Ronald Reagan died at his California home June 5 at 93 after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease, but his influence on Christian politics in this country will be felt for years to come.
The 40th president and former actor, famed for his optimism and his ability to communicate it to the American public, was also famous for introducing many conservative Christians to real political influence.
Reagan was present — and uttered one of his most famous lines — at the meeting that many credit as the birth of the “religious right,” which molded evangelical Protestant conservatism into a cohesive political movement.
At the Religious Roundtable’s National Affairs Briefing in 1980, after being introduced by a Southern Baptist evangelist as “God’s man,” Reagan — then a presidential candidate — told the gathering of conservative Christian luminaries, “I know you can’t endorse me, but I endorse you.” That quip launched a relationship with conservative Christians that would reshape America’s political landscape.
“He presented a conservative political philosophy that changed a generation — and made a great impact on my life,” Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said in Baptist Press. “He transformed the presidency by demonstrating that conviction, rather than political calculation, would drive his policies and decisions.”
Standing by religious conviction
Reagan is credited with bringing the religious right fully into the Republican fold. The group now is generally considered by political experts to be the GOP’s most dominant faction.
“I will remember Mr. Reagan primarily for his relationship with the evangelical Christian community in our nation,” Moral Majority founder Jerry Falwell recalled in 2002, in a column on the Web site WorldNetDaily.com.
Calling Reagan his “political hero,” Falwell, a Southern Baptist, said of the president’s 1980 election: “We had long been shut out of the White House when Mr. Reagan took office. But he realized that this community was largely responsible for his election and held the key to stalling our nation’s moral collapse.”
Falwell noted that Reagan introduced ideas to the Republican platform that were important to him and other conservative evangelicals — such as opposition to abortion and homosexuality, and unwavering support for Israel.
Reagan focused much of his presidential energy on fighting communism, strengthening national defense and promoting conservative economic policies. Despite promising to overturn the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion and to pass a constitutional amendment allowing government-sanctioned prayer in public schools, Reagan ended up devoting little political capital to those causes. But he was revered nonetheless by conservative Christians.
Adrian Rogers, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, recounted several meetings with Reagan — both during Reagan’s 1980 campaign and later in the White House. Recalling one Oval Office meeting, Rogers, pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova, Tenn., said: “I told him, ‘Mr. President, Southern Baptists love you and will stand behind you if you will stand for the things that mean so much to them. Stand for the home, for the family, for purity. Those are the things that mean so much to them, and I would hope that you would stand for them.’ And he said he would.”
Rogers described Reagan as “a man of principle” unswayed by “political correctness” or polls. “In that sense, I think he was comparable to our current president,” Rogers told Baptist Press. “I think the same mosquito may have bit them both.”
Some progressive Christian leaders criticized Reagan, however, for what they said was his warmongering and neglect of the poor. Others complained he failed to address the AIDS crisis as it was killing thousands of gay men and intravenous drug users during the 1980s. Reagan did not publicly acknowledge the disease’s existence until 1987.
Changing face of judiciary
Although his legislative legacy on social issues was limited, Reagan did have a strong hand in changing the face of the federal judiciary and church-state law. In his eight years in office, Reagan appointed many conservatives to the federal bench — including three of the Supreme Court’s current members. He also promoted William Rehnquist, a staunch conservative, to the chief justice’s position.
Those changes led to judicial rulings that lowered the traditional “high wall of separation” between church and state, which the courts cultivated for at least two decades.
Bob Reccord, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board, said Reagan “courageously corrected those who for so long have misrepresented the principle of separation of church and state.”
Reccord quoted a 1982 Reagan speech in which the former president said the First Amendment “was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.
“That kind of clarity … made me thankful Ronald Reagan was my president, but more importantly, a fellow Christ-follower,” Reccord told Baptist Press. (ABP)
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