The Faith of Lincoln

American Thinker ^ | 12/25/2012 | Michael Iachetta

[SeekAndFind]

Abraham Lincoln's spiritual beliefs are notoriously difficult to pin down. It's a source of endless debate for historians trying to reconcile Lincoln's words and actions into a coherent faith.

Tony Kushner, for his part, does not portray the sixteenth president as a religious man at all in his screenplay for the recent blockbuster Lincoln. Kushner alters the historical record, though, in his one direct reference to Lincoln's faith.

Near the end of the film, Kushner has Lincoln tell his wife that with the war over, he wishes to visit Jerusalem, the place "where David and Solomon walked." Yet in the original anecdote (which may be apocryphal), Lincoln says to his wife, "We will visit the Holy Land and see those places hallowed by the footstep of the Savior." There was, he went on to say, "no city on earth he so much desired to see as Jerusalem." (Some think Lincoln may have heard his secretary of state, William H. Seward, talk about his own 1859 visit to the Holy Land.) Kushner, who is Jewish, is no friend of the modern state of Israel, so it is not clear why he included this scene in the first place, with its reference to Jerusalem as the city of the ancient kings of Israel. Yet apparently this was preferable to his hero referring to Jesus, "the Savior."

Nevertheless, deliberately or not, Kushner's screenplay suggests that Lincoln underwent a spiritual shift in the last two years of his life. Two of Lincoln's most famous speeches bookend the movie, starting with the Gettysburg Address and ending with the Second Inaugural. In the first speech, Lincoln gives a transcendent meaning to the deaths at Gettysburg (and the Union cause overall) by tying them to the central principles of the American founding:

[bray]

Bet he forgot to mention he was a Republican too. You can bet the racists were today’s Republicans and Lincoln was today’s Dems and the entire show is about racism.

Merry Christmas

[jsanders2001]

Having read numerous book about Abraham Lincoln and studied his life off and on for many years I can say with any doubt he believed in the mighty power of God. Here are some of the many quotes he made about God during lifetime. You be the judge:

http://www.greatamericanhistory.net/lincolnsfaith.htm

[originalbuckeye]

I thought it was a good movie. Several references to the Republicans as the good guys. I was really glad the writer didn’t try to portray Lincoln as gay. What a ludicrous assertion that was a few years ago!

[Eccl 10:2]

Bet he forgot to mention he was a Republican too. You can bet the racists were today’s Republicans and Lincoln was today’s Dems and the entire show is about racism.

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Surprisingly, the Republicans were portrayed as the good guys here. However, the white southern men were invariably portrayed as the bad guys, but what else would they be in a movie like this?