The Movie "Reagan": A Personal Reflection and Analysis

By Douglas Groothuis

The film Reagan, while largely panned by critics (as I expected, given its conservative message), is well acted, dramatically compelling, and historically accurate. But it is also a sign of contradiction to our zeitgeist and political landscape. By recounting the life of Ronald Wilson Reagan (1911-2004), the 40^th President of the United States, this film represents a worldview, a political philosophy, and a mode of statesmanship that has largely left the American scene, and we are far worse for its absence. Before I explain, please indulge me a few biographical reflections which help explain why the film brought me to tears several times and, more importantly, why the film should inspire us to better things for our nation and for our God. (I proudly wore my blue and white “Reagan for President” button to the film, but I’m not sure anyone besides my wife noticed.)

My Political Development

In November of 1980, I was a young man of twenty-three, who was conflicted politically. Would I vote for Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan? I was raised in a traditionally Democrat household in the 1950s and 1960s. My father, Harold Groothuis (1927-1968), was a labor leader and active in the Alaska Democratic Party. Just before the 1968 Presidential election, he gave two live televised speeches supporting Hubert H. Humphrey over Richard M. Nixon. I watched both of them as an eleven-year-old. Dad was right, I thought. He was terribly disappointed when Nixon won the election, and a few weeks later Dad was killed in a small plane crash at Point Barrow while serving on the Governors’ commission of labor. I was just a kid, but I knew the Democrats were right. (My father would not recognize the Democratic Party of today, nor would Hubert Humphrey or John F. Kennedy.)

After I became a Christian in 1976, I was mostly apolitical for a few years before becoming enamored of the Christian socialism (or at least leftism) advocated by Jim Wallis of Sojourner’s Magazine[1] and by Ronald Sider’s book Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.[2] As a teenager, I was a hippie who was against the Vietnam War, and who supported George McGovern for President (who lost to Nixon in a landslide in 1972), and was taken with Marxism for a short time as a freshman in college.

But by the fall of 1980, I was beginning to rethink my political views through reading conservative writers such as William F. Buckley, Up from Liberalism, Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (ghost written by L. Brent Bozell), and R. J. Rushdoony, The Politics of Guilt and Pity. The latter gave a solidly biblical account of politics from a Calvinist worldview. But I still couldn’t pull the lever for Ronald Reagan in 1980, because I worried that his strong anti-communist stance toward Russia might plunge us into war. Yet after Reagan won, I felt happy and relieved. It was a turning point for me, but, more importantly, for America. This film explains why. The main reason I did not vote for Ronald Reagan was part of his brilliance and destiny as a statesman. He was determined to stand up to the communists who had hijacked Russia in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and to no longer appease them or take the pallid posture of détente, which was no better than a nervous political and military stalemate. 

Reagan: Christian and Anti-Communist

The film version of Reagan’s life is framed by his anti-communism and dedication to the ideals of American political and religious freedom and opportunity and is based on Paul Kengor’s book The Crusader.[3] John Voight plays an aged, retired KGB agent (the Communist’s ruthless internal agents of political enforcement) who explains to a younger man what brought down the USSR. It was Ronald Reagan, whom the USSR had been watching and fearing for decades. The trope works marvelously to set the stage for understanding Reagan’s worldview, his ambitions, and his world-historical significance, even if we know of no such KGB agent. The officer narrates the life of Reagan, which introduces crucial episodes in this life from boyhood on.  

Journeyman actor Dennis Quaid plays the adult Reagan (there are scenes of the younger Reagan played by others), and he does so convincingly, which is not easy. Reagan’s personality was a winning and rarely witnessed confluence of eloquence, affability, humility, courage, and fearsome commitment to principle. Quaid mastered these qualities, including a close approximation of Reagan’s voice and demeanor. Nancy Reagan is played capably by Penelope Ann Miller as his loyal, encouraging, and discerning wife.[4]

Young Ronald was raised by an alcoholic father and a devout mother, Nellie, who tells him that he was made for great things. He attends church and is baptized, works as a lifeguard as a teenager (supposedly saving seventy-seven people), attends college and pursues acting. He gains more influence as the president of the Screen Actor’s Guild, where he is opposed by overt communists who want to infiltrate films and even overthrow America. However, his first wife, Jane Wyman, excels in Hollywood more than Reagan and eventually resents his political ambitions.  For a time, Reagan languished, making unremarkable films and taking other acting jobs and doing commercials. After he and Wyman divorce, he meets Nancy, who becomes the love of his life and his muse. He becomes more politically active, giving speeches and eventually winning the governor’s race in California. By this time, he had left the Democratic Party, or as he put it, “I didn’t leave them. They left me.”

