Ronald Reagan’s City of God

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Paul Kengor’s new book 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative. Among the principles is faith. A version of this article first appeared at RealClearReligion.org.

Conservatives constantly talk of freedom.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom. Go to any gathering of conservatives, and you will hear a freedom mantra. They speak of “freedom” almost as if it were a one-word synonym for conservatism, a slogan for the movement. At times, they do so in an almost trite way.

Ronald Reagan likewise spoke constantly of freedom. Mankind, from “the swamps to the stars,” as he said in his seminal October 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech, longed to be free. The global Cold War struggle of Reagan’s life represented the arc of that longing, of that crisis. Obviously, the communist world hungered for freedom. But even the free world didn’t always appreciate it. Free people needed always to be reminded of their freedom and the need to understand and reassert it. That included Americans. Reagan said that freedom is always under assault; every generation must fight to preserve it.

A Pillar of Reagan's Legacy: Religion

From The Center for Vision and Values

By Paul Kengor

Retrospectives on Ronald Reagan as the nation marks the centennial of his birth will touch upon every imaginable aspect of the man. I suspect, however, that the thing most integral to the man, and most consistent throughout his life — that is, his religious faith — will not be as front and center as it should.

That was something I learned quite unintentionally. It began in the summer 2001, when I was at the Reagan library researching what I thought would be a fairly conventional biography. I scoured a fascinating cache of documents called the Handwriting File. There, I glimpsed Reagan's literal input, in speeches, proclamations, you name it. And it was there, in marked-up drafts of speeches such as the "Evil Empire" address, that I encountered an intensely religious Reagan, a man making constant, seamless references to God. I found eye-opening private letters, including one where Reagan employed C.S. Lewis' classic "liar, Lord, or lunatic" argument to, essentially, evangelize the Christian message.