The Daily Beast Podcast - Abe Lincoln Wasn’t the Kind of Christian You Think He Was

Episode Date: May 21, 2023

Historian Joshua Zeitz, author of Lincoln’s God: How Faith Transformed a President and a Nation, joins this episode of The New Abnormal to walk co-host Danielle Moodie through Abraham Lincoln’s spiritual journey and how his Christianity looked much different than what other presidents believed. He also shares with her the connection that Lincoln’s religion had to his decision to emancipate the enslaved, what others thought of him at the time, and what people get wrong about him today. Plus, Danielle and her TNA co-host Andy Levy dub Marjorie Taylor Greene “MAGA Karen” and point out comparisons between her and the woman that got Emmett Till unjustly killed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus edition of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with historian Josh Sites, who's good talk to us about his new book, Lincoln's God, how faith transformed a president. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clip us.

Yeah, clips. All right, I got bad news. We got a lot of margin. Taylor Green to them. Oh, boy. She was outside after the vote to expel George Santos. That failed because the Republicans have no morals. NACOC were telling Santos he should resign, and then MTG came to the rescue. Let's listen to what happened. It's small. We've got to save the party. The party's hanging by a thread. We got to get rid of Biden. The party is hanging the country. The party's hanging by a thread. You got to save the party. You got to save the party. Listen, no more Q&R, no more M-P-N-AW, no more CNN, no more debt-sealing nonsense.

Come on, now, save the party. Save America. Save the children. Save the country. Do something about guns. Right. So close the order. Come on.

What about the children? What about the children? What are the children? What kids? We're accepting them. We love them. No, you've lost them. We love the migrant children.

There's tens of thousands missing. You got them. can't find them. What you're talking about? What's your administration? Yeah, migrant children are missing. You don't know the news. Oh, you were sadly missing before.

Hey, let me tell you them, Jamal. Not very smart. She ain't worth it. Save the party. She ain't worth it, bro. She ain't worth it. My favorite part of the clip is when AOC walks up to Bowman and says it's not worth it, bro. Because she is 100% correct.

I mean, nothing against Jamal Bowman, but there is no point in getting into a screaming match with that woman, Marjorie Taylor Green. She is so far off the reservation, there's literally no point in engaging with her or listening to her. Marjorie Taylor Green is just an embarrassment, a idiot, a woman that believes in space lasers, somebody that sits with grifters and laughs about the way that this party is destroying this country. She's a woman that has chased a child who was a victim of a mass shooting around Capitol Hill, and that was before she became a member of Congress. She is a woman that has had restraining orders put against her because of the way that she follows her Democratic colleagues around the

office. She is a waste of skin time and a place in Congress. God bless Jamal Bowman for trying to talk sense, but that is like talking to a brick wall and expecting it to respond to you in any type of way, shape, or form. AOC is right. Don't waste your time, bro. Like, she ain't, she ain't the one. Talk to, you know, talk to the people and her representatives that think that they are actually being represented by this piece of trash. But like, don't waste your time talking to her because you might as well just face a brick wall. Yeah. So I feel like, I didn't see people grow out of this. So I want to be a little careful, but like it didn't sound like at the end, she said,

you're not very smart to him, which between the equating CNN with the Q and on and that, I don't know, well, I know which one's worse, but I really, it goes, but then she said, hold my beer. I can top all of this. And today put out a statement about the incident. I had to have so much security. There was not enough. I was swarmed.

It's all on video. Everyone can see this. But I will tell you what's on video. video is Jamal Bowman shouting at the top of his lungs, cursing, calling me a horrible, calling me a white supremacist, which I take great offense to. That is like calling a person of color the N-word, which should never happen. Calling me a white supremacist is equal to that, and that is wrong. Jamal Bowman was down there cursing at me, telling me to get the F out of there, and he was

leading the mob right outside the vehicle I was sitting in. We have this all on video. Then on the Capitol steps yesterday, he was the one that approached me. Even CNN reported that, yelling, shouting, raising his voice. He has aggressive. His physical mannerisms are aggressive. And he just recently shoved Thomas Massey just outside the House chamber. I think there's a lot of concern about Jamal Bowman.

