LUTHER AND LINCOLN

Risking the ever-present Whig fallacy, I will say a few words 'comparing and contrasting' them.

Let's pretend for a moment that we are watching the Star Trek episode where an incarnation of Lincoln inhabits the scene...........

Luther religiously 'liberated' the princes, that is, gave them a spiritual alternative to, or at least at first merely a spiritual grievance against, the Papacy.

Lincoln 'politically' liberated the slaves, largely for military advantage.

Question: Was Lincoln more a reformation, or a counterreformation type figure?

My guess, is that, were we to refer the issues which Lincoln held dear back to a 'reformation context', he would more likely have been held to have been in the counter-reformation camp, than the other way around. This might come as a surprise to many Protestants, or for that matter, to many Catholics........

I would say that both moves, Lincoln's and Luther's, were made for 'tactical' reasons, given what each confronted. This detail tells once again in favor of a counterreformation stance for a figure like lincoln.

It has been claimed that each sought to preserve a preexisting 'union', the one spiritual and temporal, the other political and modern; and there is ample evidence for this.

I am sure others have compared them in the past, but the similarities, as much as the differences, struck me only recently.