Book Review: The Faith of Ronald Reagan

I want to begin this post by apologizing to Book Sneeze for taking a sweet forever to write this book review. They graciously provide me with books free of charge to read and review and I was negligent in getting this review up in a timely manner. Quite honestly, this book ended up buried under some paperwork and I was reading another book and forgot I even needed to review this book. So, my apologies and I promise to try my best to do better in the future. Now, on to the review…

I chose this book, “The Faith of Ronald Reagan” because I have always thought Ronald Reagan was one of the best presidents this country has ever known and I was curious as to what this book would reveal to me about President Reagan’s faith. Faith plays a big part in many peoples lives whether they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc., and I wanted to know how important President’s Reagan’s faith was to him and how it may have influenced his decisions while in the White House.

Author Mary Beth Brown used first-hand interviews from President Reagan’s family and friends as well as President Reagan’s own words and writings to compose this book. The book begins by telling of the faith of the President’s mother and how her influence on him led him to his own spiritual journey and continues on through the various phases of President Reagan’s life including high school, his acting career, his governorship of California and even when he met Nancy.

One of the first stories told is how the President didn’t attend church while in office but was looking forward to doing just that once he was out of office. His reason for not attending church while in office was so that he wouldn’t put the lives of others at risk. You may recall that there was an assassination attempt on President Reagan and that event forever changed his life and way of thinking.

This book provides interesting insight into the thinking of a Christian man who lived a large part of his life in the spotlight, which caused him to be ridiculed and criticized by others. If you have any interest at all in this genre of reading, then this would be a good book for you. I found it to be interesting and insightful and a light easy read and it was nice to get to know President Reagan on a more personal level.