Early in his presidency, with the dread specter of disunion hovering over the nation, Abraham Lincoln began invoking biblical imagery to explain what was at stake. He appealed to “Divine Providence,” “the Providence of God,” “that God who has never forsaken this people,” “without whose aid we can do nothing.” He gestured to “the Almighty,” in whose hands the fate of the Union rested. But it was not until the civil conflict began to claim thousands of lives weekly, and until death touched the Lincoln household in an awful, intimate way with the loss of his young son Willie, that religion became a commanding force in his personal and public lives. Lincoln's spiritual turn combined a deep and probing exploration of divine intent and human agency, and stark political realism.
Abraham Lincoln, an erstwhile skeptic, was the first president to understand and channel the spiritual and institutional power of the evangelical churches. Over a century before Jimmy Carter became the first born-again resident of the
