After two years in the White House, an aging and increasingly unpopular Ronald Reagan looked like a one-term president, but in 1983 something changed. Reagan spoke of his embattled agenda as a spiritual rather than a political project and cast his vision for limited government and market economics as the natural outworking of religious conviction. The news media broadcast this message with enthusiasm, and white evangelicals rallied to the president’s cause. With their support, Reagan won reelection and continued to dismantle the welfare state, unraveling a political consensus that stood for half a century.
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My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, and I'm so excited to have our guest today, who's a distinguished scholar and someone whose work has been inspirational for this show and for many other people, and that is Dr. Diane Winston.
So, Dr. Winston, thank you for being here.
Oh Brad, thank you so much for inviting me.
I'm so glad to be with you today.
Let me tell folks all about you.
You spent a long time as a journalist and covering just many things in and around religion.
You're now Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California, where you serve as the Knight Chair in Media and Religion.
The author or editor of a number of books, one of which is Religion in Los Angeles: Religious Activism, Innovation, and Diversity in the Global City.
And just love that.
We're here to talk though about your brand new book, which is called Writing the American Dream: How the Media Mainstream: Reagan's Evangelical Vision.
I was so excited to read this book.
I touched on Reagan in my book, but he was not a main focus.
And And I also just, I really think that we're at a point where we're like about 40 years from the Reagan administration.
Where it's very easy to kind of flatten the history of Reagan's tenure for everyone.
Could be progressives, could be liberals, could be conservatives, could be libertarians.
But everyone just thinks of the 80s as like, oh yeah, Reagan, the golden years of, you know, yuppies and conservative economics and Alex P. Keaton and all that.
No need to investigate.
And your book just opens us and you center on 1983.
And you really start with a situation where, you know, Reagan is not doing great.
I mean, that first term is not nearly as hunky-dory as people kind of remember it.
It was not yet morning in America, as Reagan always talked about.
It was more like an overcast day, maybe some rain, maybe some wind.
We're not sure if he was going to win reelection.
Why was Reagan's presidency kind of stuck in those first couple of years?
What was bogging him down?
Reagan had big plans, but it was going to take time for them to settle in.
He basically wanted to end the economic crisis that had bedeviled the country since the 1970s.
And that boils down to stagflation, which means a stagnant economy plus inflation.
Compounded then by a recession, when Reagan's feds decided to tighten the money supply.
So, in simple English, inflation was up, interest rates were up, and there weren't jobs.
So, many Americans were really unhappy, and they expected Reagan to cure this immediately, and by January 1983, not much had changed.
The other thing was many of his supporters, especially his social conservative supporters, thought that he would end abortion on demand and return prayer to the public schools as soon as he was elected.
He didn't do either of those.
He was using his political capital to get these tax cuts in place and to do, you know, the economic changes that he thought were most significant of all.
So, there's two things happening.
He's inherited all the problems that bedeviled Jimmy Carter, and he can't fix them right away.
Right.
He's also sort of saying, hey, you know, my priority is really these tax cuts and these economic things rather than all of the wants and Christmas list of the evangelicals who claim they're the ones that got me elected.
Jerry Falwell says, it's us who got you here, buddy.
Right.
Why are you not doing everything we want?
You argue that Reagan was able to turn things around by instilling a particular religious imaginary in the American public sphere.
And I really appreciated this term.
Before we just ask about what is Reagan's religious imaginary, can you just tell us what is a religious imaginary?
And kind of then we'll get to the specific of what Reagan's look like.
Yeah.
Before I say that, I want to just be clear.
Reagan would not have succeeded if the economy hadn't improved, bounced back by late fall of 83.
Even I, who believe religion is fundamental and integral to everything you can imagine, will concede that the economy had to be doing better.
So I want to just say that before I explain what a religious imaginary is.
A religious imaginary is a constellation of ideas and images that reflect the metaphysical truths, the ethical norms, the lived religion of a group of people.
And it is pretty abstract and pretty intuitive.
So I argue that all of us live with several religious imaginaries at one time, but there is sort of an ur-fundamental religious imaginary that someone like our president sets for us.
So I guess one of the things that I'm hearing is that we have a tradition in this country of a kind of civil religion where our presidents and others have talked about one nation under God at times or a city on a hill.
So like John Kennedy was very fond of talking about a city on a hill in certain instances.
So I guess the next question then is what are the contours of Reagan's particular religious imaginary as he kind of tried to instill it in the country at the end of that first term?
Let me back up a minute.
I would say the fundamental religious imaginary of most, if not all, Americans is this idea that God blessed America and that thanks to God's blessing, we have special commitments to freedom in our own lives, in our own country, and also to spread it around the world.