And I am concerned about it. I feel threatened by him. He not only let a mob mob there, but his boister. lies, and I'll tell you another thing he said outside there, he was saying, save your party. I kept telling him, no, save the country. It's not about political parties. We shouldn't care about political parties. We should care about the country, because no matter what our political beliefs are, Jamal Bowman, I don't know what his political beliefs are. I know what mine are, but we both swore an oath to serve the country here in Congress as representatives.

So I am very concerned about Jamal Bowman, and he's someone. that people should watch. Yeah. So let me, you know, just offer. Get in there, please. As a black queer woman representative of this pod, what Marjorie Taylor Green did is what Carolyn Bryant Dunham did. Carolyn Bryant Dunham is the white woman who just died at the ripe age of 88. She's the white woman that lied about Emmett Till that ended up having him terrorized, brutalized, and beaten to death. And his death would spark, right? The civil rights movement, as we all have come to understand it.

It is a trope that white women have used about black men's bodies and aggression and mannerisms to yell, right, fire in a closed theater. This is, it is that type of bullshit rhetoric that brings white men to arms to go ahead and protect their property, which don't get twisted, is white women. So for her to stand up at a point. podium and say this hot trash as an elected official is so disgusting to me simply because there are multiple videos that show Marjorie Taylor Green was in nobody's fucking danger. And if you watched her hand in the way that it was all up in Jamal Bowman's face,

if you have seen reports again of Marjorie Taylor Green threatening her Democratic colleagues calling them enemies of the state, putting crosshairs on the faces of those that were referred to as the FAB-5, women of color representatives in that body, you are called a white supremacist because you are a fucking white supremacist because you stand on stage with white nationalists, because you shake hands with them, because you use their talking points on a regular fucking basis. And no, being called a white supremacist is not the same as being referred to as the N-word. Never is, never has been and never will be. Marjorie Taylor Green should have been expelled from Congress. She should have never been allowed to enter into Congress in the first fucking place. She is so, I can't even

laugh at some of the things that she says because she is the white woman that is dangerous to America and to black people in general. So thank God for multiple videos and multiple angles and her pattern and history of harassment and lies that make Jamal Bowman safe at this moment. Yeah, there's many things here. First of all, there is nothing anyone can say can convince me that Marjorie Taylor Green has not used the N-word in her life. Come on. So for her to say it's a word that should never be used, I don't believe that she believes that. This was not unlike what just happened here in New York City. We had a thing with a city bike. I don't know if people are aware of this. City bikes are bikes you can rent that are like, you know, they're basically out on the street and then you

can pay to rent them and then bike around New York City. And this white woman started screaming at a black man and saying, help me, help me, help me, as if he was trying to steal her bike off of the rack. When indeed, what the case was she was trying to steal the bike that he had rented. And thankfully, as you said of the MTG and Jamal Bowman thing, thankfully there was video of this. And this woman who was wearing a New York City Health and Hospitals uniform, So she was able to be identified.

She is now on leave from her job. And everybody knows, thankfully, that she was the problem there and not the black man that she was trying to pin this on. And this is just the latest example. I mean, obviously, you are absolutely right. This happens time and time and time again. We saw it here in New York with a bird watcher not that long ago. You know, the woman in New York has been called a Karen.

I think it's time to just Marjor Telegrini. Space Laser Karen. I like to call her Ultra Maga Karen. Ultra Maga Karen. That works for me too. But that's exactly what I thought of when I was listening to her speak was this is exactly, as you said, Danielle, this is exactly the playbook that is used time and time again against black men.

And she has the fucking nerve to use it against Jamal Bowman, who as far as I know, has never threatened any fellow members, has never acted threateningly towards. a teenager the way Marjorie Taylor Green did with David Hogg. As you said, she has the history of this. And as you said, there is video. So anyone with the brain knows she's not telling the truth. Of course, that leaves out anyone listening to her speak. Everyone who heard that now thinks that Jamal Bowman is a threatening black man,

which, as you said, historically in this country, often doesn't end well for that man. Sometimes things she says are funny because they're so fucking stupid. this ain't one of those times. No, it is not. Yeah, well, I think one of the funnier things that's happening with the swing of the party right now is that they think they're doing really good communications. She was trying to move the Overton window there to that Democrats are aggressors and not her. And here she's trying again with her new concept.

