Righteous Strife Tells of Lincoln's Faith, Religious Nationalism and Civil War

By John A. O'Brien

Denver, Colorado

Sunday, June 22, 2025

Oxford University emeritus professor and Lincoln scholar Richard Carwardine will speak to the Lincoln Group in October about his latest book, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union.

He last spoke to our members about his prize-winning biography, Lincoln: A Life of Power and Purpose, in 2018. The Lincoln Study Forum will be reading Righteous Strife in preparation for his presentation, which will be open to our membership. Watch for details.

Righteous Strife starts with a definition of historic Christian nationalism and proceeds to document how religion was a significant factor intensifying the horrors of the Civil War. Carwardine traces how religious influences affected President Lincoln and resulted in his evolving faith beliefs. The changes are most apparent in his revered Second Inaugural Address.

Richard J. Carwardine, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of American History, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University

American unity foundered over slavery and how different churches interpreted its place in the Bible. Depending on that understanding, the Declaration of Independence was either a statement of national aspiration or specifically intended to exclude all but white men. It was this belief in a commission from God, as people were given to see the right, that made the war so intense. Lincoln made the case for the Union by calling for days of prayer, either for fasting or celebration of divine intercession, nine times during the war. But Jefferson Davis did it first on June 13, 1861, and much more often. Further, the Confederates thought they had the advantage by writing God into their constitution, a covenant that also declared that slavery was God’s perpetual will for organizing society.

Carwardine’s well-researched and brisk narrative delves into the speeches and documents that reveal the religious basis of the divisions within the loyal states.

He describes how Lincoln chose to work with conservative Christians who thought slavery was a southern right while they abhorred destroying God’s gift of the sacred bond of Union. But as the war dragged on, Carwardine shows how Lincoln reshaped his own religious thinking as he urged others to reflect on the Almighty’s purposes. As a Lincoln scholar, Carwardine hopes that this book will serve a similar role as Edmund Wilson’s To the Finland Station. While Wilson’s classic detailed how Lenin’s revolutionary thought culminated in his arrival at St. Petersburg in 1917, Carwardine created Religious Strife to reveal Lincoln’s faith evolution and could have titled it To the Second Inaugural Address.  

I was honored by Professor Carwardine with a request to review a draft of his manuscript. In the course of developing his arguments, the author came to believe, as I have written, that Lincoln’s relationship with Rev. Dr. Phineas Gurley had a significant effect on the president’s understanding of God’s providence as active participation in human events. A key element of the change was shown in Lincoln’s private note, “Meditation on the Divine Will.” Carwardine accepts my conclusion that this deep reflection on God’s purposes and use of human instruments was most likely written between July 18 and August 22, 1862, as preparation for the Emancipation Proclamation.

Professor Carwardine will also be a featured speaker at the Lincoln Forum in Gettysburg, PA, on November 17, 2025. 

Richard J. Carwardine, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025)   

John A. O'Brien, “On Lincoln’s 'Instrumentality' to End Slavery: Meditation on the Divine Will and the Emancipation Proclamation,” The Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 45 (1) 2024: 4. https://journals.publishing.umich.edu/jala/article/id/6749/