And that idea swings between poles of individualism and communitarianism.
And for example, Franklin Roosevelt very much was on the communitarian side of that idea.
And his policies were inflected by the social gospel, by communitarianism.
And so you have the liberal welfare state.
I argue by the 1970s, this confluence of ideas was losing traction among many Americans.
And we can talk about that, why that was occurring.
And people needed a new vision.
People needed something to believe in, to give their lives meaning, and to make sense of being Americans and being proud of being an American.
Reagan offered that with his religious imaginary because he swung to the pole of individualism.
And this squared with his religious perspective, which was evangelical.
And as you well know, evangelicals, you know, are very much about God's blessing of freedom.
And that's free enterprise, free markets, free politics, limited government, and free belief in one's religious ideas.
Which is not to say they wanted religious freedom in the conventional way that many of us think about it.
They wanted religious liberty insofar as they wanted the liberty to practice their religion publicly.
So if you don't want to serve gay people in your business, you didn't have to.
And if you didn't want your company providing abortion services or contraceptives, you could sue it.
So, this idea of individualism, which easily spills into hyper-individualism, you know, it reflects back to the priesthood of all believers, to very fundamental Protestant ideas of individuals' personal relation to God and that relationship which bestows personal freedom.
I really appreciated how you discussed this early on in the book, because you really connect the dots between an idea of an individual soul in a relationship with God as an American individual who has personal freedoms—hey, don't get in my way, government—and Hey, I'm going to work hard and make money.
I'm not going to be ashamed of wanting to make money.
And the free market should go hand in hand with the freedom to worship God.
Those two are the same.
I mean, so much of this is inherited from so many evangelical forces that had been rising in the 60s and 70s.
And I think about Reagan as a product of Southern California, where much of this was centered and was certainly prominent.
How did he transpose this imaginary, this idea of the individual in relationship with God as a free consumer with religious liberty?
How does he get this through secular news media?
It's one thing to do it in the evangelical cosmos, where there's different televangelists and different magazines, but Reagan's really successful at doing this in the broader public, and that's really one of the coups of his second half of his presidency.
Right.
Well, as you suggest, these ideas have been circulating around evangelical and politically conservative circles basically since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
What Reagan did was to put them into his rhetoric, sometimes very clearly, as he did with the evil empire speech when he spoke, you know, There's evil in the world today, and it faces the Soviet Union.
That's not the verbatim, but that's what he was saying.
And when he said it in a more veiled way, where the idea was clear, but you wouldn't have gotten the evangelical reference unless you were familiar with that language.
And here I'm thinking of his approach to welfare.
He was very against welfare.
Not only because he believed it drove up taxes, but because he thought that every individual should be personally responsible for their own well-being.
And in so far as he believed this, well, he began when he was governor of California, cutting the welfare rolls.
He wanted people to take responsibility for themselves.
Now, conservatives understood that this was a religious position.
Everybody else thought it was Reagan, you know, getting after the poor and not being sensitive to people who just couldn't find jobs for one reason or another.
But when people who weren't evangelicals heard that message of personal responsibility, it resonated with them.
And it especially resonated with them Because Reagan and his administration did their best to racialize and gender poverty.
And so, whereas many Americans across the board received entitlements of one sort or another, Everything became subsumed under welfare reform and the face of welfare was a single black mother who cheated the system.
That was, you know, the way it was projected.
And as newspapers, which were a dominant form of media at this point, began writing these stories about welfare recipients in poverty, most of the time it was based on a black family or black Black single female head of household.
So he snuck it in.
Well, and it's, it's an amazing example of how he's kind of speaking in code.
One group is listening and they have this whole set of like symbols and cues and dog whistles, and they, they're interpreting it through a certain context.
But as you explained so well in the book, and I think for me, this is one of the great merits of the book is.
He's able to take those cues and those dog whistles and that code and he's able to transpose it to the broader American public in a way that they hear some of the terms and think, yeah, and they become angry at that person cheating the system and they become like infuriated that someone would live off the.
The taxpayers and all of a sudden the middle class suburban American is just can't believe that some of these folks would just dare to do this un-American, un-Christian thing, like rely on the government for such and such and such and such.
Whereas, as you say, so many people were already participating in government programs that were very helpful to them across the board.
It really is ingenious.
I just have to say, as somebody who In his own book focused on Barry Goldwater, it's like Reagan was so good at taking some of the ideas and putting them in language that the broader American public would actually listen to, where many of his predecessors were just too brusque, too on the nose, that they couldn't do this in a deft way.
Well, Reagan, a Hollywood actor, was just a genius at this in a kind of tragic manner.