She's rolling out with Steve Bannon called Impeachment Week. Aren't people saying, hey, Marjorie, we got these hearings. You're doing great. You're bringing up. You're grilling these people in the hearings. Isn't that enough? Aren't they going to say this is over the top? You're going to have Rachel Maddow saying bad things about us.

You're going to have Chris Hayes making fun of us. What's your conference saying? It's not enough. It's not enough. And I'll tell you why. Our country is the greatest country on earth. And it's time to start treating it that way. The American people have been used, abused.

They've basically been raped and pillaged and sold out to the rest of the world by this town right here. No, no, this is not enough. This is the first impeachment week. And actually, I'm going to say we should go further. I believe in firing people. I believe in laying off people. And this needs to be done here. And this is the tool that we have to do it.

You're going after three members. Yeah. I mean, I try not to carry hatred in my heart for people. Yeah. I can't stop myself with her. She's just a loathsome person. Yeah. I believe that most people probably have a redeemable quality to them

in them, she is not one of those people. No. No. And she believes in firing people, but George Santos isn't one of them. You believe in firing people, but George Santos, you'll sit with and laugh with a man that now has 13 felony charges against him, but that's not the person you want to fire. It only happens to be people of color who are speaking out for justice and equity, and you know, to maybe create some type of gun legislation that wouldn't have them murdered in their

classroom or murdered in their place of prayer or murdered, you know, going to the grocery store. But that, that is to her as an impeachable offense. Sit the fuck down, Marjorie Taylor Green. And, you know, mainstream media, here's a, here's a pro tip. Stop putting a microphone in that woman's face and legitimizing the hot shit that comes out of her mouth. She's a star because mainstream media decided to make her one. Yeah.

I will say that it is hilarious that Steve Baird tried to do the thing of like, oh, Chris Hayes and Rachel Mato are going to make fun of you for this. It's like, Chief, I got bad news for you. There's a reason Joe Biden everybody mentions her. It's because the American people think what she does is dumb. And they're running against her because it keeps digging the fucking hole for your party, which we're seeing in all the local elections. It ain't working.

Okay. I'm going to pivot over to another wing of stupid, but this time in the Senate. Tommy Tuberville, he has some thoughts, which I have to say. say me even calling these thoughts. It's kind of an insult to the concept of thoughts. But sadly, here we go. I can't go the, I can't even talk about it. You know, it's so bad. But if people don't go to jail for this, American people should just stand up and say, listen, enough's enough. Let's don't have elections anymore. I wish there was a special investigation into the voter fraud because it was outrageous what happened. But nobody wanted to look into it because they were

afraid they were going to be called out. And so it is what it is. is. I hate it has happened. I should say he's referring to the Durham report, by the way, which is a total crock of shit. Every one of these people who keeps saying people need to go to jail for this. I agree. Josh Hawley has said this, but they never say who. Because there is nothing in that report that would lead you to send anyone to jail. But it's easy for them to get out there and say people should go to jail for this because they know that their people don't expect, you know, specifics and don't expect facts. So they can just say shit like that.

But did I hear Tommy Tuberville basically say he's ready to do away with elections? Yes. Sure did. Yeah, that's what I thought. That's an interesting take from a United States senator. Yeah, it's wild. But Tommy Tuberville is a absolute dummy. But I will agree with him on this.

Somebody should go to jail for the amount of voter suppression and lies that were told around the election. I think a ton of people, the fake electors that were offered up in 2020, I think a ton of people should go to fucking jail for that because there was criminal activity that took place. So here's hoping that Tommy Tuberville's, you know, desires and wishes come through and people are indeed arrested.

It takes a lot to stand out as a Republican senator as being particularly dumb, but I think he achieves it. Yeah, I have to say, While we've previously awarded Senator John Kennedy with this award, Tommy Tuberville every time, it's hold my kick, not hold my beer. Yeah, I don't even think it's close. I think Senator Kennedy is basically Robert Oppenheimer compared to him.

