By Richard N. Ostling
The Associated Press

REVIEW

God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life By Paul Kengor Regan Books; $26.95 403 pages

The Gallup Poll reports that 64 percent of registered voters say their religious beliefs will be important in picking a president this year.

Thus, it was probably inevitable that we'd get a book titled God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life.

Author Paul Kengor, a political scientist at Grove City (Pa.) College, adores Reagan and portrays him as a committed Christian, though the book doesn't remove all ambiguities.

"While he was president, Ronald Reagan's religious faith was, at best, dismissed or ridiculed," Kengor summarizes. "For me personally it has been a moving experience to discover, and help bring to light, this overlooked side of the historical Reagan - a side he would have wanted to be recognized."

Taking on the 'evil empire'

Kengor's major theme is the religious roots of Reagan's anti-communism, underscored by the president's famous speech to the 1983 National Association of Evangelicals convention.

There, Reagan said Soviet leaders were "the focus of evil in the modern world." He warned against the "temptation" to "ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire" and to promote peace without considering moral matters of right and wrong.

Some treated Reagan's outlook as "primitive" and "outrageous" (a New York Times columnist) and "the worst presidential speech in American history" (historian Henry Steele Commager).

But Kengor says today's Russians

agree with Reagan. He's convinced Reagan's military buildup, intended to force nuclear disarmament, helped topple Europe's communist empire.

Thankful to God after shooting

Religious references were a continual thread in Reagan's words, in public and in private. Among Kengor's sources are close aides, including Richard Allen, Ed Meese and William Clark, the latter described as "his closest prayer partner." (Reagan, afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, could not be interviewed.)

The night Reagan returned to the White House after nearly being shot to death, he confided in his diary, "Whatever happens now I owe my life to God and will serve him every way I can." Biographer Edmund Morris says Reagan told New York's Cardinal Terence Cooke, "I have decided that whatever time I have left is for him (God)."

But more specifically, and in the deeds and thoughts beyond anti-communism, what was the substance of Reagan's religion?

On that, Kengor is most informative regarding Reagan's upbringing in the Disciples of Christ church in Dixon, Ill. In this and much else, his devoutly Protestant mother, Nelle, was far more influential than father Jack, a Roman Catholic with a drinking problem.

Baptized at age 11, Reagan was an active church lad in his teens, teaching Sunday school and dating the preacher's daughter. The pattern of devotion seemingly continued at Eureka College, a Disciples of Christ school, and at Beverly Christian Church during Reagan's early years in Hollywood.

But the book leaves much of Reagan's religious career enshrouded in fog. He clearly had a sincere, sturdy and nondenominational faith in Jesus. But it's not evident what that meant in particular and we learn little about Reagan's Christian involvements as a mature adult.

Kengor argues convincingly that second wife Nancy's interest in astrology didn't influence Reagan's religion or politics, and that Reagan shied away from churchgoing while president due to the assassination attempt.

After the White House years, Reagan "resumed regular attendance" at church, we're told on Meese's say-so. But there are no specifics.

If for no other reason, Reagan will always be a religiously fascinating figure because in 1980 he snatched scads of churchgoers' votes from Baptist Jimmy Carter to unseat one of the most devotedly Christian presidents of the past century.