Ronald Reagan and Where the Christian Right Went Wrong

“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” —Matthew 22:21

Ronald Reagan became the patron saint of the modern Christian Right. He spoke its language and offered religious conservatives a place within a national political coalition. Christians heard a president speak confidently about God, family and moral purpose.

But the alliance encouraged a dangerous identification: Republican conservatism came to be treated as the political expression of Christianity itself.

One episode from Reagan’s governorship should have shattered that illusion.

On September 5, 1969, Reagan signed California’s Family Law Act. Effective January 1, 1970, it established the first comprehensive modern no-fault divorce system in the United States. A spouse no longer had to prove adultery, abandonment, cruelty or another serious violation of marital duty. “Irreconcilable differences” would suffice.

Reagan did not invent no-fault divorce or write the legislation. Lawyers, judges, legislators and an earlier gubernatorial commission developed the reform. But Reagan signed it, defended it and gave the divorce revolution its decisive American breakthrough.

The politician who became the Christian Right’s greatest hero helped make marriage easier to abandon.

No-fault divorce replaced the question “Who violated the marriage?” with “Has the relationship broken down?” Once one spouse’s declaration could establish that breakdown, dissolution ceased to depend upon mutual consent or proven misconduct.

Marriage still required two people to enter. It increasingly required only one to leave.

However, Christian freedom is the capacity to recognize and fulfill the good, including obligations that become painful. Modern liberal freedom increasingly means escaping commitments that no longer correspond to one’s desires.

The organized Christian Right did not create the California law. It emerged as a consolidated movement later in the 1970s. Its failure was not authorship but selective memory: it placed Reagan above serious moral scrutiny and assimilated Christian witness into Republican identity.

Religious conservatives denounced the sexual revolution while accommodating serial divorce within their congregations, leadership circles and political coalitions. Adultery might be regretted, divorce explained and remarriage celebrated as a fresh beginning — provided the politician still voted correctly.

The Christian Right thus adopted a truncated theology of marriage. It defended heterosexuality, family structure and parental rights but often neglected covenant, endurance, repentance and reconciliation.

Being Republican came to serve as evidence of being Christian. It never was.

Reagan could be firm in his conservatism while failing to apply the Christian logic of covenant. This does not judge the sincerity of his faith. It judges a public act by the moral principles Christians claim to believe.

Defenders of no-fault divorce make an argument Christians must take seriously. The old system could trap people in dangerous homes. Victims of violence might be forced to prove terrifying facts publicly. Fabricated claims corrupted the courts, while prolonged litigation injured families.

But separation is not dissolution, and protection is not repudiation.

The Christian tradition recognizes that spouses may need to live apart while the marital bond remains. It can acknowledge adultery, abandonment, cruelty and grave danger without accepting that one spouse’s changed feelings can erase a covenant.

The old system required reform. It did not require making marital obligation legally irrelevant. A Christian politics could have protected endangered spouses and eliminated perjury while preserving the principle that marriage creates objective duties.

Instead, reformers answered abuses within marriage law by weakening the marital bond itself. The Christian Right eventually accepted that revolution as settled law.

According to his son, Michael, Reagan later considered signing California’s divorce reform one of his greatest regrets. Because that account comes through a family recollection rather than a comprehensive public recantation, it should be treated cautiously. But the regret would have been warranted.

Christians do Reagan no honor by concealing this grievous moral error. Nor do they serve Christianity by treating criticism of a Republican icon as disloyalty to the faith.

The Christian Right went wrong when it allowed a political coalition to determine which Christian doctrines deserved public emphasis. It resisted the redefinition of marriage but rarely confronted its transformation from an enduring covenant into a provisional arrangement.

It defended marriage at the altar while surrendering it at the courthouse.

More fundamentally, churches must recover the courage to say that a promise remains a promise when feelings change. Fidelity is not the absence of suffering. It is the virtue made visible through suffering.

The Church’s task is not to place halos over politicians. It is to hold every politician, party and ideology beneath a truth they did not create.

Ronald Reagan helped defeat communism abroad. But in California, he signed a law reflecting another revolutionary anthropology: the autonomous individual standing above every promise he no longer wishes to keep.

The Christian Right embraced Reagan and largely forgot the signature. Its future depends upon remembering both.

Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Townhall’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical Left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.

Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.