Who Knew? Abe Lincoln Was a Regular Baptist?

A 1921 article in the New York Times gives some evidence of Abraham Lincoln’s religious roots, reporting that he was “reared in the simple faith of the ‘hard-shelled’ Baptist church.” Historians love tidbits such as this, because Lincoln’s religious beliefs were fairly ambiguous. By the time he reached adulthood, his own life seemed filled with contradictory clues about his devotional life.

The 1921 Times report announced the discovery of “deer-skin-bound records of Little Pigeon Baptist Church” and called these the “missing link of Abraham Lincoln’s religion.”

The article describes the parents of Abraham Lincoln as “well to do pioneers of their day: of sturdy ancestral stock, owned a farm, domestic animals, tools, and a family Bible; neighborly sacrificing and active church-going members. . . . Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks were married by a Methodist minister by the name of Jesse Head, but shortly afterward they were united with one of the churches of the Baptist Licking-Locust association of Regular Baptist churches in Kentucky. . . . When Mary Hanks Lincoln died, Thomas remarried and moved to Indiana, joining the Pigeon Creek Baptist Church by letter.”

So it is correct to say that Lincoln was raised in Kentucky and Indiana Regular Baptist churches (in the “hard shell” or “primitive” use of the term). But he is not known to have made a public profession of belief as an adult. While Lincoln attended church, he never became a member of one. While he is known to have read the Bible in the White House, he did not usually say grace before meals.

In A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, historian Mark Noll observed that after Lincoln’s death, “Americans found it irresistible to see his achievement in a religious light. It was soon noted, for example, that Lincoln—the ‘Savior’ of the Union—was shot on Good Friday (April 14, 1865), that his efforts to liberate the bondslave and bind up the wounds of war were cut short by ‘martyrdom,’ and that his very name—Abraham—spoke of the father of his people.”

It should not surprise us that several descriptions such as this still circulate on the Internet, some of them also touting a supposed numerical connection between Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. It should not surprise us that the vacuum of real information on Lincoln’s religion has been filled with hopeful descriptions that border on the magical.

Mark Noll suggests there are good reasons why we know little about Lincoln’s adult beliefs: “It is probable that Lincoln was turned against organized Christianity by his experiences as a young man in New Salem, Illinois, where excessive emotion and bitter sectarian quarrels marked yearly camp meetings and the ministry of traveling preachers. Yet although Lincoln was not a church member, he did ponder the eternal significance of his own circumstances, a personal life marked by tragedy (the early death of two sons) and difficulty (the occasional mental instability of his wife). And he took to heart the carnage of war over which he presided.”