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    Lincoln's Battle with God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
    Lincoln's Battle with God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
    Lincoln's Battle with God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America
    Ebook318 pages8 hours

    Lincoln's Battle with God: A President's Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America

    By Stephen Mansfield

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    About this ebook

    Join New York Times bestselling author Stephen Mansfield as he dives into the incredible story of Abraham Lincoln's spiritual life and draws from it a deeper meaning that's sure to inspire us all. 

    Abraham Lincoln is, undoubtedly, among the most beloved of all U.S. presidents. He helped to abolish slavery, gave the world some of its most memorable speeches, and redefined the meaning of America. He did all of this with endless wisdom, compassion, and wit. Yet, throughout his life, Lincoln fought with God.

    In his early years in Illinois, he rejected even the existence of God and became the village atheist. In time, this changed but still, he wrestled with the truth of the Bible, preachers, doctrines, the will of God, the providence of God, and then, finally, God's purposes in the Civil War. Still, on the day he was shot, Lincoln said he longed to go to Jerusalem to walk in the Savior's steps.

    In this thrilling journey through a largely unknown part of American history, Mansfield traces Lincoln's exploring:

    • Lincoln's lifelong spiritual journey
    • The ways that Lincoln's faith shaped his presidency and beyond
    • How Lincoln's struggle with faith can inspire modern believers

    Let Lincoln's Battle with God show you Lincoln's life and legacy in a brand new light.

     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThomas Nelson
    Release dateNov 12, 2012
    ISBN9781595554192
    Author

    Stephen Mansfield

    Stephen Mansfield is the New York Times bestselling author of Lincoln's Battle with God, The Faith of Barack Obama, Pope Benedict XVI, Searching for God and Guinness, and Never Give In: The Extraordinary Character of Winston Churchill. He lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, Beverly.

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    Reviews for Lincoln's Battle with God

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    • 3/5
      According to the author, Abraham Lincoln's father and mother (Thomas and Nancy) were members of a strict strain of the Baptist church, sometimes spoken of as “Hard Shell Baptists,” known for its primitiveness and belief in predestination. As Lincoln became a young man, living on his own in New Salem and Springfield, Illinois (1831-1840s), he reacted negatively toward established Christian institutions and the Bible as God's word. As Lincoln matured, married, fathered children, and experienced personal tragedies, he gradually fostered an approving attitude toward Christ and his church, although he never “joined” a church.I believe the author deserves an “A for Effort” in his attempt to describe Lincoln's religious influences through the various stages of his life up to its end. He cites numerous primary and secondary sources to document his claims.The author attempts to describe a potential influence that revivals associated with Barton W. Stone (pp. 18-24) may have had on Lincoln's parents when they lived in Kentucky, but it is really a guess. Stone, while a Presbyterian at the time of his famous Cane Ridge Revival in 1801, was struggling with the doctrine of predestination that the author maintains the Lincolns believed. After 1804, Stone was to be associated with the Christian Church or Church of Christ, and the Lincolns remained Baptists.The book is enhanced by a number of photos. The appendix includes copies of a number of famous speeches by Lincoln. There is a bibliography but no index.
    • 4/5
      Every once in a while I pick up a non-fiction book that I can read without having to read something else after every chapter. This book was one of them. I felt no need to read another book at the same time.Learning how Lincoln went form an atheist to a believer in a short time, but on his own, was an experience. He was a tremendous man.
    • 4/5
      Lincoln's Battle with God follows the spiritual life of Lincoln from his earliest days to his death and the slow growth from being agnostic, if not out and out atheist to becoming a God-believing man. He never joined an organized church, but had close ties with several churchmen who were influential in his growth and development as a Christian. Much is repetitive, but the writing is clear and the book follows a chronologic time pattern. 3.5 stars
    • 4/5
      The common perception of Abraham Lincoln is that he was a man whose lifelong, deeply held Christian faith gave him the courage to prosecute a long and bloody war to right one of mankind’s greatest wrongs: slavery. The facts, however, tell a different story about Lincoln’s long journey, a journey that, although it ultimately may have arrived at the same destination, involved numerous sidetracks and obstacles along the way.As Stephen Mansfield notes in Lincoln’s Battle with God (A President’s Struggle with Faith and What It Meant for America):“He was a complicated soul, an innovative mind, and an oppressed spirit. He was raw and earthy and poetic. He could be ambitious and enraged and cold… We can hope to understand. Yet never can we confine him; never can we seek to make him conform.”Abraham Lincoln is, after all, a man who sporadically attended church services but never officially joined a church. During his presidency, he often spoke of God and made Biblical references in his public addresses, but almost never mentioned Jesus Christ directly. Many of the people of New Salem, Illinois, those who knew Lincoln longest and best, remained skeptical about his supposed Christian faith right up to the moment of his death. And because Lincoln was such a vocal anti-Christianity advocate when they knew him, who can blame them? Lincoln simply could not keep his personal convictions private – he never missed an opportunity to ridicule a preacher or to express his religious doubts (privately or publicly) to the more pious of his acquaintances. Citing an old Winston Churchill saying that, “a fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject,” Mansfield stresses just how obsessed Lincoln was about debunking organized religion. His resulting anti-religion reputation cost Lincoln many a vote during his political life when preachers specifically asked their congregations to vote for his political opponents.But Lincoln was a tortured soul from the beginning, and his journey would be a long one. His mother died when he was nine years old, leaving the boy in the care (if you can call it that) of a wandering, but demanding father who saw his son more as slave labor than as a member of his family. And it did not help that Mr. Lincoln was a Christian of the most hypocritical sort, helping to nip the boy’s budding faith in the bud. Through the years, Lincoln would lose others close to him, including two young sons, and would suffer from regular (and sometimes near suicidal) bouts with depression. And just when America was most severely tested, Lincoln was forced by his incompetent Generals to redefine the presidential role of Commander-in-Chief, a role for which he was not prepared. By war’s end, Lincoln had come to believe that God was playing a direct role in what was happening on the battlefield, that the country must pay a heavy price for its past sins before God would allow the killing to stop. Although his evolutionary religious journey, almost complete, was cut short by an assassin’s bullet, the man who died in Washington was far different from the one who lived in Illinois.Lincoln’s Battle with God is an eye-opener, particularly as regards Lincoln’s days in New Salem - a reminder that the real Abraham Lincoln is no less amazing a man than the mythical one.Rated at: 4.0
    • 5/5
      An honest look at Lincoln’s faith. He was neither as atheist as some would believe nor as Christian

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    Lincoln's Battle with God - Stephen Mansfield

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