptist. He was a possibly Unitarian.
He certainly was attached to the Presbyterian Church, and a
Presbyterian by the name of Frederick Ross wrote a book
(02:59):
on how slavery was ordained of God, and Lincoln wrote
a little memorandum to himself in which he said, well,
there's a biblical tussle over the Bible's position on slavery.
But doctor Ross has come to the rescue, and he's
given us his answer. And if I may quote it,
it's an ironic passage. Doctor Ross. He sits in the
(03:23):
shade with gloves on his hand, and subsists on the
bread that Sambo is earning in the burning sun. If
he decides that God wills Sambo to continuous slave, he
thereby retains his own comfortable position. But if he decides
that God will Sambo to be free, he thereby has
to walk out of the shade, throw off his gloves,
and delve for his own bread. Will doctor Ross be
(03:46):
actuated by that perfect impartiality, which has ever been considered
most favorable to correct decisions. Lincoln had no time for
pro slavery theology. He's alleged have had a conversation with
that state Superintendent of Education, Newton Bateman, in which he says,
I cannot see how our God could regard slavery as
just on the eve of the election of eighteen sixty,
(04:14):
the vast majority of Calvinist traditional preacheres, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and
increasingly Methodists are subscribing to the idea of the United
States as having a special mission under God. There's a
torrent of sermons during the Secession crisis and then subsequently
(04:35):
through the war completely immersed in this idea that the
United States is a modern day Israel, and that nations
under God are expected to atone for their sins. Nations
have a responsibility just as individuals do, to behave in
a godly way, in a godly fashion. God will reward
(04:58):
those nations that walk in the hearts of righteousness. God
will punish those nations that sin that deeply, deeply imbued
in the American pulpit in the Civil War, Lincoln, on
his way to Washington in February of eighteen sixty one.
He stops off at a number of places, including the
(05:19):
New Jersey Senate, at which point he refers to the
American people as an almost chosen people. There's that one
kind of a Linconian qualification, just tentativeness. Lincoln speaks to
those people. I mean, he has innumerable meetings with Presbyterians,
with Congregationalists, with Episcopalians, with Methodists, and with Baptists. They're
(05:43):
always coming to the White House. In deputations, William Decumcy
Sherman says, I wish Lincoln wouldn't spend so much time
with all these grannies. How does he get on with
the business of state? And the answer is, well, for Lincoln,
this is the business of state. And he's absolutely ofay
with understanding of this providentialism, this idea of God as
(06:04):
the rural re nations. And whereas individuals can be punished
in the afterlife, nations have to be punished here and now,
because there is no afterlife for a nation. In fact,
the only after a life for a nation is the
destruction of the nation if it actually behaves so completely
outside the scope of the plcomorality.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And you've been listening to Richard Cowardine, a Lincoln Prize
winning historian and Emeritus Rhodes Professor in American History at
Oxford University in England, telling the story of the complicated
faith life of Abraham Lincoln. And it is complicated, and
one thing we knew for sure is Lincoln had no
(06:50):
no time for the pro slavery theology developing in the
South that somehow slavery was ordained by God also fermenting
around them. Time was quite the opposite feeling from the
pulpits of the North, that America had this special mission
and must atone for our sins as humans must. When
(07:11):
we come back more of the story of Lincoln's faith
life here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
(07:33):
host of our American Stories. Every day on this show
we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and
your stories. Send us your story small or large to
out email oas at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That'sas at
Ouramerican Stories dot com. We'd love to hear them and
(07:53):
put them on the air. Our audience loves them too.
And we returned to our American Stories and the story
of Lincoln's faith walk with Richard cowardine. Let's get back
(08:17):
to the story, and you'll also be hearing from Hillsdale
collegeist Bill McClay later in this piece.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I don't think he became the Christian that many Christians
wanted him to be. They kept pushing him, and they
kept asking him, but there's no clear evidence that he
ever saw Christ as anything more than a prophetic figure,
not as a divine figure inspired by God, but not God.
