Please join our guest moderator, Dr. Christian McWhirter on Thursday, February 12, 2026, at 2 p.m. CT, for an enlightening conversation with author Dr. Richard Carwardine on his latest book Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union.

Righteous Strife is the first major account of the American Civil War to give full weight to the central role played by religion, reframing the conflict through Abraham Lincoln’s contentious appeals to faith-based nationalism.

How did slavery figure in God’s plan? Was it the providential role of government to abolish this sin and build a righteous nation? Or did such a mission amount to “religious tyranny” and “pulpit politics,” in an effort to strip the southern states of their God-given rights? In 1861, in an already fracturing nation, the tensions surrounding this moral quandary cracked the United States in half, and even formed rifts within the North itself, where antislavery religious nationalists butted heads with conservative religious nationalists over their visions for America’s future.

At the center of this melee stood Abraham Lincoln, who would turn to his own faith for guidance, proclaiming more days of national fasting and thanksgiving than any other president before or since. These pauses for spiritual reflection provided the inspirational rhetoric and ideological fuel that sustained the war.

Richard Carwardine is Emeritus Rhodes Professor of American History and Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. Carwardine's research and publications center on the United States between 1776 and the Civil War, and his published work also includes the books Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven, 1993), Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (New York, 2006), and The Global Lincoln (2011).

Please note:  This event is scheduled for 2 p.m. CT on Thursday, February 12, 2026.

Register Here.