Reagan: The Life (62 page)

The invasion sparked international condemnation of the United States for trampling the sovereignty of Grenada. The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to censure the American government. After-battle reports suggested that the American students had never been in danger and that the administration exaggerated the Cuban influence.

Reagan retreated not an inch. Reporter
Helen Thomas inquired whether he was bothered by the heavy vote in the General Assembly. “
It didn’t upset my breakfast at all,” Reagan answered. Another reporter asked him to explain how the American invasion of Grenada differed from the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Reagan replied. “This was a rescue mission. It was a successful rescue mission, and the people that have been rescued, and the Grenadians that have been liberated, are down there delighted with and giving every evidence of appreciation and gratitude to our men down there.” Another reporter wanted to know whether the success of the Grenada operation inclined the president to use military force elsewhere. Reagan dodged the question, saying any other situation would be different. A third reporter said the Nicaraguan regime was asserting that Reagan was preparing to order the invasion of their country; was this true?

Reagan smiled, as if considering the matter. He had certainly intended that the Sandinistas take notice of what American power could accomplish. If they were worried, all the better. He didn’t quite deny their assertion. “I haven’t believed anything they’ve been saying since they got in charge,” he said. “And you shouldn’t either.”

D
URING
R
EAGAN
’
S SECOND
year in office, his father-in-law,
Loyal Davis, became seriously ill. “
Nancy is very depressed about her father’s health and understandably so,” Reagan wrote in his diary. Davis and Nancy’s mother had retired to Scottsdale, Arizona, and his illness prompted repeated flights by Nancy across the country from Washington. Reagan liked and respected his father-in-law and was naturally concerned for his health. But he worried more about his spiritual health. “He’s always been an Agnostic,” Reagan wrote. “Now I think he knows fear for probably the first time in his life.” Reagan couldn’t take the time Nancy did to visit Davis, but he wished he could. “I want so much to speak to him about faith,” he said. “I believe this is a moment when he should turn to God and I want so much to help him do that.” Yet Reagan never found the time, and Davis died a few months later with Reagan’s words unspoken.

This diffidence on religion was the rule with Reagan rather than the exception. Casual observers and even people close to him might sometimes have wondered whether he had any religion at all. Edwin Meese later asserted, “
He got a lot of sustenance from his faith,” but neither Nancy nor his children thought enough of Reagan’s religious beliefs to remark more than passingly upon them in their memoirs. Ron Reagan recalled that his father subscribed to a sort of modern Manifest Destiny. “ ‘
I can’t help feeling that the Lord put America here between two oceans for a purpose,’ he used to say with a kind of unblinking innocence,” the younger Reagan wrote. And Ron recorded that the family attended Sunday services at the Bel Air Presbyterian Church when he was growing up.
But beyond that, his father kept his religious beliefs largely to himself. “
He was not a real Bible thumper,” Ron said.

As president, Reagan sprinkled his speeches with religious references, making the closing tag “God bless America” mandatory for every president after him. In his diary and private letters he occasionally included a line about religion. Yet his faith was far less conspicuous than Jimmy Carter’s, for example. On Sundays he preferred
Camp David to church. He explained that his attendance disrupted the services, which was true enough. But his faith was internal rather than institutional, and he professed to perceive the divine as much in nature as in any building. “
It bothers me not to be in church on Sunday but don’t see how I can with the security problem,” he wrote on a Camp David Sunday during his first year in office. “I’m a hazard to others. I hope God realizes how much I feel that I am in a temple when I’m out in his beautiful forest and countryside as we were this morning.”

N
OW AND THEN
, however, Reagan spoke openly about religion. He had done so briefly at the Republican convention in 1980, and he did so at greater length in March 1983, when he traveled to Florida to address the annual convention of the
National Association of Evangelicals. Conservative Christians had become a pillar of Republican politics about the time southern Democrats became Sunbelt Republicans; a Republican fund-raiser featuring the president and including many of those in the audience was scheduled for the same hotel right after his address. Consequently, Reagan wasn’t surprised at the warm welcome he received. The ovation that greeted him went on and on; when it finally ended, he thanked the members of the audience not only for their applause on this afternoon but for the more potent support they offered on other occasions. “
Thank you for your prayers,” he said. “Nancy and I have felt their presence many times in many ways. And believe me, for us they’ve made all the difference. The other day in the East Room of the White House at a meeting there, someone asked me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the President. And I had to say, ‘Yes, I am. I’ve felt it. I believe in intercessionary prayer.’ ” He practiced what he believed, he said. “I couldn’t help but say to that questioner after he’d asked the question that if sometimes when he was praying he got a busy signal, it was just me in there ahead of him.” Reagan’s audience laughed appreciatively.

He had another joke. “An evangelical minister and a politician arrived at heaven’s gate one day together. And St. Peter, after doing all the necessary formalities, took them in hand to show them where their quarters would be. And he took them to a small, single room with a bed, a chair, and a table and said this was for the clergyman. And the politician was a little worried about what might be in store for him. And he couldn’t believe it then when St. Peter stopped in front of a beautiful mansion with lovely grounds and many servants and told him that these would be his quarters. And he couldn’t help but ask, ‘But wait, there’s something wrong. How do I get this mansion while that good and holy man only gets a single room?’ And St. Peter said, ‘You have to understand how things are up here. We’ve got thousands and thousands of clergy. You’re the first politician who ever made it.’ ” Reagan’s listeners roared laughter and shouted approval.

