Reagan, the Wall, and the Hand of God

We need more Ronald Reagans in our world:

Perhaps because of my age and past experiences, whenever I hear about the momentous events of 1989 – primarily the fall of the Berlin Wall – I can easily be moved to tears. In part this is because I lived through that period. And more yet, I once lived through the radical 60s in which I and other hippies and Marxists railed against the US and the West, and naively thought that Communism was the only hope for mankind and the wave of the future.

Now that I am on the right side of history – chiefly because of getting right with God, but also because of waking from the opiate of the masses: Marxism – I now celebrate and am thankful for those giants that were raised up by God for such a time as this.

Last century godless communism was devouring the world, and it seemed it could not be stopped. But a handful of heroes believed otherwise. Four in particular can be discussed: Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. I have discussed them often on this site. See here for example: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2022/06/04/god-communism-and-the-1989-revolution/

But in this article I want to look more closely at President Reagan and how his Christian faith really led him to doggedly resist the Soviet menace and to work tirelessly to see it fail. And it sure did – in spectacular style.

Many books have been written about Reagan of course, with some volumes highlighting his faith. The Christian writer Peggy Grande, who served as Reagan’s executive assistant while in office, penned an entire book discussing his character, his optimism, and his faith. Just one quote from her 2017 memoir, The President Will See You Now:

“Ronald Reagan talked about his faith openly and unashamedly, even as president. In fact, it was President Reagan who designated the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer and also declared 1983 to be the Year of the Bible.”

See this very inspiring and moving 30-minute interview with her here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30LdB7pHzVc

One more author deserves recognition. Paul Kengor wrote a number of books on Reagan, including:

God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life (Harper, 2004)

The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (Harper, 2006)

A Pope and a President: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Extraordinary Untold Story of the 20th Century (ISI Books, 2017)

Here I want to specifically look at his 2006 volume. It of course focuses on Reagan’s leading role in bringing down the “Evil Empire”. But it is his faith in God and his sense of a divine call to do this work that is worth bringing to the fore. Let me share some quotes from this important book. In the Preface, Kengor explains the use of the term “crusade” as applied to Reagan:

He saw himself as an instrument of God, doing the Almighty’s will according to what he called “God’s Plan.” Ronald Reagan believed America was chosen by God to confront the Soviet Communist empire and prevail. As the leader of the United States at a special moment in time, he sensed that God had ordained such a role upon, as he put it, his “team.”

 

It was this religious dimension to Reagan’s Cold War assault that enraged the Kremlin. The officially atheistic Soviet government had long pursued, in Mikhail Gorbachev’s words, an open “war on religion.” For Soviet atheists, Reagan’s talk of a crusade was too much to swallow; it became a source of highest condemnation and scorn. (xii)

He had long hoped to see the demise of the Communist system, and when in office he worked overtime to ensure it happened. But well before his two Presidential terms in the 80s, he was championing this cause. From his Hollywood days of the late 30s and onward, he worked against Communist menace.

Kengor says this about a June 1957 speech he gave at his alma mater Eureka College:

Citing a possibly apocryphal story about the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, he quoted an unidentified man in the state house on that day. “Were my soul trembling on the verge of eternity, my hand freezing in death,” said the stranger allegedly, “I would still implore you to remember this truth: God has given America to be free.” Here, said Reagan, “was the first challenge to the people of this new land, the charging of this nation with a responsibility to all mankind. And down through the years with but few lapses the people of America have fulfilled their destiny.” Here again was a common Reagan refrain that God not only chose America to be free, but gave the nation that freedom with a larger responsibility to all mankind.

 

In that speech, he expressed aggressive words, telling his audience: “You are fighting for your lives. And you’re fighting against the best organized and the most capable enemy of freedom and of right and decency that has ever been abroad in the world.” (p. 23)

He was clear about the alternatives facing America. Kengor notes what he wrote in the mid-60s:

Displaying the crisp anti-Communism which would come to define many of his stances toward the USSR, he charged that a “policy of accommodation is appeasement, and appeasement does not give a choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender.”…

 

Reagan rejected any “deal” between the United States and USSR that sold into “permanent slavery” those Eastern European captives behind the Iron Curtain. Such deals were not simply wrong and immoral, but the “greatest possible immorality.” (p. 31)

And this from his 1980 run for office:

Ronald Reagan wanted a confident America, a global leader that would protect and promote freedom; the country was to serve as a Shining City Upon a Hill—a light of liberty that would “shine unto the nations,” acting not just as a model of liberty but a purveyor. To Reagan, spreading freedom entailed rolling back Communist totalitarianism. The Shining City represented not just a lofty ideal; it signaled a future in which America stood proud, a future in which there was not a Soviet superpower.

