God And Ronald Reagan A Spiritual Life Sparknotes

In the book God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life, author Paul Kengor talks about Ronald Reagan's legacy of speeches and the memories of those who knew him well. Kengor revealed Reagan as a man whose Christian faith remained profound and consistent throughout more than six decades in his public life. Reagan was raised in the Disciples of Christ Church by a faithful mother with a passionate missionary streak. He grasped the church after reading a Christian novel when he was eleven years old. Reagan was a Sunday school teacher who absorbed the church's representative of "practical Christianity" and strived to achieve it in every stage of his life.
Americans have always been uncertain about mixing politics and religion. We seem to want our

We view their spiritual lives by questioning either their truthfulness or their freedom. This was especially true for Ronald Reagan. “While he was president, Reagan’s religious faith was, at best, dismissed or ridiculed.” Paul Kengor states. The criticisms were wrong; Reagan’s belief in God “was a key source of his optimism and boldness, his daring and self-security, and his confidence; these essential intangibles carried him throughout his presidency — and career as a whole — and enabled him to achieve what he did.” (p.175) Kengor’s reasoning of Reagan’s upbringing is particularly useful in understanding his spiritual life. Reagan’s father, an uninterested Catholic, left his sons’ religious education to their mother, Nelle, the most active member of the local Disciples of Christ evangelical church. The energetic Nelle gave religious readings, appeared in dramas, taught Sunday school, led discussions and prayer meetings, and aided the ill and the exhausted. Neighbors considered her prayers to be so powerful that many believed she had the gift of healing. Powered by her son, Ron became similarly active in the church and in prayer. Many congregation members were convinced he was

Astounded by the religious restraint 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, he conducted an openly spiritual campaign against communism, insisting that religious freedom was the base of personal freedom. "The source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but spiritual," he said in his Evil Empire address. (p.240) "And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over those who would enslave their fellow man."