Free Republic

A close aide to Ronald Reagan has claimed that the former US president tried to convert the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Christianity.A new biography that draws on recently declassified documents discloses a secret exchange between the two leaders that left at least one official present convinced that Reagan had tried to persuade his counterpart of God's existence. The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, by the former Los Angeles Times reporter James Mann, provides fresh insight into the former US president's religious convictions and the role they played in foreign policy. Reagan had apparently reached a conviction, which has since become...

It was the question that preoccupied President Ronald Reagan: Was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev a religious believer? Reagan held a series of summits with Gorbachev from 1985 to 1988, and as their meetings proceeded, Reagan sometimes speculated to his aides that Gorbachev's use of phrases such as "God bless" might be an expression of religious faith. Many of the summit sessions involved large groups of U.S. and Soviet officials, discussing issues like arms control and regional conflicts. But in one-on-one talks with Gorbachev outside the presence of other senior officials like Secretary of State George Shultz, Reagan sometimes ventured off...

Moscow, March 20, Interfax - In 1980s, the idea that religion might change the Soviet system preoccupied US President Ronald Reagan. This is testified by the notes taken by two Reagan aides during the meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. According to these documents recently declassified and made available at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., Reagan secretly attempted to persuade Gorbachev of the existence of God, Vedomosti. Pyatnitsa newspaper reports. During their fourth summit meeting in 1988, Reagan launched into a private conversation with Gorbachev, one that he promised he would deny had ever taken place. The...

Ronald Reagan's spiritual pilgrimage has been a topic of great interest, and sometimes heated debate, among evangelicals. In his conscientiously researched "spiritual life" of the 20th century's "patron saint" of small-government conservatism, Grove City College political science professor Paul Kengor has added a relatively new dimension to the Reagan biography: the President as a man of deeply-rooted faith in a providential God. Kengor's sweeping examination of the spiritual quest of the man he calls a "practical Christian" should quiet the controversy about whether Reagan had an entrenched faith. Reagan's faith was not only sincere and vocalized throughout his life, Kengor...