At prayer breakfast, Obama says Christian faith guides his policies

[Journeyman]

109. Yes. His two most important speeches are etched in full on the walls of the memorial. . .

His "Dedicatory Remarks" at Gettysburg are on the left as you face him, and his "Second Inaugural Address" is on the right.

And as we're considering religious aspects of Presidential comments, it's quite enlightening, if you are familiar with the Christ story, to re-read Mr Lincoln's remarks at Gettysburg with an ear to parallels between Christ's life and the life of the nation as described by Mr Lincoln. A nation "brought forth" (not founded, but intellectually realized from a virgin land), a struggle through a crucible of blood and death, and resurrection through "a new birth of freedom." The imagery was highly calculated by Mr Lincoln to draw his audience into subconscious agreement with a fundamental ideal Mr Lincoln sought to instill, and the speech serves the purpose of not only dedicating a cemetery and establishing a memorial for the war, it remade the emphasis of the nation and turned us from the flawed Constitution (which codified slavery within the land) and rededicated us to the ideals of the Declaration, which sought freedom and equality for all.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.