c. 2003 Religion and Ethics Newsweekly
WASHINGTON _ William Martin, professor of religion and public policy at Rice University, and the author of “With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America,” talked with Religion and Ethics Newsweekly about Ronald Reagan, religion and politics:
Q. What is the significance of Ronald Reagan for the Christian right today?
Martin: They still look to Reagan as the paragon, the hero. I’m fairly certain that Reagan would have won without the Christian right’s votes _ certainly the first time, and surely the second time, because he won so much bigger. But they did vote for him; they did come out in force for him, and because he won, in their own minds they took a lot of credit for it. It did help make them feel that they were a political force.
I’m virtually certain that the numbers of people Jerry Falwell claimed to have recruited _ the new votes _ that Reagan could have won without any of them. That doesn’t mean that he could have won without other evangelicals, so it’s a little bit dicey. But certainly Reagan’s ability to say things _ he was an eloquent man, no question, and he was able to connect with audiences in a way that few people are or have been able. Even though he had, obviously, either to be coached or had to reach back to get the evangelical language, he was able to “hit” it in ways that were very convincing, perhaps even seductive.
Q: Was the Reagan era a seduction of the religious right?
Martin: That was a significant aspect. It was a big one. I don’t know if that was all it was.
Q: And the seduction hasn’t ended?
Martin: No, indeed. Reagan said things (to evangelicals) like, “You can’t endorse me, but I can endorse you,” and “All of the answers are in this old book (the Bible).” George Bush has tried the same kind of thing with considerable success: when he said Jesus was his favorite philosopher or when he spoke of “wonder-working power” _ using those code words. Of course, Reagan’s appointment of Dr. C. Everett Koop (as Surgeon General in 1981) _ in a way it was in response to evangelicals that for six years Koop was not allowed to talk about AIDS. The grand irony there is that when he finally talked about it in public, one of his big moments was on a Billy Graham crusade, which is just astonishing _ that Graham allowed him to say, “I believe sex ought to be within marriage, but if it’s not going to be, please use a condom.” That is remarkable.
Q: What about the relationship between Billy Graham and Ronald Reagan?
Martin: Billy told me that he was in the White House more with Reagan than virtually anybody else, except possibly Johnson. He visited the Reagan White House a great deal and said that they never talked politics. He said Reagan really wasn’t too interested in politics; he wanted to talk about the old days in Hollywood.
Billy talked to me two or three years after Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer’s. About 1995-96, some time in there, Billy called me and said he had visited with Reagan and noted that he was having difficulty with his faculties and remembering things, but he said Reagan was very interested in talking about the Second Coming. He had talked about that in the ’50s, and of course it’s well known that he mentioned Armageddon several times during his presidency, and apparently that remained something that was really on his mind until the end of his consciousness.
I think Graham thought it was an indication of Reagan’s deep concern with spiritual matters. It was characteristic of Graham to ascribe an interest in spiritual matters to people who didn’t ordinarily show them. I’m willing to acknowledge that that probably was a real, sincere interest of Reagan’s, for whatever reasons. It’s quite likely Reagan was not a theologically complicated man. He didn’t give himself a chance to be exposed to much theology in church _ he didn’t go. His theology, I imagine, was really quite like the basic evangelical message: that we are sinners; God sent his son to redeem us; and if we accept the grace available in his son, through his son’s blood, then we shall be saved.
Q: Still, senior staffers close to Reagan tried to keep the religious right at arm’s length, and you’ve written that Christian conservatives really got little hearing during Reagan’s first term.
Martin: In 1984, Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell were both grading Reagan. Weyrich gave him a B- and Falwell gave him an A+. Weyrich was enough of a savvy politico to understand that Reagan hadn’t really done much on either the movement conservatives’ or the religious conservatives’ agenda. Falwell thought Reagan was a great friend, and he accepted Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s nomination to the Supreme Court even though she had a pro-choice record.
Karl Rove and the people who work for George W. Bush _ they are much more attentive to the religious right, and Bush now, of course, could not win without them. The Republican Party would lose more than a third of its membership without the conservative Christians.
Q: Do the Democrats have any chance at all with conservative Christians?
Martin: One serious mistake the Democrats have made is not saying, “There are moral issues on which people differ, and we are a party in which we can discuss these things openly, and we can acknowledge people who disagree with us on such subjects, for example, as abortion.” They refuse to let anybody be heard who doesn’t take the complete pro-choice line.