All right. Before we run out of time, a few weeks ago after it came out that Maga World's Alexander was a pedophile, a conservative host we played on the show said, could everyone in the conservative movement just fess up if they're a pedophile? Well, Nick Fuentes decided to do just that. And we may be familiar with him this week since he was in the news since one of Paul Gossar's staffers came out to be a big fan and be in cahoots with him while working for a sitting congressman. And so Nick Fuentes was very triggered by both Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert's divorces, which somehow led him to endorse pedophilia. Here I am.

Like, hey, listen, guys, you turn 21. You find yourself a 16-year-old bride. you go crazy. You go crazy. No condoms, no snips, no abortions, no pills, no none of that. That's the most pro-sex position there is. Anyway, so that's, anyway, so that's where I'm at. That's where I'm at with that. I honestly wish this was a video show because if you literally would have just seen my face just now, like, what? First of all, he's upset. This is because he's upset that Lauren Bobridge getting divorced.

She was 16 when she started dating her husband, but they couldn't get, and he was 22, but they had to wait for her to turn 17 before they could get married. So every one of these guys, whether it's white supremacist Nick Fuentes, it's Matt Walsh from the Daily Wire talking about 16-year-olds, they are all fascinated with 16-year-old girls. and it's just so deeply weird and so deeply creepy that it's just, it's just bizarre that it seems to be every single one of them. I don't know if it's bizarre. It's totally on brand. I guess, yeah.

It is totally absolutely on brand that the people that would be chanting groomers and pedophiles and directing that at LGBTQ people, people who are just trying to live their lives, that it would turn out that you're screaming so loud. because thou doth protest too much. Like the party is filled, the Republican Party, and this is not just hyperbolic. It's filled with fucking pedophiles. Who have been charged or accused of actual pedophilia? And you cannot look to the Democratic Party and say the same thing.

So I'm like how you look at the rape of an underage girl as being pro-sex, And this is a man that was invited to Mara Lago. This is a man that has had elected officials stand on stage with him. Yo, you just, you should, Democrats just play that clip over and over again and then put up the pictures of all the fucking Republican representatives and senators that call him a friend. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal author, Josh Zytes, who is the author of the new book, Lincoln's God.

faith transformed a president and a nation. Josh, you know, Lincoln is thrown around all the time. I swear by, you know, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, everyone always wants to harken on this mythical idea that I believe that people have of President Lincoln. The first question I have for you is, what compelled you? Because you had written prior on President Lincoln's two secretaries, John Hay and John Nicolet, what prompted you to want to dig more into the president himself? Lincoln is sort of like an avatar for America in the 19th century. He, you know, he seems to be everywhere and he seems to represent everything about that experience. And on the other hand, he was a lifelong icon class who always sort of marched one or two steps offbeat with

the rest of the country. And so I wanted to do a book that looked at religion and Civil War era culture because I think that it's a neglected aspect of American political and cultural experience during the Civil War era. Less so now. There are a bunch of really good scholars who are doing academic histories on it, but nothing that I've seen for a wider reading audience. So I wanted to look at that because I thought that it would be a compelling topic. And at the same time, I thought that Lincoln would be an interesting organizing thread throughout the book for two reasons. One is because he has this sort of icon-classic and very interesting personal spiritual journey when he's president, which has been written about, but not, I think, placed in a broader societal context. And second, because I think that

during the war, he ironically became the first president to assiduously court religious voters to channel the energy and support of church leaders, both lay and religious, behind the war effort, as well as behind a shift in the war's meaning and end from a war for union to a war for emancipation. And he was really the first president to openly incorporate religious themes and language and Argo in his public speeches. In a way, really, no president has done since. There's a kind of dual purpose here. There's been so much written about Lincoln, right? It's hard to find something that's differentiated.

Lincoln becomes the sort of perfect organizational thread for a book that looks at religion and Civil War era culture. But there's also an interesting story about him behind it. And it does help contextualize some of his presidency as well. What I find interesting about your book is the fact that while we may not particularly be in a traditional war time that Lincoln presided over, the Civil War, there is definitely a fracture, a very real fracture, a very divided America that we are living in right now. What kind of parallels do you see in the way that political figures currently, and I don't just mean President Biden,

but I mean politicians at large, are weaponizing religion. as a way to continue their push towards autocracy. And what Lincoln did was utilize religion, not weaponized, but utilize religion as a common thread to sow the nation together after a civil war. So how do you see the usage of religion both then and now in what can be seen as either a bringing together or a breaking apart? Well, let me begin just by stating the obvious caveats. America in the 19th century in America today from a religious stamp are quite different.