 

In U.S. history, the Shining City was invoked in 1630 aboard the Arabella by John Winthrop, the leader of the small group of pilgrim settlers approaching the shoreline. While other Americans cited the metaphor in subsequent centuries, few latched on to it like Reagan. Both Reagan and Winthrop felt that this role for America was divinely ordained: God had chosen their land as an example, to be set upon a hill, aglow, admired by all who covet freedom. An important corollary to Reagan’s invocation is that he believed that a leader who recognized this special call needed to encourage fellow Americans to respond to this challenge to lead the free world. (p. 59)

The attempted assassination only motivated Reagan further:

After the failed attempt on his life in March 1981, Reagan felt a sense of calling stronger than ever: Believing that God was moving him to something greater, he was certain his life was spared for a special purpose related to the Cold War struggle—to the epic battle against atheistic Communism. The assassination attempt failed to derail his resolve, and a few weeks later, back in the saddle at the White House, on Good Friday, he reflected on the “divine plan” he sensed internally. Mike Deaver summoned New York’s Terence Cardinal Cooke, who flew to Washington to counsel the president. “The hand of God was upon you,” Cooke told Reagan. “I know,” a serious Reagan replied, before confiding: “I have decided that whatever time I have left is for Him.” (p. 76)

The book covers so much more, leading up of course to the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. Near the book’s end Kengor says this:

“Wars end in victory or defeat,” Ronald Reagan once said in 1961. The Cold War ended in victory—or, to paraphrase Reagan from January 1977, “We won, they lost.” It was a victory for which the world was thankful, especially given the tranquil way in which it ended—without the nuclear Armageddon that everyone so deeply feared and many expected. Within a decade of Reagan coming to power, the Cold War was over and the USSR ceased to exist, and both world-shaking developments occurred without a missile launched. (p. 310)

In the Epilogue he writes:

What he pursued was truly revolutionary. He was not content to contain Soviet Communism. He wanted to kill it. He not only said so but committed himself and his administration to that very deliberate goal—a goal that stemmed from Reagan himself, not his advisers, long before 1981. (p. 313)

And lastly, this:

On September 12, 1990, Reagan returned to the Berlin Wall as a private citizen. Just three years earlier he had called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the structure, and was now armed only with a hammer to chisel off a chunk of the edifice as a memento of the Cold War that he had brought to a close. The ex-president that day kicked off a ten-day, four-country European trip, fittingly starting at the neutered wall. “It feels great,” said the seventynine-year-old as he stepped carefully around the mangled steel rods that now protruded from the harmless, beat up barrier. “I don’t think you can overstate the importance of it. I was trying to do everything I could for such things as this….It happened earlier than I thought it would, but I’m an optimist.”

 

Only twenty months earlier, on Reagan’s last day in the Oval Office, East German dictator Erich Honecker had defiantly proclaimed that the Berlin Wall would be standing 100 years henceforth, proudly “protecting our republic from robbers.” But on that September 1990 day, Reagan was the robber, as he chopped hard at the divide with a blue-headed hammer, taking a piece home with him.

 

Today, the largest chunk of the wall outside of Germany sits in Simi Valley, California, directly beyond the window at the welcome desk of the Reagan Library and Museum, a gift donated by the citizens of unified, free Berlin, again the capital of a united Germany. Inside that library sits a video cassette tucked in a box: it features footage of that May 1967 Reagan-Bobby Kennedy debate, when Ronald Reagan first publicly called for the dismantling of the Berlin Wall.

 

Alas, in a poignant moment later; indeed an instance of weakness born of a rapacious mental disease, in the summer of 1997 Ronald Reagan, by then fully in the throes of Alzheimer’s, offered a private acknowledgment, a rare admission. It came at a time when Nancy was readying to close her husband off from the world, and when he would spend his final few years in a bewildered state. Apparently, some memories were momentarily retrievable; all was not lost—not yet:

 

That summer, Reagan strolled through Armand Hammer Park near his Bel Air home when he was approached by a tourist named Yakob Ravin and his twelve-year-old grandson, both Jewish Ukrainian émigrés living near Toledo, Ohio. They cheered Reagan as he got near and briefly spoke to the former president, who posed for a picture with the boy, which his grandfather proudly snapped. “Mr. President,” said Ravin, “thank you for everything you did for the Jewish people, for Soviet people, to destroy the Communist empire.” The slightly confused eighty-six-year-old Reagan paused and responded: “Yes, that is my job.” (pp. 313-314)

Reagan was a great man with a great faith on a great mission. We all owe him our heartfelt thanks. And we can use some more leaders like him today around the world – men and women filled with hope and optimism. We need those who are fanatics for faith and freedom, and have the courage and the resolve to prayerfully and actively work towards those ends.

Final note: The 2024 film Reagan starring Dennis Quaid is based on this Kengor book. While the usual suspects disliked the film, it provides great insights into the man and his mission. It showed us so clearly Reagan’s patriotism, his love of freedom, his optimism, and his faith.

[2017 words]