REVIEW: 'Lincoln's Bishop,' by Gustav Niebuhr.

From Minnesota-

In the latest book on the U.S.-Dakota War, Gustav Niebuhr takes us back to an extraordinary and pivotal meeting in September 1862 with Henry Benjamin Whipple, Minnesota’s first Episcopal bishop. Lincoln’s 12-year-old son, Willie, had died of typhoid fever that year. The Civil War wasn’t going well and the president was busy crafting his Emancipation Proclamation.

Back in Minnesota, more than 600 white immigrant settlers had been killed and more than a dozen counties emptied out after starving Dakota Indians staged surprise attacks in hopes of winning back land snatched through a series of shady treaties.

More here-

http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/books/270537541.html

How a bishop moved Lincoln, and saved 265 Dakota Indians

From The LA Times-

The Founding Fathers had good reasons for explicitly barring government from inserting itself into matters of religion. But nothing in the Constitution forbids a president from consulting with clerics, and meetings between presidents and religious figures have, on occasion, helped shape history.

One such time came when an Episcopal Church bishop traveled to Washington from Minnesota to try to persuade Abraham Lincoln to make wholesale changes in the corrupt and brutal ways the federal government treated Native Americans. The entreaty may well have saved hundreds of Dakota Indians from execution — and the nation from a huge injustice.

Whipple ... gave Lincoln a lens through which to evaluate the Dakota War.

Bishop Henry B. Whipple, a native of upstate New York, was an unlikely advocate for Native Americans. A missionary priest in Chicago until he was elected Minnesota's first Episcopal bishop in 1859, he didn't even know a Native American until he was 37 years old.


More here-


http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-niebuhr-abraham-lincoln-religion-indians-20140718-story.html

Gettysburg Address laced with religious language and meaning

From Utah-

Few speeches have had more influence or been more examined than President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

Delivered 150 years ago today as the closing remarks at the dedication of a cemetery, the short speech — or at least a portion of it — is etched into the minds of most Americans. Books have been written analyzing the 272-word speech's structure, rhetorical tools, historical context and legacy.

But nearly all the books and papers examining this famous and enduring speech either gloss over or completely miss the religious language and meaning of the Gettysburg Address, said A.E. Elmore, a retired English professor and playwright.

More here-


http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865590845/Gettysburg-Address-laced-with-religious-language-and-meaning.html

Obama To Use MLK, Lincoln Bibles During Oath At Presidential Inauguration

From Huffington-

President Barack Obama is putting a symbolic twist on a time-honored tradition, taking the oath of office for his second term with his hand placed not on a single Bible but on two – one owned by Martin Luther King Jr. and one by Abraham Lincoln.

The inclusion of King's Bible is particularly significant since the inauguration comes on Jan. 21, the federal holiday in honor of the civil rights leader, who delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech 50 years ago at the Lincoln Memorial. Obama will be facing the memorial as he takes the oath. King's Bible, which his children say he used early in his career as a preacher, has never been part of a presidential inauguration.

The selection of the pair of Bibles announced Thursday is richly symbolic of the struggle for equality in America, beginning with Lincoln's emancipation of slaves 150 years ago this month, through King's leadership of the civil rights movement, and ultimately to Obama becoming the nation's first black president.

Inaugural planners say Obama plans to place his left hand on the stacked Bibles held by first lady Michelle Obama as he raises his right hand to repeat the oath administered by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. It hasn't been determined which will be on top, with Obama's hand actually resting on it, but King's is larger, so it may need to be on the bottom.

More here-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/obama-using-mlk-lincoln-b_n_2447174.html

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Decree 1863

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore if, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done at the city of Washington, this 3d day of October A.D. 1863, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-eighth

Abraham Lincoln's faith, from his pew

Interesting piece about Abraham Lincoln's faith and religious affiliation.

Wallace gave us a brief overview of Lincoln's religious affiliation: he was born in Kentucky to a family of so-called hard-shell Baptists, who were so strongly predestinarian that they rejected missionary activity; although Lincoln came to reject that strain of Baptist faith, his upbringing gave him a strong familiarity with the Bible, and as an adult he was able to quote large portions of the King James Bible from memory. In Illinois, Wallace said, Lincoln was hostile to "the emotional revivalism that was going around,'' and was viewed by friends as a religious skeptic. He married Mary Todd in an Episcopal Church; she went on to join First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois, and then, in Washington, New York Avenue Presbyterian. Lincoln never joined either church, but he attended periodically with his family, and, in Washington, he befriended the pastor, the Rev. Phineas D. Gurley, who played a particularly important role when the Lincolns' son, Willie, died in 1862.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles_of_faith/2008/09/abraham_lincoln.html