But what he does do during the war is turn
(08:53):
to faith. He's a seeker after faith and a seeker
after the truth through reading of God. I wouldn't say
there's anything like guilt in a Lincoln search for an Almighty,
but I do think that as the bringer of war,
(09:14):
as the person who sees the deaths of hundreds of thousands,
in the end of course three quarters of a million
North and South, who are the victims of war, as
he suffers the terrible death of his own son, of
a favored favorite son, Willie in February of eighteen sixty two,
as he loses the emotional support of his wife through
(09:36):
the rest of the war. Basically, it is no surprise
it seems to me that he would turn for nourishment
to the Bible is to be found frequently reading the Bible.
The housekeeper, on one occasion crept up behind him to
see what he was reading and discovered that, no surprise,
he was reading the Book of Job. He clearly spent
as much time reading the Old Testament as the New Testament,
(10:00):
recognizing that there were lessons to be learnt there. And
fast days were very familiar to the colonial settlers, to
the inhabitants of the colonies, as they were indeed to
British Christians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that had
been pretty few and far between. In the American Republic,
(10:21):
there was real tussle as to how legitimate it was.
George Washington called one, Madison called one, but when Andrew
Jackson was asked to call one at the time of
the coolera epidemic, he said, no, this is tying church
and state. The fast Days and Federal Days of Thanksgiving
(10:41):
only come in significant numbers under Lincoln, and Lincoln issues
three separate calls for fast days. One is in the
after the defeat of bull Run, the second on the
eve of the Battles of the summer of eighteen sixty three,
when there'd been severe losses in the period leading up
to that, and then again after the terrible Summer's events
(11:04):
in eighteen sixty four, the Battle of the Spotsylvania the Wilderness,
and on each of those occasions Lincoln calls fast days.
In addition, he calls days of Thanksgiving after Vicksburg and
Gettysburg in eighteen sixty three, and again after the fall
of Atlanta. These are moments where the theology that I've
explained earlier, this theology of nations under God, spelt out
(11:28):
in some detail. These are religious occasions. These are profoundly
theological occasions. The citizens will attend church, they will be
preached at by ministers who are exploring the ways in
which the nation, the American nation, has failed. Now for
(11:49):
some people that failing has absolutely to do with slavery,
but for others it has to do with not with slavery,
but with the shortcomings of the people in other particular,
and Lincoln at the second in overall at odds with
the majority pulpits of the North. In March of eighteen
sixty five, it was very clear that the war was
(12:11):
in its final stages and the Union was going to triumph.
But instead of saying as you might have expected a
triumphalist president to say. He says, we both North and
South pray to the same God.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Maybe in praying to the same God, we are actually
speaking the language that he doesn't accept from either of us.
The Daist God was utterly predictable. The God of Tom
Paine was here, He was the clockmaker, and the world
was just rather accorded to Lincoln's God is unpredictable.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of
neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Maybe we are both North and South, are to blame
for the sin of slavery.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Justice is at the heart of this second inaugural. This
is an American sin. It is not simply a Southern sin.
We are being commercially and politically embraced in the sin
of slavery. We've not stood up as we should have done.
How God chooses to punish the unjust is for God
to side, and God is punishing us all.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
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
(14:28):
by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood
drawn with a 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, with malice towards none,
(14:54):
with charity for all, with firmness in the right. As
God gives us to sa see the right, let us
strive on to finish the work we are in, to
bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and
his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish
(15:15):
a just and lasting piece among ourselves and with all nations.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It is, in fact a remarkable plea for national unity
in a basement, in religious abasement before God, for the
sins that the nation has committed. And this is what's
at the heart of the Second Inaugural, forgiveness and reconciliation
of the true Christian virtues. He knew when he deliver
(15:50):
this that he was saying something that was not likely
to be acceptable to many people, and he wrote this
to Thurlow Weed, the political boss. Though Weed, who had
written to Lincoln and Lincoln I think Lincoln misread his
letter thinking that Thurlowheed had commended the Second in overall.
I don't know we'd have done that, but anyway, Lincoln
took it to be such, and he said it expected
(16:11):
the speech I quote to wear as well as perhaps
better than anything I have produced. But I believe it
is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being
shown that there has been a difference of purpose between
the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case,
(16:32):
is to deny that there is a God governing the world.
