Reagan's Penchant for Prayer

For Reagan, spiritual faith was not something to hang in the closet upon taking political office. As governor he had often relied on prayer for guidance, and after entering the White House he felt he needed prayer as much as ever. And politics, he held, needed faith. He frequently invoked George Washington's aphorism that religion and morality were "indispensable supports" to political prosperity.

He also felt that America and Americans needed the Bible. The Bible, argued Reagan, held all the answers. "I'm accused of being simplistic at times," he said more than once. "But within that single Book are all the answers to all the problems that face us." As Ben Elliott remembers, it was a line that many found over-the-top, some White House staff among them. Nonetheless, Reagan believed it devoutly. When the president shared the thought before the National Religious Broadcasters convention, Elliott recalled, it "brought the house down." The audience responded with a standing ovation, and Reagan was delighted.

He saw God as the preeminent source of wisdom and moral guidance, the fount "from whom all knowledge springs." "When we open ourselves to Him," the president told a group of students in December 1983, "we gain not only moral courage but also intellectual strength." It was a line he had used for years.

And his faith in spiritual guidance had a geopolitical dimension. Reagan was earnestly afraid of what might happen to free, democratic societies if they scrapped religious faith. "At its full flowering, freedom is the first principle of society; this society, Western society," he told a crowd at Georgetown University on its bicentennial. "And yet freedom cannot exist alone. And that's why the theme for your bicentennial is so very apt: learning, faith, and freedom. Each reinforces the others, each makes the others possible. For what are they without each other?"

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