I have eight granddaughters. Can you imagine I’m not concerned about what they are exposed to in the media? Democrats have been essentially silent on this, saying, “We are the great friends of free speech and free expression.” They just abandoned that particular field. John Edwards talked about two Americas, but the Democrats have really not hammered home in a plausible way, or they’ve certainly not been able to make their message catch, it seems to me, about the inequities of the Bush tax plan. It’s a marvel of political machinations that the Republicans have been able to convince people to join a party that operates largely against their interests.
Paul Weyrich talks about telling the movement conservatives, “Look, I know you don’t have any interest in abortion, but you’ve got to stand up on these things because you can’t win without the votes of these other people,” and telling religious conservatives, “I know that taxes are not your main interest, but you’ve got to get an interest in them.” Ralph Reed acknowledged that when he’d talked to his groups about taxes they just rolled their eyes because they weren’t all that interested in them, but they each found out that they’ve got to join hands with each other in order to win. If you espouse a line long enough, you come to believe it.
Another thing that liberals in general have done _ they have waited and felt that “the arguments are so clearly on our side, and people are not going to take these other folks seriously.” In the meantime the conservative movement has organized itself into a very formidable machine. Democrats have just said, “People will recognize their own interests when it comes to that, and they’ll vote,” but they haven’t.
Q: You’ve written about Reagan and the religious right that they needed him more than he needed them. Has that been turned around now with George W. Bush?
Martin: For Bush I think it’s true that he needs them more than they need him.
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Q: You make the point that Reagan knew the religious right’s code words and phrases, yet as late as 1976 you say he didn’t understand what it meant when someone asked him whether he was born again. How did he learn to talk the talk of the religious right?
Martin: In this sense I think his skills as an actor and communicator served him well. That does not mean that it’s insincere. A good teacher, a good trial lawyer, a good preacher, a good politician not only understands but enjoys _ when I’m teaching I know when I’m on. I know when I’m making a point well, and I know to say something to (one audience) that would be different to another. It doesn’t mean I’m being insincere; it does mean that I know which dials to turn. The language itself is not that hard to learn. Reagan grew up in the Midwestern Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), was baptized in it, so at least in early teen years he was exposed to the language. It happens that the Disciples of Christ don’t use the born-again term as much. Reagan may well not have really been up on what that meant.
Q: Reagan had a famously bright, optimistic, “morning in America” and “shining city on a hill” view of the world, but conservative Christians usually have a much darker world view. Yet they resonated to his sunny perspective. Was it an odd marriage?
Martin: The pre-millennial view or just the conservative Christian view is that things are getting worse and going to hell in a hand basket. On the other hand, further on out we can be glad, because we are going to win. But I think there is something more basic than that at work with them. Most people would prefer to be happy than to be grim. You could say theirs is a kind a joy akin to knowing the world is lost, but here we are at a Billy Graham revival and 12, 000 people have just been saved.
There was still a glorification or a nostalgic halo around the 1950s or so, when it looked like Jesus was making a comeback; the churches were booming; there was a real revival here _ church-building, Bible sales, attendance. All those things were happening. And Reagan was saying, “Let’s bring back those days,” essentially.
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Q: When all is said and done, what was Reagan’s importance for conservative religion in America?
Martin: Reagan played a significant role in bringing conservative Christians into the political realm. Ironically, his not giving them what they wanted _ when the presidency turned out not to be the prize that would deliver subsequent prizes, subsidiary prizes, they (with Pat Robertson playing a key role) decided, learned that they had not just to show up to vote; they had to become real, politically savvy activists. The Christian Coalition was much more important than the Moral Majority. The Moral Majority was largely an organization of ministers who said, “You should vote, and you should vote for the Republican Party.” The Christian Coalition said, “You should vote. You should talk to your neighbors about voting. You should go to precinct meetings. We want to get 10 members in every one of 175,000 precincts. We want to take over one of the major parties.” Interestingly, they could have done the same thing to the Democratic Party, but it was an easier task with the Republicans. Now, of course, people ask me, “Whatever became of the religious right? Are they still important?” Yes, they are now called Republicans. There are a lot of Republicans in the party who are really unhappy with that. When I go out and give talks, inevitably someone says, “I remember being at our regional meeting, and these three busloads of people we’d never seen before got off, and before the night was over we’d lost our convention.”
Q: And we owe this all to Ronald Reagan?
Martin: We don’t owe it all to him, but he was a significant figure in catalyzing that movement and inspiring it and giving it political blessing. He made it kosher for Christians to get involved in politics, because they thought, “This is a man we can get behind.” Jimmy Carter might have played that role, but he turned out to be a Democrat. Evangelicals still idolize Reagan and talk about him as one of the great presidents of all time. There are people like (former representative) Bob Barr who wanted to name everything in the country for him. That keeps up the heroic view of Reagan.
DEA END DANIEL