And that's Lincoln in a private letter, very clearly stating
that this document, the second inaugural, it was not just
for public consumption, but he personally, Lincoln believes there is
a God governing the world, a mysterious God who intervenes
(16:54):
in human affairs. And that's a dramatic statement. And then
he ends and says, it is a truth which I
thought needed to be told. And as whatever of humiliation
there is in it falls most directly on myself, I
thought others might have falled for me to tell it,
(17:14):
so that extraordinary humility. We are all sinful, and I'm
saying that I am one of us who have committed
this sin. To that extent, it's reasonable for me to
say that this is a sin of all Americans. It
is a remarkable document and the nearest thing that I
guess one has ever had from a president that could
(17:35):
be called a sermon.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And last is special thanks to the Bill of Rights
Institute for allowing us to access this wonderful audio, originally
a part of their scholar talk series, The Story of
Lincoln's Faith. Here on our American Stories.
This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories,
the show where America is the star and the American
people coming to you from the city where the West begins,
Fort Worth, Texas. Up next, the story of the complicated
faith of Abraham Lincoln. And here to tell it is
Richard Carradine, a Lincoln Prize winning historian an emeritus Rhodes
(00:34):
Professor of American History at Oxford University in England. Let's
get into the story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Lincoln's religious views before the Civil War are a matter
of controversy or a matter of uncertainty. He had certainly
been attracted to the ideas of Tom Paine. He had
an inquiring mind. He was an intellectual. He knew his
Bible as well as an other book, with the possible
exception of Shakespeare. They were the two staples of his reading.
(01:05):
He attended the First Presbyterian Church in Springfield with his
wife Mary. They were pew holders. She was a member,
he was not a member. He was an adherent. He attended,
and I think probably by the late eighteen fifties we
can say that he was broadly in tune with what
we would say today in Unitarian theology. It could be
summed up in a belief in the fatherhood of God
(01:26):
and the brotherhood of man. One thing we do know
is that he had no time for pro slavery theology.
And I just say a little bit about that. The
South in the immediate post Revolutionary early Republic period thought
that slavery would gradually disappear. They regarded it as a
(01:49):
necessary evil. But by the eighteen forties and eighteen fifties,
more and more Southerners were standing up for the principle
of slavery and the goodness of slavery, and they developed
pro slavery theology, and their position is that slavery is
scripturally sound. The Old Testament prophets owned slaves. Nowhere in
the New Testament does Christ declare slavery to be unsinful
(02:13):
or unlawful or wrong. Major churches split over the issue
of slavery. The biggest church, Methodism, split in the eighteen forties,
and it was a really important step on the way
to civil war because the breakdown of these national institutions
had implications for politics. When we look at the secession movement,
it's quite clear that it's being driven as much by
(02:36):
the preachers and the pulpit as it is by the
political conventions. Lincoln was deeply unimpressed with this theology, as
indeed were very many other Northerners. Lincoln was not a Methodist,
he was not a Baptist. He was a possibly Unitarian.
He certainly was attached to the Presbyterian Church, and a
Presbyterian by the name of Frederick Ross wrote a book
(02:59):
on how slavery was ordained of God, and Lincoln wrote
a little memorandum to himself in which he said, well,
there's a biblical tussle over the Bible's position on slavery.
But doctor Ross has come to the rescue, and he's
given us his answer. And if I may quote it,
it's an ironic passage. Doctor Ross. He sits in the
(03:23):
shade with gloves on his hand, and subsists on the
bread that Sambo is earning in the burning sun. If
he decides that God wills Sambo to continuous slave, he
thereby retains his own comfortable position. But if he decides
that God will Sambo to be free, he thereby has
to walk out of the shade, throw off his gloves,
and delve for his own bread. Will doctor Ross be
(03:46):
actuated by that perfect impartiality, which has ever been considered
most favorable to correct decisions. Lincoln had no time for
pro slavery theology. He's alleged have had a conversation with
that state Superintendent of Education, Newton Bateman, in which he says,
I cannot see how our God could regard slavery as
just on the eve of the election of eighteen sixty,
(04:14):
the vast majority of Calvinist traditional preacheres, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and
increasingly Methodists are subscribing to the idea of the United
States as having a special mission under God. There's a
torrent of sermons during the Secession crisis and then subsequently
(04:35):
through the war completely immersed in this idea that the
United States is a modern day Israel, and that nations
under God are expected to atone for their sins. Nations
have a responsibility just as individuals do, to behave in
a godly way, in a godly fashion. God will reward
(04:58):
those nations that walk in the hearts of righteousness. God
will punish those nations that sin that deeply, deeply imbued
in the American pulpit in the Civil War, Lincoln, on
his way to Washington in February of eighteen sixty one.