Instead of reviewing the details of Reagan’s life as depicted and assessing the film for accuracy, I will rather address two key themes of the film that ring true to the life of Ronald Reagan.[5] The first is his Christian faith and the second is his Americanism and anti-communism.

Although politicians routinely pander to religious people for votes, Reagan seems to have been a genuine believer, as the film portrays. His speeches to religious groups bear this out as do his more general religious comments to the nation as a whole. His opposition to communism was rooted in his religious faith, since he knew that communism was atheistic and repressive of religion. He affirmed religious liberty as well as the historical American affirmation of ordered liberty under law. Just as he stood up to communist infiltration in Hollywood, he would stand up to communism on the global stage. Two speeches highlight his commitment, which had more weight than just words, however. One comes from his speech in March of 1983 to the National Association of Evangelicals, part of which is spoken in the film. This quote encapsulates Reagan’s religious opposition to communism.

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness–pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the State, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth, they are the focus of evil in the modern world.[6]

This comment, “they are the focus of evil in the modern world,” earned these remarks the title “the evil empire speech.” Because he was a Christian and because he understood the worldview of communism (atheistic Marxism), and because he knew the history of the Soviet’s ruthless expansionism and repression of the Russian people, sending dissenters to prison camps or even exterminating millions of them, Reagan could name this beast for what it was. By knowing it as such, he enacted policies that helped bring it down, along with the stalwart support of Margaret Thatcher, Pope John II, political dissidents in Eastern Europe, and the courageous literary work of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Reagan’s vision was “peace through strength” or, more simply, “We win. They lose.”

President Reagan also traveled to Germany to deliver a speech at the wall that divided East Germany from West Germany, the Berlin Wall. In case you are weak on history (as so many younger people are), the wall was constructed to keep citizens imprisoned in communist East Germany. On June 12, 1987, Reagan addressed his comments to the head of the USSR. At the end of his speech, he said:

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Two years later, as a result of Gorbachev’s liberalized policies, the Berlin Wall was toppled by German citizens as the world watched. I remember watching it on television in amazement.[7] Two years later, the USSR was no more, and the prayers of millions, myself included, were answered. The godless vision of Karl Marx and his atheistic accolades lay in ruins, having failed the test of history in the most egregious manner imaginable. The inhumanity of Soviet Marxism to its own citizens was titanic. Joseph Stalin starved about four million Ukrainian peasants when these farmers refused to give up their small parcels of land to the collective. This called forth Stalin’s “planned famine” from 1932–33. R. J. Rummel called the killing of citizens by their own governments democide, which “means for governments what murder means for an individual under municipal law. It is the premeditated killing of a person in cold blood or causing the death of a person through reckless and wanton disregard for their life.”[8] Communism brought murder, misery, and oppression wherever it went, and eventually it was crushed by a combination of its own weight of inhumanity and the opposition of freedom-loving opponents such as Ronald Reagan.[9]

Other Achievements

While the defeat of communism was Reagan’s greatest achievement, his success also included lifting America out of a sustained economic recession through reducing taxation and limiting the power of civil government over private enterprise (regulations). In the film, Reagan briefly explains how lower tax rates will generate more overall tax revenue. At this point I applauded, and several in the theater joined me.[10]

Although the film does not mention it, by the time he was President, Reagan was strongly pro-life and articulated a principled sanctity of life ethic over the utilitarian quality of life ethic. He authored a cogent essay in 1983 as a sitting President titled “Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation,” which was later made into a book.[11]

Tears, Politics, and God

At the beginning of this review, I mentioned that Reagan made me weep repeatedly. This review may have explained why, given the ideas and actions of a truly grand and honorable man, Ronald Reagan. I came of age as a Christian thinker—on many issues, but not least politics—during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. At the beginning of his first term, I had begun to warm to conservativism and was discovering how this vision fit my developing Christian worldview.[12] Since I was born in 1957, I had lived through the Cold War and feared nuclear war. As a child, I had ducked under my school desk during air raid drills and it was not absurd for people to discuss purchasing bomb shelters. After becoming a Christian, I prayed for those persecuted for their Christian faith in the USSR and prayed for its downfall. I remembered all of the major events of Reagan’s presidency depicted in the film, since I lived through them, including the assassination attempt in 1981. (As a testimony to his good humor and courage, Reagan said to the doctors about to operate on him after the shooting, “I hope you are all Republicans.”) Yes, this man was a hero to me and to many. But ours is largely a world without heroes.[13] Instead, on the political scene we find giddy celebrities, shameless power brokers, and bellicose ideologues.

