Classic Book of the Month: Rediscovering the redeemer president

MYRNA BROWN, HOST:

Today is Tuesday, March 7th.

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Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: our Classic Book of the Month for March. Reviewer Emily Whitten says a new edition of a classic biography seems clearly a good fit for history buffs, but also for anyone who wants to know the real secret of American greatness.

SAVING LINCOLN: Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

EMILY WHITTEN, REVIEWER: That’s a clip of The Gettysburg Address from the 2012 movie, Saving Lincoln. Maybe you memorized that speech as a kid…or maybe you’re memorizing it with your own kids these days…perhaps a musical version like this one on Sandy Wilbur’s Youtube channel.

SOUND: [THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS SONG]

While some today are toppling statues, Abraham Lincoln remains a hero for many of us. But as Christians, what are we to make of Lincoln? I hope our Classic Book of the Month can help answer that question. It’s titled Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, and it’s by Princeton University’s Allen C. Guelzo, who’s also a committed Christian. Guelzo currently serves as Princeton’s Director of the Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship in the James Madison Program.

GUELZO: I wrote my dissertation not on Abraham Lincoln, but on Jonathan Edwards. And I fully expected that what I would continue to do be to write about 18th century moral philosophy, especially about Edwards. But a detour opened up.

That detour began with a phone call from a publisher, asking him to write about Lincoln. At first, he resisted, but eventually he came around to the concept of an “intellectual biography,” treating Lincoln as a man of ideas. Eerdmans published the book in 1999.

GUELZO: I take as something of a guiding star that verse from the Psalms, as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. And in many ways I take that and I apply it to Lincoln. I want to know what was in Lincoln's core. What were these ideas and how did they work themselves out.

In Guelzo’s telling, Abraham Lincoln grows up reading the Bible, but he turns away from Christianity early on. His father is a Calvinist, but he and Lincoln have very different temperaments and his father is sometimes abusive. Later on, Lincoln reads authors like Thomas Paine who strengthen his early skepticism.

GUELZO: Lincoln will pay a certain degree of respect to Christianity, but he won't participate in it. He never joins the church. We have no record of him ever taking communion, being baptized or anything like that.

For a while, Lincoln seems to put his faith in political ideas of progress. He embraces authors like John Stuart Mill and Whig politicians like Henry Clay. And if you’re unsure what a Whig actually is, no fear—Guelzo defines such terms and helps readers understand 19th century battles over tariffs, slavery, and the idea of markets and “free labor.”

Later in life, Lincoln does soften his public skepticism of Christianity. When The Civil War becomes a bloody quagmire, Lincoln begins to see the God of Providence in a new way—prompting him to free many slaves.

GUELZO: He says, I am almost ready to say that what it means is that God has a purpose in this war beyond just victory for the north or the south. Something else is in play here. And it's not too hard to guess what's at the back of his mind, he's thinking about emancipation.

Guelzo says he got his title–Redeemer President–from a Walt Whitman poem. He thinks it’s a good descriptor because Lincoln was a man of great irony. By helping to end slavery in America, Lincoln hoped to give the nation a new birth—to realize the freedom of the Declaration of Independence for many Americans.

GUELZO: He redeemed the promise of the founders. He made it live again. He got it up from its bed of sickness that the civil war had consigned it to. 43:20 And yet the irony is that he could not claim redemption himself.

Guelzo concludes that, sadly, Lincoln probably never came “the whole way to belief” in Christ.

Overall, Guelzo’s writing isn’t as gripping as someone like David McCullough. But Guelzo is more theologically astute. And his depiction of Lincoln’s last days and hours is especially moving.

Since 1999, debates over slavery and America’s history have only intensified. Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, our Classic Book of the Month, can equip us to join that debate wisely. Ultimately, while Lincoln wasn’t a Christian, his best ideas still offer Americans much worth striving for.

SAVING LINCOLN: We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I’m Emily Whitten.

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