The Christian Faith Of Ronald Reagan; From Sunday-school teacher to Oval Office occupant, author Paul Kengor reveals, Ronald Reagan remained deeply devoted to his faith and based his policies on it

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 11, 2004 | by Stephen Goode

Q: One of the most outstanding examples of Reagan's concerns about the Soviet people in your book comes when you say that Reagan carried a list of the names of Soviet dissidents in his pocket that he could pull out whenever he wanted.

A: Yes, that was great. George Schultz [Reagan's secretary of State, now a Hoover Institution fellow] says Reagan would have that list in his pocket and whenever he met with somebody from the Soviet Union, an ambassador, say, or with [Mikhail] Gorbachev, he would pull out the list and say, "Here are some names. Do what you can."

I do not know if it went like this, I just don't know, but you can almost picture a cell door opening in the Soviet Union somewhere and the dissident in there saying, "What's going on?"

The guard says, "You're free."

"Why am I free?"

"Well, you've got a friend in a high place."

Q: A subject you bring up frequently in your book is the great emphasis Reagan placed on freedom.

A: That's probably the word he said more than any other. He used the word freedom constantly. I think for some his frequent calls for freedom became a cliche because he did it so often. They didn't get it, but Reagan certainly did. He thought deeply about the relationship between God and human freedom and the nonrelationship between atheistic communism and that freedom.

Q: A familiar Reagan statement that was popular with many people was, "God isn't dead; we just can't speak to him in the classroom anymore."

A: Yes, that's right. That's why he thought school prayer was important. I get asked a lot of questions now: "How would Reagan react to the war on terror? How would he react to gay marriage?" I recently was asked how he would react to the attempt to remove "one nation, under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. To that question I said he'd probably be appalled by it because he supported the initial rationale with which President [Dwight] Eisenhower and the Congress put it there in the first place, which was to draw a clear moral distinction between the Soviet system and the American system. You also can say that's what the famous evil empire speech was all about: drawing a clear distinction between the Soviet Union and the United States. People wanting to strike "under God" from the Pledge say, "After all, the Cold War is over. The U.S.S.R. is dead." To which Reagan responded, "Yes, but God isn't dead."

Reagan thought that school prayer was important because it was crucial to begin each day reminding students that their inalienable rights came to them from their Creator and not from government bureaucrats.

Q: To your mind, how does Reagan's faith compare with the religious faith of other presidents?

A: It's as strong a faith as any president I've studied. [George] Washington had a strong faith. So did John Adams and Woodrow Wilson. In a lot of cases, the presidents with very strong faith were liberal Democrats. It is interesting that liberals don't mind that at all. When it's their guy with a strong faith whether it's Jimmy Carter or Woodrow Wilson or Harry Truman that's just great. FDR inscribing Bibles and sending them to the troops. God bless him! But when a Republican president cites Jesus Christ as his favorite philosopher, as George W. Bush did on a famous occasion, then, well, the liberals cry out that [Tom s de] Torquemada is on the loose and warn gravely of the coming Inquisition.