God and Ronald Reagan

By Paul Kengor

God and Ronald Reagan - Paul Kengor
  • Release Date: 2009-03-17
  • Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 6 Ratings

Description

Ronald Reagan is hailed today for a presidency that restored optimism to America, engendered years of economic prosperity, and helped bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet until now little attention has been paid to the role Reagan's personal spirituality played in his political career, shaping his ideas, bolstering his resolve, and ultimately compelling him to confront the brutal -- and, not coincidentally, atheistic -- Soviet empire.

In this groundbreaking book, political historian Paul Kengor draws upon Reagan's legacy of speeches and correspondence, and the memories of those who knew him well, to reveal a man whose Christian faith remained deep and consistent throughout his more than six decades in public life. Raised in the Disciples of Christ Church by a devout mother with a passionate missionary streak, Reagan embraced the church after reading a Christian novel at the age of eleven. A devoted Sunday-school teacher, he absorbed the church's model of "practical Christianity" and strived to achieve it in every stage of his life.

But it was in his lifelong battle against communism -- first in Hollywood, then on the political stage -- that Reagan's Christian beliefs had their most profound effect. Appalled by the religious repression and state-mandated atheism of Bolshevik Marxism, Reagan felt called by a sense of personal mission to confront the USSR. Inspired by influences as diverse as C.S. Lewis, Whittaker Chambers, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he waged an openly spiritual campaign against communism, insisting that religious freedom was the bedrock of personal liberty. "The source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual," he said in his Evil Empire address. "And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man."

From a church classroom in 1920s Dixon, Illinois, to his triumphant mission to Moscow in 1988, Ronald Reagan was both political leader and spiritual crusader. God and Ronald Reagan deepens immeasurably our understanding of how these twin missions shaped his presidency -- and changed the world.

Reviews

  • This book is nothing more than fictional garbage.

    1
    By CurtisX
    If you know your history, and economics, then you know that the author's claims that Ronald Reagan not only DID NOT set us up for years of prosperity, the size of Government exploded under him. At the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency, the debt was 250-260B. At the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the debt was 1.4T. And if the author's blatant distortion of economics and history weren't bad enough, he's throwing in RELIGION as well. Only a fool word believe any of the claims this author is making. This book, in and of itself, is proof that we need separation of church and state.