And we need heroes in a day when LGBTQ ideology is ascendent, when pornography is a settled part of American life, when abortion until birth is part of the Democratic Party’s platform and the Republican platform has gone soft on the issue, when America is flooded with millions of immigrants whose first act in America was to break its laws of trespass and who overwhelm our cities with their needs and who bring in deadly drugs and human trafficking, and when inflation is hurting most Americans, especially the poor.

I also wept because I lament that the American political scene has declined radically in moral seriousness and civility since the time Reagan held office, especially since 2016. The film notes the collegiality shared by Reagan and his Democrat rival, Tip O’Neill. In one scene, probably fanciful, they recited Psalm 23 together when Reagan was recovering from his gunshot wound. Still, the point is sound. At that time, political rivals could remain civil and even be friendly. Those days are long gone, with politicians on all sides trash talking against each other. The congeniality shown between Reagan and Walter Mondale in their 1984 presidential debate seems to emanate from another world.

If My People…

No President or politician will save America from its decline into barbarism, criminality, addiction, perversity, and economic ruin. If we are to be renewed, this must come from the bottom up through religious revival and from the top down through political reform and virtuous leadership. Perhaps this film about Ronald Wilson Reagan, our fortieth President, can point us in the right direction, so that we move from lament over what we have lost to hope in what is possible through the power of our living Lord. The film notes that when Ronald Reagan was first sworn in as President on January 21, 1981, he had his mother’s Bible open to 2 Chronicles 7:14, as he did for this second term in 1985. Although it was meant for ancient Israel, I see no reason to deny its power for our dark day. Whatever the result for America, let us follow the admonition of this verse.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Notes

[1] At the time I read Sojourners in the late 1970s and early 1980s it was politically far left—supporting unilateral nuclear disarmament and redistributionist economic policies; however, it did not affirm the homosexual rights movement, which later morphed into the LGBTQ ideology. It was then orthodox theologically. Sadly, it is now both leftist and theologically liberal, supporting LBGTQ ideology. A section of their web page is called: LGBTQ, https://sojo.net/tags/lgbtq.

[2] David Chilton wrote an acerbic and devastating refutation of this book called Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators, 3^rd ed. (Tyler, TX: Institute for Biblical Economics, 1985).

[3] Paul Kengor, The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism (New York: HarperPerennial, 2007).

[4] After Reagan left office, it was revealed that Nancy Reagan was an acolyte of astrology and that she had influenced her husband on the basis of some astrological readings by Joan Quigley. The film omits this, since it is a hero’s tale and not a tell-all exposé. See Shelby Gad and David Colker,  “Nancy Reagan turned to astrology in White House to protect her husband,” LA Times (March 6, 2016). Astrology is a form of divination, which is forbidden by God. See Deuteronomy 18:9-14 and Isaiah 47:13-15. For a critique of astrology by an ex-astrologer who became a Christian, see Charles Strohmer, What Your Horoscope Doesn’t Tell You (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 1988).

[5] For Reagan’s life and legacy, see Peggy Noonan, When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan (New York: Viking, 2001).

[6] Voices of Democracy, https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/reagan-evil-empire-speech-text.

[7] Tear down this wall! speech.

[8] R. J. Rummel, “How Many Did Communist Regimes Murder?” 1993, https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COM.ART.HTM. For the fuller story, see R. J. Rummel, Death by Government (New York: Routledge, 1997).

[9] For more on Marxism and its relationship to Critical Race Theory, see Douglas Groothuis, “Fire in the Minds of Karl Marx and His Followers,” Fire in the Streets (Washington, DC: Salem Books, 2022).

[10] For an explanation of this principle, see Groothuis, Fire in the Streets, 119-120.

[11] Ronald Reagan, “Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation,” The Catholic Lawyer, Volume 30, no. 2 (Spring 1986). https://scholarship.law.stjohns.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2212&context=tcl.

[12] Two others were instrumental: Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985) and Francis Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1981).

[13] See George Roche, A World Without Heroes: A Modern Tragedy (Hillsdale, MI: Hillsdale University Press, 1987).

— Douglas Groothuis is University Research Professor of Apologetics and Christian Worldview at Cornerstone University and is the author of twenty books, including, most recently, Beyond the Wager: The Christian Brilliance of Blaise Pascal (InterVarsity-Academic, 2024) and Christian Apologetics, 2^nd ed. (InterVarsity-Academic, 2022).

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