Reagan, Christian Vision, and Meeting Today’s Challenges

Few of the world’s great leaders are overtly identified with religious denominations or as ‘religious’ leaders, yet very frequently their achievements have had a profound moral and spiritual dimension to them. In these cases, we often find in the historical record substantial evidence of a deep and sincere Christian faith. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln certainly fall into this category, and the achievements associated with their leadership have had a lasting and blessing impact on the United States of America and indeed the world.

More recently, the Christian faith of President Ronald Reagan and its relation to his impact is worth serious investigation. The achievement most widely associated with his administration was the final winning of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, without a shot being fired. Secularists in various forms enjoy debating the range and degree of cause and effect in the demise of communism, but no honest observer would dismiss the contribution of President Reagan’s leadership.

So it’s interesting to take a look at some of the speeches Reagan made and thoughts he shared on this subject. Reagan biographer Paul Kengor wrote a column about his experience preparing for the writing of a Reagan biography (“God and Ronald Reagan, a Spiritual Life”) . Kengor wrote:

A few years ago I began researching a book on Ronald Reagan…

I began with the official presidential-documents collection, a record of every presidential statement. I read innumerable Reagan letters and vetted the massive presidential handwriting file at the Reagan Library, which included all documents in his hand. …

I was surprised to find, in all this material, a long record of religious comment. I was startled, for instance, to note that Reagan offered a parable about Jesus and Judas at the Garden of Gethsemane for a toast at the 1988 Moscow Summit--in the heart of the evil empire itself. Speaking of the "evil empire," it was a revelation to me to learn that Reagan wrote probably half the speech that made that phrase famous, delivered to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983. …

It became clear that, for all the sniping of his detractors, Reagan was a devout Christian, a Protestant who felt a keen fellowship with Catholics and Jews. … …

And how, exactly, did Reagan's faith affect his presidency? In many ways, but perhaps most of all in his view of Soviet communism. … It wasn't just the regime's repressive nature that inspired a sense of mission in him, or its ghastly record of blood and suffering. It was the official atheism of Soviet communism that especially angered Reagan and convinced him that he was dealing with an "evil" adversary.

"There is sin and evil in the world," he told the evangelicals in March 1983, "and we're enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might." He saw his confrontation with communism as a spiritual one. He told a joint session of the Irish National Parliament in June 1984 that the "struggle between freedom and totalitarianism today" was ultimately not a test of arms or missiles "but a test of faith and spirit." It was, he said, a "spiritual struggle."

In another historical anecdote, Ben Elliott, one of Reagan’s speechwriters, commented on Reagan’s propensity to make multiple changes in the speeches prepared for him. On one speech draft by Elliott and speechwriter Peggy Noonan, they called Christmas "the day that marks the birth on Earth of the Son of God." Reagan changed the phrasing to read: "the birthday of the promised Messiah, the Son of God (emphasis added).

Pardon us for engaging in a little mind-reading of the deceased, but we find enormous significance in Reagan’s change. Reagan’s vision of Jesus’s life and teachings as the ‘promised Messiah’ shows his heartfelt grasp of Jesus’ life as evidence of God’s direct care and love for humanity—i.e., it was the fulfillment of a promise of incomparable importance to the well-being of humanity, a promise made by God, a promise fulfilled. One has the sense that it was this heartfelt grasp of God’s presence and love that gave Reagan such conviction that America represented the ‘shining city on a hill’ for all humanity, while atheism was evil, immoral and ultimately, unsustainable. Reagan was right, of course. But his faith was also at a high enough level that he didn’t see the enemy as persons or a people, but an ideology of godlessness. It’s extremely noteworthy to remember that among the tenderest moments at Reagan’s funeral procession was the sight of Mikhail Gorbachev pausing to touch Reagan’s casket in a final good bye. Gorbachev undoubtedly felt the goodness and sincerity of Reagan’s faith, and could not see him as anything other than a friend to him and to all humanity.

Which brings us to today. We’ve long grown accustomed in American society to see the evil external to our borders, but reluctant to see evil in our midst. Presidents Bush 41 and Bush 43 had this affliction in spades; they just could never bring themselves to see the actions of fellow Americans—no matter how evil and hateful—as evil. They’d reach across the aisle, never react in anger no matter how despicable the invective directed toward them, and just assume things would work out alright because, after all, we’re all Americans.

But now we’re seeing evil in full display in our midst. It is the aggressively godless intellectualism that is the unifying philosophy of George Soros, Saul Alinsky, William Ayres and Barack Obama, and it is hell-bent to destroy the shining city on a hill and remake it into a godless society controlled by their amoral version of right and wrong, enforced by the power and authority of the state. We as Americans just don’t want to believe this is happening within our beloved country; we keep straining to find some evidence that surely they aren’t cut out of the same mold as the Marxists outside our borders that we have had to go to war with to defeat. But they are Marxists, and their intent is just as deadly. This is evil at its worst, because it is being deliberately obscured by the use of high-minded Orwellian rhetoric intended to soothe the masses while the core ideals of the country are denied and destroyed.

It isn’t going to succeed, for the same reasons Reagan knew the aggressive godlessness of communism wasn’t going to succeed. It violates the spirit in man; it attempts to deny and destroy man’s God-given right to freedom. But these are indestructible. And recognizing this evil as such is the first step to ridding America of it.

As with Reagan, the enemy is not a person or group of persons; it is a way of thinking. The thinking needs to change; it must change; or, as with the apparatus of the Soviet Union, this administration needs to be dismantled and removed from power. As with Reagan, the key is our individual and collective faith in a present and loving God to lead and guide into the right steps for the complete defeat and removal of this evil. We know it can be done without firing a shot; Reagan showed us the way.

But it is going to take moral courage on the part of many of us, speaking up when the voices of this evil will use every device known to man to silence, ridicule, discredit and intimidate.

Don’t back down. Join the fight. Stay in the fight. Good will win.

Paul Gable

Posted March 2, 2009