As you know, Reagan was a big supporter of Barry Goldwater, but he understood pretty early on that Goldwater was his own worst enemy because he alienated people, to be quite blunt.
And so what Reagan did after watching that campaign fizzle Was to say, I'm going to project these policies, but I'm going to do it in a way that is kinder and more gentle than what Goldwater did.
And he, he was superlative at it.
Yeah, it's really a tale of two different politicians and one learning to succeed in a way that's well beyond the other.
You mentioned something that I really want to focus on, and that is the rhetoric he used when it came to the Soviet Union.
And it's something I think we're just kind of used to now.
But your book is a great reminder that this was not always the case.
So 1983, 1984, there's this whole nuclear standoff slash, hey, should we have a freeze?
Should we stop making nuclear weapons?
What do you think, Soviet Union?
Can we end the Cold War?
Is that a possibility?
And Reagan starts couching this in terms of a cosmic battle of good and evil.
You know, how did he do?
And was that part of this larger strategy we just talked about?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, the communist revolution in 1970 was a real turning point for conservatives, whether fiscal, political, or religious.
And communism became the great enemy because communism was against democracy, against open markets and free markets, and against religions.
And so this had been, these were ideas that were circulating around the evangelical community for a while.
Obviously, elites or people who weren't evangelical, not necessarily elite, weren't familiar with these particular ideas.
They thought communism was bad because of its threat to America, but they didn't put it in cosmic terms.
Reagan did that to emphasize how important this battle was.
And at the time, many reporters didn't know what to do with that language because it was so far out to them.
And pundits took it to show that Reagan was either wacky or deluded.
And yet it set up a stage where people could begin seeing this conflict, not just in geopolitical terms, but also in this, as I say, cosmic arena that Reagan had proposed.
And that became important, for example, when in September 1983, The Russians shot down a Korean plane that had entered into its airspace, and so Reagan, good example of the evil empire striking down a plane of civilians.
It became important in October of 1983 when, in Lebanon, Russian proxies sacked marines and french soldiers who were stationed there and it became important also at the end of october when a communist coup in grenada
according to reagan was going to put more communist north koreans and russians into the hemisphere on top of those who were already present in cuba and so all of these events played into this idea of this cosmic good versus evil going on Thank you.
Can I add one more thing?
Interestingly, in the October 16th issue of the New Yorker, there's an interview with Jake Sullivan, who's head of the NSA.
Sullivan says, the interviewer asks him, why are you so dedicated to the fight in Ukraine?
Sullivan says, I grew up in the 80s.
I believe in Rocky and Rambo.
I believe in good and bad, and I want to be on the good side.
Jake Sullivan, Democrat, channeling Reagan.
And that's how these things, you know, become part of the Our popular mindset, because I bet anything, if you asked him, Sullivan would be like shocked to hear, you know, that that's a little bit of the Reagan influence handed down.
Well, sorry, but for me as somebody who grew up in the 80s and had two brothers, three brothers in a household with VHS tapes, we watched The Rambos and The Rockies and all of those movies that were like, American empire, good.
All other empires, bad.
And it just really plays into this religious imaginary idea.
Not only are we chosen by God and individuals in relationship with God, and not only are we individual consumers who believe in free enterprise, but we are chosen by God to be a light to the world in a way that means we are good in the Soviet Union.
It's not just that they are in conflict with us geopolitically.
They are evil.
There's a difference.
It's not that they're our opponent.
They're our enemy because they're evil.
And that is what Reagan is just spreading abroad.
As you point out, however, he's also doing some of that domestically with how he handles the AIDS crisis.
And here he really does rely on religious proxies to spread his idea that the AIDS pandemic is a punishment from God.
So Jerry Falwell is involved, and there's some other prominent evangelical preachers who are basically saying God is punishing the gay community and the American country as a whole for our disobedience.
How did that work?
Why was that how Reagan framed this?
Well, let me nuance this a little.
I don't think Reagan was anti-gay.
I don't know how he felt about AIDS, but the fact that he lived in Hollywood for a number of years and the fact that many of his friends were gay probably did not Put him on the same footing as Falwell and televangelists who were so, so critical of homosexuality.
Reagan's advisors told him not to comment on AIDS, which really blew up in the early 80s, because no matter what he said, he'd make someone mad.
So he stayed silent until his friend Rock Hudson died a couple of years after this.
In the silence, Jerry Falwell was able to enunciate a policy which looked like it was Reagan's because of Falwell's proximity to Reagan.
As you said earlier in this discussion, Falwell claimed that he and his minions had won the election.
Now, sociologists disagree.
About whether that's actually factual.
But of course, the evangelical bloc, which had just been developing at that point, helped Reagan.