He stops off at a number of places, including the
(05:19):
New Jersey Senate, at which point he refers to the
American people as an almost chosen people. There's that one
kind of a Linconian qualification, just tentativeness. Lincoln speaks to
those people. I mean, he has innumerable meetings with Presbyterians,
with Congregationalists, with Episcopalians, with Methodists, and with Baptists. They're
(05:43):
always coming to the White House. In deputations, William Decumcy
Sherman says, I wish Lincoln wouldn't spend so much time
with all these grannies. How does he get on with
the business of state? And the answer is, well, for Lincoln,
this is the business of state. And he's absolutely ofay
with understanding of this providentialism, this idea of God as
(06:04):
the rural re nations. And whereas individuals can be punished
in the afterlife, nations have to be punished here and now,
because there is no afterlife for a nation. In fact,
the only after a life for a nation is the
destruction of the nation if it actually behaves so completely
outside the scope of the plcomorality.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
And you've been listening to Richard Cowardine, a Lincoln Prize
winning historian and Emeritus Rhodes Professor in American History at
Oxford University in England, telling the story of the complicated
faith life of Abraham Lincoln. And it is complicated, and
one thing we knew for sure is Lincoln had no
(06:50):
no time for the pro slavery theology developing in the
South that somehow slavery was ordained by God also fermenting
around them. Time was quite the opposite feeling from the
pulpits of the North, that America had this special mission
and must atone for our sins as humans must. When
(07:11):
we come back more of the story of Lincoln's faith
life here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib,
(07:33):
host of our American Stories. Every day on this show
we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and
your stories. Send us your story small or large to
out email oas at Ouramerican Stories dot com. That'sas at
Ouramerican Stories dot com. We'd love to hear them and
(07:53):
put them on the air. Our audience loves them too.
And we returned to our American Stories and the story
of Lincoln's faith walk with Richard cowardine. Let's get back
(08:17):
to the story, and you'll also be hearing from Hillsdale
collegeist Bill McClay later in this piece.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
I don't think he became the Christian that many Christians
wanted him to be. They kept pushing him, and they
kept asking him, but there's no clear evidence that he
ever saw Christ as anything more than a prophetic figure,
not as a divine figure inspired by God, but not God.
But what he does do during the war is turn
(08:53):
to faith. He's a seeker after faith and a seeker
after the truth through reading of God. I wouldn't say
there's anything like guilt in a Lincoln search for an Almighty,
but I do think that as the bringer of war,
(09:14):
as the person who sees the deaths of hundreds of thousands,
in the end of course three quarters of a million
North and South, who are the victims of war, as
he suffers the terrible death of his own son, of
a favored favorite son, Willie in February of eighteen sixty two,
as he loses the emotional support of his wife through
(09:36):
the rest of the war. Basically, it is no surprise
it seems to me that he would turn for nourishment
to the Bible is to be found frequently reading the Bible.
The housekeeper, on one occasion crept up behind him to
see what he was reading and discovered that, no surprise,
he was reading the Book of Job. He clearly spent
as much time reading the Old Testament as the New Testament,
(10:00):
recognizing that there were lessons to be learnt there. And
fast days were very familiar to the colonial settlers, to
the inhabitants of the colonies, as they were indeed to
British Christians in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that had
been pretty few and far between. In the American Republic,
(10:21):
there was real tussle as to how legitimate it was.
