Symbol of emerging Christian right, Reagan mourned in U.S.

by Chris Herlinger
Ecumenical News International

Editor’s note: Ronald W. Reagan attended Presbyterian churches most of his life. He and his wife, Nancy, joined Bel Air Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, where they had attended for more than 25 years, in 1989, shortly after he concluded his presidency. The Rev. Michael Wenning, who is providing much of the pastoral care to the Reagan family this week, served for many years on the staff of Bel Air church. He is now retired. —Jerry L. Van Marter

NEW YORK — Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, is being mourned as a symbol of an ascendant America, that was witnessing an increasingly vociferous U.S. Christian right. 

      Reagan, the former Hollywood actor and California governor, who died on June 5 June at the age of 93 at his home in Los Angeles, aligned himself publicly with Christian conservatives at a time when they became a potent political force in the 1980s. 

      If Reagan did not always come through politically for the Christian right, he remained to them a hero who, as one said, affirmed the widely held American belief that the United States is “one nation under God.” 

      “Ronald Reagan, more than any other 20th century president since Theodore Roosevelt, spoke of the importance of publicly acknowledging America’s dependence on the Almighty,” said Rob Schenck, the president of the National Clergy Council, a politically conservative group. 

      But Reagan could not have remained such a popular political figure merely because of any alignment with conservative Christians — he tapped into a vein that many call America’s civil religion. 

      In its obituary, the Los Angeles Times newspaper noted what the eminent U.S. cultural historian Garry Wills said in his landmark study of Reagan and America, Reagan’s America: Innocents at Home.  

   The Times wrote Americans believed “that both he (Reagan) and they were hopeful and independent, strong and God-fearing, as well as destined to be extraordinary. They shaped their faith in him and in themselves to accommodate any uncomfortable realities, Wills said, and they ignored his inconsistencies.” 

      Among those pointing out such inconsistencies were those on the religious left, who criticized Reagan for his economic policies, his lack of action on the AIDS crisis and for a foreign policy they said needlessly and deleteriously involved several Central American nations in proxy wars at the end of the Cold War. 

      The Rev. Robert Edgar, the general secretary of the National Council of Churches (NCC) and a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania, told Religion News Service that while Reagan was always personally appealing — embued with a sense of hope and the gift of humor — “he had no sense there were poor people, or cared about the poorest of the poor.” 

      As Reagan was being laid to rest, such criticisms were likely to recede into the background. 

      “Mr. Reagan had a religious faith deeper than most people knew,” said Billy Graham, the eminent U.S. evangelist. “The president was a man of tremendous integrity, based on his religious belief.”