In the 19th century, Christianity was the predominant religion in America by far numerically. Within that, Protestants were by far still the predominant set of denominations. And you compare that to today where we are both a less religious country in terms of church membership and attendance. America in the early 19th century, mid-19th century was undergoing the second great awakening. So religion was deeply ingrained in every part of public consciousness. And most public figures across culture, the arts, and politics openly discussed and express the religiosity. Today we're, by the numbers, anyway, less religious country. And among those who are religious, we are also far more pluralistic.

We have Catholics, we have Jews, we have Hindus, we have a cross-section of faiths. And even, you know, 19th century Protestantism was a, they called it the United Evangelical Front. Well, today, Christian communities are deeply divided, not just between churches, but within churches, you see the same rifts that we saw in the 1840s that were literally splitting the Presbyterian Baptist and Methodist churches today, where the Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Baptist churches are splitting not along sectional lines, although some of it is sectional by coincidence, but along cultural issues as well. So the caveats are that it's different, but some things are the same. Lincoln is the first president who openly courts the evangelical churches.

He is extremely solicitous toward the ministers and the lay leaders. He is in constant correspondence with them, always receiving church groups, incorporating religious themes into his public statements and speeches. And the ministers themselves, they do this gradual move. Before the war, most evangelical churches in the U.S. had stayed clear of politics. Even when they involved themselves in social reform movements, whether that was temperance or Sabbath observance or abolitionism,

they did it individual to individual. They believed that the way that you saw, if you were a religious abolitionist, you were really focused on converting the individual slave-holding sinner and making him realize the error of his ways rather than trying to enforce some political solution. But by the start of the war, the churches moved gradually from engaging on behalf of the union and the war effort, which is one thing. You could just say that that's just patriotic, right? And then they start to engage the northern churches as well on behalf of the abolitionist calls. The churches had been tepid in their support of abolitionism before the war, but the war caused

to see change in that, and evangelical leaders became some of the most vocal proponents of abolitionism early on the war as a war aim and end. And they finally become basically an adjun of the Republican Party by 1864, where the churches are fully engaged in, the campaign, they're endorsing Lincoln and the Republican Party. Prominent clerics are out on the stump in a way that would seem quite familiar today. So how do you compare that to today? I would argue that if you're looking at conservative white evangelical communities, the scheme that you've sort of put forward, is what you see now where, and you can see where there was a slippery slope with what Lincoln and the churches were playing at, right? It was all fine and good when it was a war to abolish slavery.

Of course, you want the churches actively engaged in that. But after the war, you know, some churches embraced the liberal social gospel politics of ministers like Washington Gladden and got involved in all sorts of progressive causes in the late 19th century. That was an offshoot of the politicization of the churches during the war. But others went in another direction, people like Francis Willard and Anthony Comstock who wanted to, Comstock's back in the news, right? Because his Comstock laws are being invoked by conservative judges, many of whom are strict evangelicals who are invoking that law

in order to ban certain abortifacians. So it could take a liberal or conservative direction. Today, though, I think that when we talk about the way in which evangelical churches have somewhat been politicized and have made themselves into blunt instruments for reactionary politicians, that works. But then you have to write out a whole whole. lot of other liberal Christians who are actively engaged in advocating for LGBT rights or advocating

for, advocating for immigrant rights or for civil rights. You have to write out reform and conservative and reconstructive and Reconstitutional Jewish congregations that have always been longtime supporters of social justice reform. And you have to write the black evangelical churches out of that story. And they've been engaged for decades in the work of anti-poverty work and civil rights work. So I think one thing, when I think about this, I try not to let one group of very conservative evangelical white Christians define what it means to be engaged in politics from a religious perspective. Yeah, and I get that from a religious perspective because I think that religion, when not

