Reaganology: The Son is gonna shine tomorrow



President Ronald Reagan

Like Annie, Reagan was a sunny optimist.  Unlike Annie, he had family that cared from the beginning - and a mother who was an ardent member of the Disciples of Christ.

The original two strands of the Disciples of Christ movement

both diverged from Presbyterianism.  Barton W. Stone’s strand has been largely defined by his group’s 1804 publication of the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery.  This document called for a “union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body and one Spirit…”  It also upheld the right of each church to choose its own preacher and to be congregationally governed with “Christ himself” as the “chief cornerstone.” 

The Campbell strand began in 1809 when Thomas Campbell

published the Declaration and Address of the Christian

Association of Washington after his Presbyterian credentials

had been suspended for “irregularities” such as offering communion to those outside his particular synod.  His son, Alexander Campbell, furthered his father’s movement to recreate the early church paradigm of the New Testament.  It was Alexander who insisted upon the name “Disciples of Christ” for this new/old paradigm.  According to Wikipedia, the 19^th-century slogan of the eventual Stone-Campbell merger became:  In essentials, Unity; In non-essentials, Liberty; and in all things, Charity.

This is the powerful blend of democracy and theology that Reagan grew up with.  When the local inn in his

midwestern town refused to admit a group of black people, young Ronald and his mother invited them to

stay overnight at their home.  Reagan was baptized into the Disciples of Christ as a young adolescent, and later attended Eureka College (a school that is related by covenant to the Disciples of Christ, and was founded by abolitionists).

Although Reagan became a Presbyterian much later in life, he never strayed all that far from his theological roots.  As reported by Paul Kengor in Belief.net, he had always felt that “politics needed faith.”  His standard practices - such as praying for guidance, relying upon Biblical wisdom, and insisting that democracy would fail without Divine input – seemed to all stem from those earliest of church influences.

Resources

http://www.adherents.com/people/pr/Ronald_Reagan.html

http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Politics/2004/02/Reagans-Penchant-For-Prayer.aspx?p=2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disciples_of_Christ

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan

Copyright February 7, 2011 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved