Lincoln's Sacred Effort

Defining Religion's Role in American Self-Government

By (author) Lucas E. Morel

Not available to order

Publication date:

19 January 2000

Length of book:

264 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

ISBN-13: 9780739157206

Lucas Morel examines what the public life of Abraham Lincoln teaches about the role of religion in a self-governing society. Lincoln's understanding of the requirements of republican government led him to accommodate and direct religious sentiment toward responsible self-government. As a successful republic requires a moral or self-controlled people, Lincoln believed, the moral and religious sensibilities of a society should be nurtured.

Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Religious Politics and Political Religion
Chapter 3 The Political Utility of Religion
Chapter 4 The Political Accommodation of Religion
Chapter 5 The Political Vices of Religion: An Interpretation of the Temperance Address
Chapter 6 The Political Limits of Reason and Religion: An Interpretation of the Second Inaugural Address

Morel's work draws considerably—as he acknowledges—from Crisis of the House Divided, my book on the Lincoln-Douglas debates published forty years ago, especially from the chapters on the Lyceum and Temperance speeches. However, Morel gives a thoroughly fresh reading of those speeches, and discovers in them dozens of biblical references, allusions, and paraphrases that I had not noticed or identified. In addition, he locates these texts within the framework of church history and church controversycontemporaneous with Lincoln. How Lincoln negotiated his way amidst sectarian differences, enlisting religious dispositions for non-sectarian political ends, especially in his Second Inaugural, is described with great sensitivity and great precision.I can say candidly that I learned a great deal from reading this book..