weaponized, has played to the examples that you provided, a really powerful place in our politics. When you're looking at the interpretation of the Bible as caring for thy neighbor and uplifting the poor and welcoming all people that are turned away. then you think, oh, yes, then that's the religion that I understand. That's, you know, what you want to see. But when you see it as creating this exclusive club and then this tiered level of hierarchical oppression, then you want no religion to be in politics because what we are seeing play out right now is not the same as what you write about in the time of Lincoln. But it is similar to the word that you use, a similar scheme to make people believe, with regard to the weaponization of religion. I think that one of the interesting pieces, you had a wonderful review that was done of the book in the New York Times,

entitled How an Unconventional Approach to Religion Help Shape a Divided Nation by Ted Widmer. And in it, he writes this, and I wanted to get your reaction to this piece, which is, quote, that you, you're the author, weaves between dogmas, revealing a complex thinker who definitely merged religious language

with political goals and underwent a spiritual renewal during the Civil War and following the death of his own son, of Lincoln's own son. Talk to us about the weaving between the dogmas and then this spiritual awakening and how it began with the emancipation of enslaved peoples and using religion to talk about the abomination of slavery and then following the death of his son. So Lincoln gets to the White House, and he's almost certainly a lifelong non-believer. He had been dogged early in his political career by charges that he was a religious scoffer, that he had at one point penned some sort of infidel tract denying the divinity of Christ, which would have been a big no-no in 1840-something.

You know, Illinois, if you're a congressional candidate, and in 1846, when he ran for Congress, his Democratic opponent was Peter Cartwright. It was a very famous Methodist circuit writer. So, you know, he started at a disadvantage, and he learned. not to talk about religion at all, denies that he's a scoffer, but makes no effort to convince people that he actually is a believer either. And something happens when he's president. And on one hand, he proves deft at recognizing the influence of Christianity culturally, intellectually in the North. And so he understands it's a framework that can help him convey the meaning and importance

of the war to ordinary voters and Americans and also help them to contextualize their place in that war. At the same time, he understands the rising power of the churches as organizations. I think there's little argument that on the eve of the civil war, there's no larger or more influential part of civil society than the churches. I mean, there were as many Methodist ministers on the eve of the war as there were post office employees, which doesn't sound like a very meaningful stat. But in the 19th century, the largest branch of the U.S. government was the postal service and most people's only direct interaction with the government before the Civil War was with the

Postal Service. So he understands how enormously influential the churches and that voting block are, and he undertakes efforts to both cultivate them politically and cultivate the ministers in a way that seems very modern. It seems like something that Republican politicians would do today. But he also understands the power of religious language and imagery to contextualize a war, particularly after that war, makes its transformation from being a war for union, which is a very civic type of war to a war for But then there's also something happening with him personally. He experiences the death of his son, Willie, in February of 1862. And for him, this is the Lincoln's personal experience with death and grief mirrors what the rest of the country is undergoing. And he's deeply aware that he's lost

Willie, but he's also presiding over this carnival of death that's ultimately going to cost 750,000 lives. And there's a sense of personal responsibility that he feels for it. And he's grasping to understand why it's happening and what his role in it is. And we know, I was asked by an interviewer earlier today, like, was this just all was his incorporation of religious themes and imagery in these speeches? And it ratcheted up to the point where during the second inaugural address, Frederick Douglas, who was a very religious person who was in the audience later, you know, that day told a reporter that he thought it sounded more like a sermon than a state paper. Than a state paper. So what, you know, they asked, was he just doing this because he was a shrewd

politician. And my answer was no. And we know this for a few reasons, but one of the most compelling, I think, is this document that he wrote. It was sort of a memo to himself. It wasn't meant for public consumption and no one ever saw it until after he died. It was John Hay and John Nicolay, who found it afterward. And he's sort of grasping with how do you divine what God's will is? How am I supposed to understand what I'm supposed to do? I think I'm an instrument. I'm paraphrasing. He thinks he's an instrument of God. He's pretty sure that his role is supposed to be to eliminate slavery, but he's not quite sure how you divine, you know, God's will. And he's really struggling with it. And this is just not something somebody who doesn't believe would write. This is somebody who may not have come to a

