The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is charged with caring for American veterans, their families and their survivors. Eric Shinseki has been Secretary 0f Veterans Affairs since January 2009.

Ronald D. Rietveld is professor of history emeritus at California State University at Fullerton. He has written extensively on Lincoln, the antebellum period, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the history of religion in America. He was a historical consultant for the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum and is known as the only person who found […]

Gordon Leidner is a Lincoln scholar and former president of the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia. He maintains the website Great American History, on which he has written about Lincoln’s religious faith. He says Lincoln’s legacy in American civil religion is that he never doubted the existence and sovereignty of God or that God had […]

Harold Holzer is senior vice president of external affairs for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. He is also co-chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and a member of its speakers bureau. Among the lectures he offers is “Lincoln and the Jews.” He has written several books on Lincoln.

Allen Guelzo wrote Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, a 1999 book that challenged the reigning thought about Lincoln’s faith – basically, that he had little, if any. He is a professor of Civil War era history at Gettysburg College.

Eric Foner is a history professor at Columbia University in New York City and author of A House Divided: America in the Age of Lincoln.

CNN has exit poll data: Click on the “Results” tab and go to “Exit Polls.” The second page has most of the breakdowns by religion.

According to this Dec. 19, 2008, survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, most members of Congress are Protestant, as is most of the country.

An Aug. 27, 2007, Christian Science Monitor profile of Biden, “A frank and abiding faith,” is a good starting point for exploring his personal religious views.