Yet Reagan didn’t want the evangelicals to feel they and their religion had no place in politics. On the contrary, he asserted historic roots for the Christian religion in American politics and public life. He quoted
William Penn: “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.” And
Thomas Jefferson: “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” And
George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” And finally
Alexis de Tocqueville, the French conservative who had searched far and wide for the secret of American democracy: “Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius of America. America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.” More applause, serious this time, and many nods of approval.

Reagan thanked his audience for keeping America great by keeping it good. He explained that his administration supported their efforts to preserve the role of religion and faith in American life. It was no easy task. “I don’t have to tell you that this puts us in opposition to, or at least out of step with, a prevailing attitude of many who have turned to a modern-day secularism, discarding the tried and time-tested values upon which our very civilization is based.” Reagan didn’t dispute the worthy intentions of the secularists, but he held that the results of their actions were pernicious. They arrogated to government what rightly belonged to individuals, and they substituted their godless values for the tested truths of religion.

He gave an example. “An organization of citizens, sincerely motivated
and deeply concerned about the increase in illegitimate births and
abortions involving girls well below the age of consent, sometime ago established a nationwide network of clinics to offer help to these girls and, hopefully, alleviate this situation.” Reagan reiterated that he didn’t fault the intentions of those involved. But their efforts undermined morality. “These clinics have decided to provide advice and birth control drugs and devices to underage girls without the knowledge of their parents.” Reagan said he had ordered clinics receiving federal funds to notify the parents. And the secularists had cried foul. “One of the nation’s leading newspapers has created the term ‘squeal rule’ in editorializing against us for doing this, and we’re being criticized for violating the privacy of young people. A judge has recently granted an injunction against an enforcement of our rule.” Reagan wondered aloud what the country was coming to. “I’ve watched TV panel shows discuss this issue, seen columnists pontificating on our error, but no one seems to mention morality as playing a part in the subject of sex. Is all of Judeo-Christian tradition wrong? Are we to believe that something so sacred can be looked upon as a purely physical thing with no potential for emotional and psychological harm? And isn’t it the parents’ right to give counsel and advice to keep their children from making mistakes that may affect their entire lives?” The evangelicals leaped to their feet for another ovation.

Reagan vowed to fight for parents’ rights against the secular onslaught. He would fight on other fronts as well. He had sent Congress a constitutional amendment to put prayer back in the classroom. “There’s growing bipartisan support for the amendment,” he was pleased to report. “And I am calling on the Congress to act speedily to pass it and to let our children pray.” His administration supported legislation guaranteeing student religious groups the same rights to use school facilities after hours as nonreligious groups.

He turned to an issue about which most of his audience cared passionately. “More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of fifty states statutes protecting the rights of unborn children,” he said, referring to the 1973 case of
Roe v. Wade
. “Abortion on demand now takes the lives of up to one and a half million unborn children a year. Human life legislation ending this tragedy will some day pass the Congress, and you and I must never rest until it does. Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected.” Enthusiastic applause.

Reagan knew his audience felt embattled; more than a few
liked
feeling embattled. Yet he reminded them of the signs of progress on matters dear to their hearts. “There’s a great spiritual awakening in America, a renewal of the traditional values that have been the bedrock of America’s goodness and greatness,” he said. He cited survey results showing that Americans were far more religious than people elsewhere. Nineteen of twenty Americans believed in God, and a very large majority took the
Ten Commandments quite seriously. “Another study has found that an overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of adultery, teenage sex, pornography, abortion, and hard drugs. And this same study showed a deep reverence for the importance of family ties and religious belief.” America was far from perfect. “There is sin and evil in the world,” Reagan said. “Our nation, too, has a legacy of evil with which it must deal.” But America had dealt with evil, and it would continue to do so. “The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past. For example, the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights, once a source of disunity and civil war, is now a point of pride for all Americans. We must never go back. There is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in this country.” Reagan enjoined his listeners to speak out against those who would take the country back to those old ways. “I know that you’ve been horrified, as have I, by the resurgence of some hate groups preaching bigotry and prejudice. Use the mighty voice of your pulpits and the powerful standing of your churches to denounce and isolate these hate groups in our midst. The commandment given us is clear and simple: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ ”

A
MERICA REMAINED THE
best hope of mankind, the torchbearer of human freedom, Reagan said. This brought him to his closing point, touching on the nation’s struggle for right in the world. “During my first press conference as president, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists, the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I should point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas—that’s their name for religion—or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to the interests of class war. And everything is moral
that is necessary for the annihilation of the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.”

The communists’ subordination of morality to the needs of the state put them in fundamental conflict with Americans and others who placed morality first. And it complicated negotiations with them. “This doesn’t mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an understanding with them,” Reagan said. “I intend to do everything I can to persuade them of our peaceful intent, to remind them that it was the West that refused to use its nuclear monopoly in the ’40s and ’50s for territorial gain.”

But it did mean that Americans must be clear about the kinds of people and regimes they were dealing with. “Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness—pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.”