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O n March 8, 1983, at 3:04 P.M., President Ronald Reagan stepped to the podium before a group of evangelical Christians at the Sheraton Twin Towers Hotel in Orlando, Florida. Knowing he had a friendly crowd, he began by thanking all those present for their prayers. He cited a favorite quote from Lincoln, about often being driven to his knees by the overwhelming conviction that he had nowhere else to go. He then commended the role of religious faith in American democracy.

That was all nice enough—standard fare, no surprise, preaching to the choir.

Reagan then took a sharp theological-philosophical turn. He spoke of sin and man's fallen nature: "We know that living in this world means dealing with what philosophers would call the phenomenology of evil or, as theologians would put it, the doctrine of sin." He then gave a glimpse of where he was heading: "There is sin and evil in the world, and we're enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might."

Particularly possessed of that sin and evil, he told the National Association of Evangelicals, was America's principal foe: the Soviet Union was the "focus of evil in the modern world"; it was an "evil empire."

Reagan's audacious assertion was a shot heard 'round the world—and certainly within the packed Citrus Crown Ballroom of several hundred people. "It was a surprise to all of us," said Thomas McDill, president of the Evangelical Free Church, "but especially to the reporters down in front." It did not take long for the ripple effect to make waves outside the auditorium. In the Washington Post, Richard Cohen asked, "Question: What does Ronald Reagan have in common with my grandmother? Answer: They are both religious bigots." Historian Henry Steele Commager asserted, "It was the worst presidential speech in American history, and I've read them all." A damning indictment came from The New Republic, the political bible of the American left, in a sarcastic editorial titled "Reverend Reagan." "He is not in the White House to save our souls," the editors objected, "but to protect our bodies; not to do God's will, but the people's."

Not all reactions were negative. Upon learning what Reagan had said, Anatoly Sharansky, an inmate of U.S.S.R. Permanent Labor Camp 35, jumped for joy inside his prison cell and tapped in Morse Code to his fellow gulag residents the good news that "someone had finally spoken the truth" about the U.S.S.R. Once the communist collapse came, Russian government officials were eager to talk openly and even to affirm the president's characterization. Arkady Murashev, Moscow police chief and a leader of Democratic Russia, who was close to Russian president Boris Yeltsin, told the Washington Post's David Remnick: "He [Reagan] called us the 'Evil Empire.' So why did you in the West laugh at him? It's true!"

Why did Reagan say what he said on that day in March 1983? As he explained after the presidency, "Although a lot of liberal pundits jumped on my speech at Orlando and said it showed I was a rhetorical hip-shooter who was recklessly and unconsciously provoking the Soviets into war, I made the 'Evil Empire' speech and others like it with malice aforethought."

Reagan's chief motivation was laid bare in the speech itself. He believed he had no choice—morally or spiritually—but to condemn the Soviet system because it was evil. He would be remiss in his Christian duty if he did not denounce and oppose the Soviet Union.

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