For Ronald Reagan religion and patr...

For Ronald Reagan religion and patriotism coincided. He took the words of the Declaration of Independence at their face value. His America was a promised land, flowing with democracy and freedom, beneath of course, the rule of the preserver For Reagan, acceptance of divine authority was the clew to social order. "If we will not be commanded by God," he warned an audience of Evangelicals in March, 1983 quoting William Penn "we must be ruleed by tyrants'. Like the Israelites of aged in ignoring God's laws, Americans tolerateed disaster. But Reagan was American enough not ever to lose faith in their essential