Sada cheers, friend.
Good to see ya here.
Earlier this year NewsMax Magazine published the special report "Reagan and God," based on newly discovered papers of President Reagan and the findings of scholar Paul Kengor in his book "God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life." NewsMax is republishing part of the NewsMax Magazine report in honor of President Reagan. For more details on this report and Paul Kengor's book,
Part one: Forewarned of Shooting. Part two: Mother Set Example. Part three follows:
When Reagan arrived in Hollywood in 1938 on contract with Warner Brothers, Hollywood was far from the celebrity-crazed, hedonistic Tinseltown we know today.
Nor was it one of the quaint Puritan towns that dotted America’s midsection, such as Dixon, Ill., where Reagan’s childhood unfolded. He quickly joined the Hollywood Beverly Christian Church, which belonged to Disciples of Christ. He was not a regular church attendee, however. In fact, Kengor discovered that despite being quite religious, Reagan never thought going to church every Sunday was critical.
In an article he wrote in 1950 titled “My Faith,” he admitted not attending church “as regularly as I should. I suppose it’s true that a man can be religious without going to church.”
But his commitment to his church was underscored by the fact that, though he moved from the Beverly Christian Church, he remained a member of its congregation and financially supported the church his entire life. Kengor notes that even today, “Nancy Reagan still sends a monthly check to Beverly Christian in their names.”
Honoring his parents was a central concern for Reagan. Soon after establishing himself in Hollywood, he bought his parents a home in Hollywood and supported them financially.
Nelle didn’t retire. She did what she always had done: helped the poor and needy. Kengor said she volunteered at a TB sanatorium “and at least three other medical treatment centers. She also continued her prison fellowship.”
Communist Threat
Though Reagan was not political in his early Hollywood days, the growing communist influence in the movie industry captured his interest. During a speech to a group in Los Angeles, he spoke of the growing threat of fascism. After the speech, a pastor approached him, saying that communism was an equal danger and needed to be addressed.
Reagan did address the issue, and his criticisms of communism made him many enemies.
“To Reagan few passages of his life had been as grueling as those years when he faced physical intimidation, including a threat that he would be splashed with acid, ruining the big screen face he depended upon for income,” the author recalled. “He began packing a .32 Smith and Wesson pistol, holstering the gun on every morning for months and wearing it until he stepped into bed at night.”
The pastor’s comment sparked a passion for exposing communism that would dominate Reagan for the rest of his political life and would lead to his own crusade to bring down the Soviet Union.
Spiritual Odyssey
Reagan’s faith and spirituality are difficult to pigeonhole. Many critics have dismissed his frequent references to God as throwaway lines made by a politician to appeal to religious voters.
On the other extreme, foes have categorized his religious faith as fundamentalist, that of a Bible-thumper. Such was the fictional depiction of Reagan in Viacom’s recent Showtime movie “The Reagans.” The screenwriters falsely portrayed Reagan as uncaring about AIDS victims as he quoted the Bible: “Those who live in sin shall die in sin.” Of course, Ronald Reagan never made such a statement.
Other critics have accused Reagan and his wife of hypocrisy. The couple didn’t attend church regularly. Mrs. Reagan had consulted an astrologer. And the public problems with their children suggested that the Reagans were not your typical Christian family.
But, as Kengor explains in one detail after another, Reagan’s faith was deep, personal, formative to his politics, and much more complex and embracing than a fundamentalist’s faith.
In “God and Reagan,” we discover how Reagan’s faith manifested itself. Here are just some of the traditional and non-traditional ways that Kengor reveals:
Belief in an afterlife. Reagan firmly believed not only that death does not end one’s existence but also that sometimes those who die can communicate with the living. He had such an experience at the funeral service for his father.
He recalled that he was terribly sad and then he heard his father’s voice: “I’m OK, and where I am it’s very nice. Please don’t be unhappy.” Reagan turned to his mother to share the communication and said that his sadness disappeared.
Dreams. The Bible shows that God sometimes talks to people in their dreams.
Reagan believed that, as the Sieffert anecdote indicated. But he also had a dream that recurred throughout his life: “He had always dreamed that he was living in a big white house.”
He told Peggy Noonan that the dream “just kept coming back … that I was going to live in a sort of mansion with big rooms like this one. …” Christ as savior. He believed that acceptance of Christ as a savior is paramount to salvation. He accepted Jesus as his savior as a teen-ager and continued to profess that belief throughout his life.
Reagan was concerned about others doing the same and worried for years that his son Ron Jr. had not “found Christ.” As a teen-ager, young Ron had refused to go to church. His father accepted his son’s decision, but was never happy about it. Young Ron’s apparent atheism was a source of angst for Reagan, and in one summit meeting he even complained to Mikhail Gorbachev about it.
The miracle after the assassination attempt. Reagan believed that he survived the 1981 attempt on his life only by divine intervention. Not only did the bullet Hinckley fired miss Reagan’s heart by inches, but also the Devastator bullet Hinckley used inexplicably and miraculously failed to explode.
Soon after being shot, Reagan had a vision while lying in his hospital bed. He was startled to see “figures in white standing around him.” He wasn’t sure he was still alive, so he scribbled a note to Nancy: “I’m alive, aren’t I.”
He wrote during his recuperation, “Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will try to serve him every way I can.”
Interestingly, Mother Teresa believed Reagan’s survival had a higher purpose. She told him privately that there was “a purpose to this.” She said the attack had helped him to “understand the suffering and pain of the world.”
The power of prayer. “God and Reagan” makes it clear that Reagan not only believed in the power of prayer, he also was in almost constant prayer.
Biographer Edmund Morris said his firm memory of Reagan was the president sitting alone mumbling to himself. Morris was surprised to learn that he was talking to God.
Reagan once admitted to his Cabinet that he began the meetings with a private prayer. In telephone calls to the families of servicemen who had died, he would ask if he could lead the family in prayer.
He believed that prayer could work in practical ways. As a youth, he knew his mother’s prayers were deemed so powerful that some viewed her as a faith healer. He believed prayer had saved and repaired his own health on more than one occasion.
Prayer also helped Reagan with his fears. One was his fear of flying. For decades he refused to fly and took cars and trains to travel across the country. He overcame that fear through prayer, and began every flight with a silent prayer. His daughter Patti, once seeing him pray before a flight, asked if he was requesting that the plane not crash.
“No,” Reagan responded, “I pray that whatever God’s will is, I’ll be able to accept it with grace and have faith in His wisdom.”
For more details on this report and Paul Kengor's book, "God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life," .