Related articles and links |  1 of 3

God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life By Paul Kengor HarperCollins, 402 pp.; $26.95

Type in "Ronald Reagan" on Amazon.com under "books" and nearly 14,000 results pop out at you. Want Reagan's ghostwritten autobiography An American Life? (In a speech in the early Nineties, Reagan quipped that he'd get around to reading it one of these days.) It's still in print. As are numerous collections of letters, including letters to Joe and Judy taxpayer, letters to Nancy, and copies of old radio commentaries, in Reagan's own hand. Also present are hagiographies (Peggy Noonan, Dinesh D'Souza), collections of Reagan quotations, volumes that continue to pour forth from the pens of Reagan administration alum (How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, A Different Drummer, etc.), and perhaps the most poorly conceived official biography in the history of official biographies (Dutch, by Edmund Morris).

The books only touch the tip of the iceberg that is the Reagan industry. Put crassly, Ronald Reagan sells. His image on the cover of conservative magazines will boost sales, and his name on direct mail is fundraising gold. The Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, for instance, is attempting to name one "notable public landmark" in every state, and one landmark in each of the nation's 3,067 counties, after the Great Communicator. The project also wants his mug stamped on the $10 bill and chiseled into Mount Rushmore.

Around the capital, advocates have already succeeded in lobbying Congress to rename one airport after our 40th president, and to put his name on a new federal building (the latter is an honor that son Michael insists his father, were he not under the fog of Alzheimer's, would have declined). Further north, the New Hampshire legislature voted last year to change the name of a local peak from Mount Clay to Mount Reagan, though—wouldn't you know?—the obstructionist federal government insists on waiting until after the namesake's death to formally recognize it.

The publishing end of the Reagan industry does turn out the occasional gem (e.g., some of the works of de facto official biographer, former Washington Post reporter Lou Cannon), but the genre is riddled with so much hackjobbery and quickbuckery as to make any new entry suspect. Reagan's official stance toward the Soviets, "trust but verify," seems almost too lenient, and so I came to Grove City professor Paul Kengor's latest only after tossing back a few shots of skepticism.

Fascination with Reagan's faith is nothing new, of course, and Kengor's God and Ronald Reagan isn't the first book to carry the title. Conservative Christians, incensed by Jimmy Carter's ham-fisted attempt to force racial quotas on private religious elementary and high schools, provided the margin of Reagan's victory in 1980, and they never let him forget it. Several books came off the presses during the Eighties that played up the Gipper's statements on religion, his conversion experience, his opposition to abortion and secularism, and his belief that the Bible was the inspired word of God. However, there appears of late to be a renewed interest in Reagan's spirituality. God and Ronald Reagan only narrowly beat Mary Beth Brown's Hand of Providence: The Strong and Quiet Faith of Ronald Reagan (WND Books, slated for a late March release) into print.

This suddenly exotic faith grew out of Reagan's life. Son of a nominally Catholic father and a pious fundamentalist mother, he grew up in the Disciples of Christ church of Dixon, Illinois. There, he honed his oratorical skills as reader of Scripture, got his first taste of acting, and tried his hand at leadership. He taught the boys' Sunday school class for over two years, relinquishing it only when he went to Eureka College. Many members of the local congregation believed Reagan would become a preacher, and he nearly married the minister's daughter, whose unexplained nickname was "Muggs." From the picture Kengor paints, in solid workmanlike strokes, Reagan sounds not unlike some of the Baptist youths I grew up with while the 40th president was watching over the Oval Office.

next page... |  1 of 3

March (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48