George Washington called one, Madison called one, but when Andrew
Jackson was asked to call one at the time of
the coolera epidemic, he said, no, this is tying church
and state. The fast Days and Federal Days of Thanksgiving
(10:41):
only come in significant numbers under Lincoln, and Lincoln issues
three separate calls for fast days. One is in the
after the defeat of bull Run, the second on the
eve of the Battles of the summer of eighteen sixty three,
when there'd been severe losses in the period leading up
to that, and then again after the terrible Summer's events
(11:04):
in eighteen sixty four, the Battle of the Spotsylvania the Wilderness,
and on each of those occasions Lincoln calls fast days.
In addition, he calls days of Thanksgiving after Vicksburg and
Gettysburg in eighteen sixty three, and again after the fall
of Atlanta. These are moments where the theology that I've
explained earlier, this theology of nations under God, spelt out
(11:28):
in some detail. These are religious occasions. These are profoundly
theological occasions. The citizens will attend church, they will be
preached at by ministers who are exploring the ways in
which the nation, the American nation, has failed. Now for
(11:49):
some people that failing has absolutely to do with slavery,
but for others it has to do with not with slavery,
but with the shortcomings of the people in other particular,
and Lincoln at the second in overall at odds with
the majority pulpits of the North. In March of eighteen
sixty five, it was very clear that the war was
(12:11):
in its final stages and the Union was going to triumph.
But instead of saying as you might have expected a
triumphalist president to say. He says, we both North and
South pray to the same God.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
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.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Maybe in praying to the same God, we are actually
speaking the language that he doesn't accept from either of us.
The Daist God was utterly predictable. The God of Tom
Paine was here, He was the clockmaker, and the world
was just rather accorded to Lincoln's God is unpredictable.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of
neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has his own purposes.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Maybe we are both North and South, are to blame
for the sin of slavery.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
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.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Justice is at the heart of this second inaugural. This
is an American sin. It is not simply a Southern sin.
We are being commercially and politically embraced in the sin
of slavery. We've not stood up as we should have done.
How God chooses to punish the unjust is for God
to side, and God is punishing us all.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
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
(14:28):
by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited
toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood
drawn with a 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, with malice towards none,
(14:54):
with charity for all, with firmness in the right. As
God gives us to sa see the right, let us
strive on to finish the work we are in, to
bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and
his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish
(15:15):
a just and lasting piece among ourselves and with all nations.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
It is, in fact a remarkable plea for national unity
in a basement, in religious abasement before God, for the
sins that the nation has committed. And this is what's
at the heart of the Second Inaugural, forgiveness and reconciliation
of the true Christian virtues. He knew when he deliver
(15:50):
this that he was saying something that was not likely
to be acceptable to many people, and he wrote this
to Thurlow Weed, the political boss. Though Weed, who had
written to Lincoln and Lincoln I think Lincoln misread his
letter thinking that Thurlowheed had commended the Second in overall.
I don't know we'd have done that, but anyway, Lincoln
took it to be such, and he said it expected
(16:11):
the speech I quote to wear as well as perhaps
better than anything I have produced. But I believe it
is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being
shown that there has been a difference of purpose between
the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case,
(16:32):
is to deny that there is a God governing the world.
And that's Lincoln in a private letter, very clearly stating
that this document, the second inaugural, it was not just
for public consumption, but he personally, Lincoln believes there is
a God governing the world, a mysterious God who intervenes
(16:54):
in human affairs. And that's a dramatic statement. And then
he ends and says, it is a truth which I
thought needed to be told. And as whatever of humiliation
there is in it falls most directly on myself, I
thought others might have falled for me to tell it,
(17:14):
so that extraordinary humility. We are all sinful, and I'm
saying that I am one of us who have committed
this sin. To that extent, it's reasonable for me to
say that this is a sin of all Americans. It
is a remarkable document and the nearest thing that I
guess one has ever had from a president that could
(17:35):
be called a sermon.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
And last is special thanks to the Bill of Rights
Institute for allowing us to access this wonderful audio, originally
a part of their scholar talk series, The Story of
Lincoln's Faith. Here on our American Stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.