structured point of view about what his beliefs were by this point. But he's definitely evolving. Mary Todd Lincoln would later say that he was not a technical Christian, but I think she believed to that point that he had become some form of Christian. I don't think he was ever a Trinitarian Christian. I don't think that Christ was essential. I think he was closer to being a Unitarian than anything else. But what's fascinating about this is that he is really deft at summoning the enthusiasm of the evangelical churches and speaking that language, even though his personal evolution is moving in a very different direction. The evangelical churches, their leaders, become convinced during the war, like, God's on the Union side,

the Union is on God's side. And he's thoroughly unconvinced of this. He thinks there's just no way you can know. His God is unknowable and distant. And so he's never convinced that maybe the union is supposed to lose this war because he believes that's entirely possible because both North and South are facing some sort of divine retribution for the shared sin of slavery, in which they were both complicit.

So his faith is a sort of more introspective and doubting faith, which makes him different from other religious presidents and religious politicians who come into it kind of with this great certitude. And for him, there was always a humility about it, which is so different from the way you think about religious figures in politics. I mean, to me, your book is what has kind of opened my eyes and endeared me to Lincoln in a different way than before, which is that I prefer a politician that is nimble, that is questioning, that is curious, as opposed to one that says, I alone can fix this, or I will be your retribution. It's important that you lifted that up in this book. The last question that I have for you is with so many books and theories with regard to Lincoln, what do you think that people get wrong about this man that has been flattened over many a decades,

many a centuries into this kind of one-dimensional figure when he was clearly so complex and so layered? What do people get wrong? You know, I mean, and for this book, it's sort of meaningful. He was assassinated on Good Friday, which immediately led the world to apotheosize him as soon as the funeral was over. A newspaper reporter at the time said it makes it, the fact that he was killed on Easter makes it impossible for anyone ever to speak the truth of him again, right? He was always going to be greater than life. And I think if you back up what we miss, and it's not particularly ideological, and I think both left and right do it, he was a person. He was just a guy. He was as flawed as anybody else. He had extraordinary talents. He also got extraordinarily lucky in life. He grew into the presidency. He wasn't a natural born anything. He was actually a pretty mediocre state legislator when he was in the legislature. He was his one term in Congress. He was somewhat of a political failure. And actually, even though the wigs in his district had a rotation system, so he was never going to be able to run for second term, it was the only Whig district in Illinois. But they lost it the year after, as he was exiting Congress, because he had been so unpopular. He was unsuccessful in other aspects. of his career. So it's not, he wasn't a god, right? He wasn't the person who was apotheized on

Good Friday. And yet he was extraordinarily gifted. And to your point, he had the capacity to grow and learn. And John Hay remembered him and said like part of what pissed other politicians off about him, particularly the ones who thought they should be president, that it was preposterous that he was, was that they thought that he had this sort of detached kind of arrogance about him. It sounds exactly like what other political, you know, Democratic politicians said about Barack Obama on 2008, right? This self-assurance, you know, Lincoln's younger cousin, Sophie, later said, like, Abe always had a sense that he was going to be something.

So there was that, but you can have that self-assurance about your natural gifts and be the same person who's sitting down and grasping about, you know, at trying to understand what his role is supposed to be and how it plays out. He famously, a delegation of clergyman came to visit him and they told him that he was put on this earth by God to do the following things, including abolished slavery. and that only he could win the war because surely only he knew how to do it. And he said, look, and he was kind of angry. He said, if you think that God is going to express his, explicitly express his will about what I'm supposed to do,

don't you think he'd tell me first and not you? So he was a guy who, you know, was full of self-doubt in many ways that kind of informed his presidency. So I think just humanize him, you know, just realize he was a person living in a context and he was both a product of that context as well as somebody who always marched a little bit offbeat. Amazing. Josh, I thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal and just bringing a different, layered, complex, and humanized approach to a president and a man that we have learned about, you know, since the beginning of our schooling. Folks, the book is entitled Lincoln's God, how faith transformed a president. and a nation.

Josh Zights, thank you so much for writing this and thank you so much for your time. We appreciate you. Thank you, Daniel. I really appreciate it. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

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