A Lincoln parable

Karl Barth, who believed God’s word meets and saves us within our historical circumstances, famously opined that preachers should hold the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. American journalist Alan Barth (no relation to the Swiss theologian) held that news is only the first draft of history. With the advent of social media, news cycles, and the proliferation of tendentious news outlets, the views of both Barths have become increasingly problematic. In a news landscape that is increasingly formless and void, an essential Christian task is still to respond to our troubled ethos with a two-handed proclamation. If the Bible is in one hand, the other should hold whatever gives us insight for this task.

Eminent Civil War historian Allen C. Guelzo, a distinguished research scholar at Princeton University, has written a book-length essay worth commending to your second hand. Marshaling a lifetime of learning and reflection, Our Ancient Faith reviews Abraham Lincoln’s life, thoughts, speeches, and outlook to reveal the riches of American democracy. With a wink to Friedrich Schleiermacher, Guelzo writes to American democracy’s “cultured despisers.” The result is a timely and convicting parable for our time. Guelzo shows how Lincoln’s life and words demonstrate the opportunities and demands of democracy, the values needed to sustain it, and the actions required to keep it.

Our Ancient Faith is titled with a phrase drawn from Lincoln’s 1854 speech at Peoria, in which he stated that “according to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed.” The faith under review throughout the book is not Christianity but rather, as the subtitle puts it, faith in the American experiment. As Guelzo says, Lincoln had a “cagey relationship with American religion.” Able to quote the Bible at length, tolerant, and broad-minded, Lincoln refused to mock American religion and was unwilling to support those who did. But his own religion was that of Paine’s and Voltaire’s rationalism, blended with an action program of political economy and an ethic of self-making.