“The Paradox of Lincoln’s Faith”

p. 3

Observes how nationalistic Lincoln’s faith was. Paradox: “Like the Puritans [Lincoln] believed that God had chosen America to be the scene of his further revelations to the world. Lincoln even went beyond the Puritans to locate that manifestation in human documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Here is the irony and paradox: this compound faith inspired Lincoln, as it had the Puritans, to public actions of a profoundly Christian character. And it moved him, as it had moved them, to the clearest perception in our history of the moral dimension of public life.”