You make the point that Reagan knew the religious right's code words and phrases, yet as late as 1976, you say, he didn't understand what it meant when someone asked him whether he was born again. How did he learn to talk the talk of the religious right?

In this sense I think his skills as an actor and communicator served him well. That does not mean that it's insincere. A good teacher, a good trial lawyer, a good preacher, a good politician not only understands but enjoys -- when I'm teaching, I know when I'm on. I know when I'm making a point well, and I know to say something to [one audience] that would be different to another. It doesn't mean I'm being insincere; it does mean that I know which dials to turn. The language itself is not that hard to learn. Reagan grew up in the midwestern Christian church [Disciples of Christ], was baptized in it, so at least in early teen years he was exposed to the language. It happens that the Disciples of Christ don't use the "born-again" term as much. Reagan may well not have really been up on what that meant.

Reagan had a famously bright, optimistic, "morning in America" and "shining city on a hill" view of the world, but conservative Christians usually have a much darker worldview. Yet they resonated to his sunny perspective. Was it an odd marriage?

The premillennial view, or just the conservative Christian view, is that things are getting worse and going to hell in a handbasket. On the other hand, further on out we can be glad, because we are going to win. But I think there is something more basic than that at work with them. Most people would prefer to be happy than to be grim. You could say theirs is a kind of joy akin to knowing the world is lost, but here we are at a Billy Graham revival and 12,000 people have just been saved. There was still a glorification or a nostalgic halo around the 1950s or so, when it looked like Jesus was making a comeback; the churches were booming; there was a real revival here - church building, Bible sales, attendance. All those things were happening. And Reagan was saying, "Let's bring back those days," essentially.

When all is said and done, what was Reagan's importance for conservative religion in America?

Reagan played a significant role in bringing conservative Christians into the political realm. Ironically, his not giving them what they wanted -- when the presidency turned out not to be the prize that would deliver subsequent prizes, subsidiary prizes, they (with Pat Robertson playing a key role) decided, learned that they had not just to show up to vote; they had to become real, politically savvy activists. The Christian Coalition was much more important than the Moral Majority. The Moral Majority was largely an organization of ministers who said, "You should vote, and you should vote for the Republican Party." The Christian Coalition said, "You should vote. You should talk to your neighbors about voting. You should go to precinct meetings. We want to get 10 members in every one of 175,000 precincts. We want to take over one of the major parties." Interestingly, they could have done the same thing to the Democratic Party, but it was an easier task with the Republicans. Now, of course, people ask me, "Whatever became of the religious right? Are they still important?" Yes, they are now called Republicans. There are a lot of Republicans in the party who are really unhappy with that. When I go out and give talks, inevitably someone says, "I remember being at our regional meeting, and these three busloads of people we'd never seen before got off, and before the night was over we'd lost our convention."

And we owe this all to Ronald Reagan?

We don't owe it all to him, but he was a significant figure in catalyzing that movement and inspiring it and giving it political blessing. He made it kosher for Christians to get involved in politics, because they thought, "This is a man we can get behind." Jimmy Carter might have played that role, but he turned out to be a Democrat. Evangelicals still idolize Reagan and talk about him as one of the great presidents of all time. There are people like [former U.S. representative] Bob Barr who wanted to name everything in the country for him. That keeps up the heroic view of Reagan. ... As many people have said, he was a man difficult to dislike. I remember exactly where I was listening to Reagan give that speech at the 1964 Republican convention, and I thought, "Wow, that is one powerful speech."

I think it was D. James Kennedy who asked Reagan what reason he would give God for letting him into heaven. [Reagan said, "I wouldn't give God any reason for letting me. I'd just ask for mercy, because of what Jesus Christ did for me at Calvary."] It would be interesting to me to know whether Reagan pulled that out of his background or somebody told him, just like [Texas evangelist] James Robison told him to go out and say [to a meeting of evangelicals in Dallas], "You can't endorse me, but I endorse you." It may have been a line someone fed to him. It's difficult to untangle. We know he quoted great generals who were, in fact, characters in movies. He would say, "A general said ..." and it was a general in a movie. He told stories that were not true, but they were effective.

We had had a Catholic president [John F. Kennedy] about whom evangelicals were very uneasy. Then we had Lyndon Johnson, who made a great many evangelicals uneasy because of his social policies -- integration and all of those things. Then we have Richard Nixon who, his own disclaimer to the contrary, was a crook. He brought the presidency low. It caused people to lose confidence in that institution. Gerald Ford played a healing role, but for a brief time. Ford was admired by most people; he had a tough job, and he did it with honor. And then Carter came in, and many, many evangelicals came out to support him, but then he came with his pro-choice views and also with the White House Conference on the Family that gave a place for homosexuals, and anything having to do with the libido or sex or nontraditional sexuality is of great concern to fundamentalists, whether they are Jewish or Christian or Islamic or whatever. There is great concern with control of the libido. So Carter was a disappointment. It had been 30 years; a generation felt it had not been able to trust the president; there had been tough economic times with runaway inflation, and Reagan came in and indeed did change things and gave the religious right a feeling that, "This is a man we can trust, and we are on the inside." Ike had had Billy Graham to the White House, so that evangelicals had felt like they had a tie with the very top echelons of power, but they had lost that. Billy Graham, of course, was tied up with Johnson, but a lot of Johnson's policies were very unpopular with many people, and particularly in the South. So with Reagan there was a sense, "Now finally we can relax. He's been through all the trouble he's going to have." He had been divorced; he was not a very good father, by his own children's testimony. But evangelicals love somebody who has repented. It's easier to repent when you're over 70.

All the evangelical leaders continued to praise Reagan, and when they weren't getting what they wanted, they said, "He wants to do it, but the men around him won't let him." Even though they weren't getting anything, they always believed. They were convinced that he was on their side, and so was God.