Well said. However, in Lincoln's inaugural address which you quote, just before he got to the "with malice toward none" bit, he had something else to say. As the Civil War approached its close, here are the words--almost inconceivable today in their eloquent bluntness--with which the American president dared to combined religion and race:

"If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

"God damn America," indeed. It strikes me that old Abe was in some ways closer to Reverend Wright than to Obama--praiseworthy, thought-provoking, and indeed groundbreaking though Barack's speech was.