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

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 27 April 2023

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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 transformed Protestantism. Rather than focus on battles and personalities, we explore the social impact of the war on Northerners’ spiritual worldview, and the ways in which religion helped millions of Northerners interpret the carnage and political upheaval of the 1850s and 1860s. about the book. Long underestimated in accounts of the Civil War, religion—specifically evangelical Christianity—played an instrumental role on the battlefield and home front, and in the corridors of government.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.
0:07.8	Abraham Lincoln solved massive religious upheaval during his lifetime.
0:11.5	The Antebellum period brought the second grade awakening, with revival sweeping the United
0:15.7	States, big tent meetings, where preachers claimed the second coming of Christ was imminent,
0:20.1	and whole new belief systems sprung up like Mormonism, a Jehovah's Witness movement, and
0:24.1	even Utopian communities.
0:25.9	Abraham Lincoln personally experienced religious transformation, going from a religious skeptic
0:30.8	to what we would consider a 19th century evangelical Christian, and millions of other Americans
0:35.9	experienced this change in spiritual worldview, giving them a way to interpret the carnage
0:39.7	and political upheaval of the 1850s and 1860s.
0:42.9	This guest is Joshua Zites, author of the book Lincoln's God, a faith transformed a
0:46.9	president and a nation.
0:48.0	We look at how Lincoln hardest popular religious enthusiasm to build broad-based support for
0:52.7	political party and a cause, and how after his death, Lincoln was memorialized as a Christian
0:57.6	martyr.
0:58.6	Lincoln embodies many of the fundamental transformations of the United States in the 19th century, and
1:03.2	religion is an often overlooked, key part of this understanding of his transformation
1:07.6	and America's transformation.
1:08.6	Hope you enjoyed this discussion with Joshua Zites.
1:14.1	And one more thing before we get started with this episode, a quick break for word from
1:17.3	our sponsors.
1:22.7	The history of North America podcast is a sweeping historical saga of the United States,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from History Unplugged, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of History Unplugged and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.