new church life: jan uary/february 2015
traces Lincoln’s interaction with Swedenborgians, especially while living and
working as a lawyer in Springfield, Illinois, before he was elected president.
He notes that although Lincoln was exposed to religion throughout
his life he is the only U.S. president never to join a church. What seems
likely, Dr. Lawrence says, is that he “certainly appreciated the company of
some Swedenborgians and was more acquainted with Swedenborg and
Swedenborgians than any president in U.S. history. He took a reasonably
thoughtful interest in Swedenborg’s views on Christianity, as he did perhaps in
other viewpoints and authors as well, but he certainly did not regard himself
as a Swedenborgian, but merely as a Christian – one who might have some
perceptions on the nature of God shaped in some ways by Swedenborg the
prophet.”
Dr. Lawrence notes that Isaac Britton, who became superintendent of
schools in Illinois, was a close friend of Lincoln’s and that they often discussed
religious ideas. “It is claimed that Britton had given Lincoln copies of some of
Swedenborg’s works, and that Lincoln’s views on Divine Providence especially
were influenced by Swedenborgian thought.”
That seems evident in a quote from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s classic
biography of Lincoln, Team of Rivals, in which she quotes him about the Civil
War: “If I had my way, this war would never have been commenced; if I had
been allowed my way, this war would have ended before this, but we still find
it continues; and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose
of His own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with our limited
understanding we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe
that He who made the world still governs it.”
Dr. Lawrence quotes Lincoln as saying: “I have never united myself to any
church, because I have found difficulty in giving my assent, without mental
reservations, to the long, complicated statements of Christian doctrine which
characterize their Articles of Belief and Confessions of Faith. What any church
will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Master’s
condensed statement of the substance of both the Law and Gospel: ‘Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy
mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ that church will I join with all my heart and
with all my soul.”
We cannot know if Lincoln ever read Arcana Coelestia (Secrets of Heaven)
1799.4, but he may well have given his assent:
In the Christian world, it is doctrine that differentiates churches. Doctrine is the
basis on which people call themselves Roman Catholic, Lutheran (or Evangelical),
Calvinist (or Reformed), and other names as well. These names grow out of
doctrine alone, which would never happen if we considered love for the Lord and
charity for our neighbor the chief concern of faith. If we did, those distinctions
102