Alwell took this idea of AIDS as a punishment and ran with it.
And because journalists knew that Falwell was close to Reagan, Follows one of the first visitors to the White House.
Reagan, you know, treated him as if he agreed with the minister's policies, even though they did have some disagreements.
And so Fowler used that proximity to put forth an idea which the administration never contradicted.
So I'm not saying Reagan necessarily believed that, but Falwell put it forth in the news and no one contradicted it.
And this idea of a domestic evil, along with an international evil, made sense in Reagan's world.
Well, and certainly it seems to be one of those complicit by absence, complicit by silence.
The gay community to this day is traumatized by that refusal for Reagan to engage, to provide any sort of governmental response that would have helpful in any widespread way.
And so when you're allowing someone like Falwell, who was a homophobe to the highest degree, to basically spread your policy that AIDS is a punishment from God, That we're suffering at the hands of a God who is angry about our sexual sin and licentiousness.
You can see how Reagan's legacy is shaped by it, even if, as you're nuancing for us, this was not necessarily Reagan on the microphone saying it, and as you say, The man spent decades in Hollywood.
There's no way he would have had the same kind of contouring as someone like Falwell, who was a lifelong Baptist from the South.
I need to ask before we go the question I seem to ask all the time on this show, but it just is important because we're doing histories that are really helping us understand the present.
And that is, how much does Donald Trump becoming president owe to Ronald Reagan, whether in religious, political or economic terms?
Unfortunately, I would say Trump owes a lot to Reagan.
I think Reagan would be horrified by Trump because Reagan believed in America and he believed in democracy and he believed in God.
I am not a Reagan supporter.
I never have been.
But when I look at him in contrast to Trump, there's a huge difference.
But the sort of spiritualized neoliberalism that Reagan put in place enabled someone like Trump to become a candidate.
More important, Trump promised to put the finishing touches on the Reagan Revolution, specifically by bringing the social agenda to its fruition.
For the last 40 years, evangelicals have voted for Republican candidates who promised to end Roe versus Wade, and no one did it.
Reagan, Trump did that.
He brought the capital of Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which is also very important.
He continued to cut taxes.
He packed the Supreme Court.
So all the social issues that Reagan never got to, nor his successors, Trump did.
Now, the problem with Trump is that he's offering a new imaginary, which deviates from the ones I've discussed, and I would call that imaginary apocalyptic nihilism.
And basically, it's the idea that, well, let's just blow everything up, you know?
We don't have to believe in everything, in anything anymore.
We're just gonna blow it up.
And that's why Trump is particularly scary to me as an historian, because he has moved away from that guiding belief, God bless America, and no matter how problematic that is, it's still about democracy, which I don't think Trump is about.
Well, and as somebody, yes, who has criticized that ethos, who has dissected it, who has looked at it sociologically and historically, I find it problematic, as you just said.
But, and it is not nihilism.
And I think that's something I've emphasized over the last months is that we have entered a phase of political nihilism that is truly frightening.
Because if you believe in nothing, if you believe in nothing but the will to power, then you're in a place politically where everything's on the table.
You'll turn your back on allies, you'll turn your back on the will of the people, you'll turn your back on the idea of democracy.
Fascism is on the table.
Authoritarianism is on the table.
And that's that is truly frightening.
So yes, I mean, there's I am not going to be somebody who says, I missed the good old days of Ronald Reagan.
It's not going to happen.
But I do see the difference.
And I'm willing to say, yes, there is a difference, even though The Reagan presidency is one that I generally view negatively.
So I take your point and it's well made.
Well, thank you, Dr. Winston, for taking the time to speak to us and for just a really important book.
Again, I think we've reached this critical juncture where the Reagan years are far enough behind us that many people assume they know about them.
And as soon as I picked up your book and started reading, I thought, this is great because I have fallen into that trap as well.
I have just thought of them as a kind of a flat line.
And there's so much nuance, so much detail, and there's such a rich texturing of issues that I had already thought so much about, whether that's the AIDS crisis, whether that is the nuclear freeze and so on.
So where can people find you?
What's the best way to keep up if you're giving a talk or have live events or have updates about your book?
Oh, thank you for asking.
I'm on Instagram under Diane Winston.
I'm on Facebook under Diane Winston.
I always post ahead of time when I'm doing either live or virtual events.
I'd love to see people come and talk with me about the book because it does get people excited.
And of course, you can buy it at the University of Chicago website.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
Well, it's also, friends, on our recommended book list for October.
So if you just go to the show notes and click that link, you'll get to a place where you see the book and you can buy it there from bookshop.org.
That would help us as a show.
Look for all the information in the show notes.
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