Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian?

Was Abraham Lincoln a Christian? The book Abraham Lincoln, The Christian (1913) claims he was. Contemporary Lincoln biographer Allen Guelzo said in 2000, “He was not.” It’s a hard question: Lincoln was a skilled politician who understood his public, a compassionate president who agonized about sending soldiers to die, a private man with marriage problems that became public, and a thinker who thought long and hard about God. 

Lincoln, born on February 12, 1809, grew up reading the King James Bible and contrasting its majestic language with the frontier Bible teaching that he treated in a variety of ways. First came parody. When Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Lincoln and daughter Sarah joined the Little Pigeon Baptist Church in 1823, teenaged Abraham did not. He often listened to sermons, though, and mimicked them afterward before a crowd of children until (as one child remembered) Lincoln’s father “would come and make him quit.”