{"id":720,"date":"2014-12-09T11:46:58","date_gmt":"2014-12-09T16:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/?p=720"},"modified":"2015-01-15T11:30:44","modified_gmt":"2015-01-15T16:30:44","slug":"was-abraham-lincoln-a-free-will-baptist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/?p=720","title":{"rendered":"Was Abraham Lincoln a Free Will Baptist?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now and again the subject of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s religion arises. We have sometimes been told that he had a Free Will Baptist background. Recently reprinted (and available on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Abraham-Lincolns-Religion-Parents-Baptists\/dp\/1494495546\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1420822038&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=was+abraham+lincoln+a+free+will+baptist%3F\" target=\"_blank\">Amazon<\/a>) is a little book from 1909,\u00a0<a title=\"Abraham Lincoln's Religion\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/abrahamlincolnsr00peter\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Abraham Lincoln\u2019s Religion<\/em>,<\/a>\u00a0by Madison C. Peters.\u00a0The reprint adds to the original title these words: <em>His Parents Were Free Will Baptists in Kentucky<\/em>.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The book does not justify that claim. All Peters said (page 17) was that Lincoln\u2019s \u201cmother and father were Free-Will Baptists in Kentucky.\u201d And that is not correct. Lincoln\u2019s parents attended a <em>Separate Baptist <\/em>church in Kentucky, and the Separate Baptists never were part of the Free Will Baptist denomination. True, <em>some<\/em> of them\u2014especially after the merger of the Separate and Regular Baptists in Virginia in 1787\u2014were \u201cfree will\u201d in their sentiments, at least in their view of predestination and the atonement.<\/p>\n<p>But it is also true that many Separate Baptists were Calvinistic. Knowing what theology of salvation Lincoln\u2019s parents personally held is not possible. They would have attended churches near them, whether they agreed with all their articles of faith or not. Peters also reports that they were in a <em>predestinarian<\/em> church when they relocated to Indiana.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone interested in the subject would do well to read Allen C. Guelzo\u2019s article <a title=\"Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity\" href=\"http:\/\/quod.lib.umich.edu\/j\/jala\/2629860.0018.105?view=text;rgn=main\" target=\"_blank\">Abraham Lincoln and the Doctrine of Necessity<\/a>.\u00a0Guelzo shows convincingly that Lincoln himself was something of a fatalist and cites evidence that Lincoln\u2019s parents were Calvinists.<\/p>\n<p>Separate Baptist literature promotes the tradition that young Abe Lincoln sent for one of their Kentucky preachers to come to Indiana for his mother\u2019s memorial service (some days after her burial) in 1818. Peters (pages 23, 24) identifies him as \u201cParson Elkin.\u201d But we have no information about Elkin\u2019s theology.<\/p>\n<p>Was Lincoln rocked in a \u201cfree-will\u201d Baptist cradle? Forget it! (Now, President Garfield <em>did<\/em> attend a Free Will Baptist institution in his youth. But that\u2019s another story.)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>About the Writer: Robert Picirilli is a member of the Free Will Baptist Historical Commission and is grateful for the help of Dr. Darrell Holley in this, especially in pointing him to Guelzo\u2019s online article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now and again the subject of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s religion arises. We have sometimes been told that he had a Free Will Baptist background. Recently reprinted (and available on Amazon) is a little book from 1909,\u00a0Abraham Lincoln\u2019s Religion,\u00a0by Madison C. Peters.\u00a0The reprint adds to the original title these words: His Parents Were Free Will Baptists in Kentucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=720"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":935,"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720\/revisions\/935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fwbhistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}