Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy: Jimmy Carter the Disciple and Ronald Reagan the Alchemist

297 Pages·2014·2.44 MB·English

by  William Steding (auth.)

Palgrave Studies in Religion, Politics, and Policy
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The Catholic Church in Polish History: Politics, Religion, and Cultural Resistance
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Edited by Edited By Elizabeth A. Oldmixon and Kevin R. den Dulk
Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy: Jimmy Carter the Disciple and
Ronald Reagan the Alchemist
By William Steding
Presidential Faith and

Foreign Policy
Jimmy Carter the Disciple and Ronald
Reagan the Alchemist
William Steding
PRESIDENTIAL FAITH AND FOREIGN POLICY
Copyright © William Steding, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-47647-0
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-50201-1 ISBN 978-1-137-47711-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137477118
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: November 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to my wife, Dana McCullam,
our children Jill, Shannon, Grayson, and Corsica, and
to my sister Dorothy Steding.
May you remain steadfastly curious throughout your lives
such that each new day is more interesting
than the last.
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Contents

Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
1 Religion in the American Political Sphere 7
2 Jimmy Carter’s Cognetic Narrative: An
Evangelical Engineer 25
3 Jimmy Carter’s Evangelical Mission:
Human Rights 39
4 Redemption: Jimmy Carter and the
Panama Canal Treaties 57
5 Jimmy Carter’s Just Peace in the Middle East 71
6 Ronald Reagan’s Cognetic Narrative:
All-American Alchemist 87
7 Ronald Reagan’s Divine Imperium of
Freedom 103
8 Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative 123
9 The Strategic Defense Initiative and
US–Soviet Relations: 1983–1987 139
vii
viii Contents
Conclusion: God Is Love, God Is Power 159
Notes 165
Bibliography 255
Index 279
Preface

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I awoke in the
“Holidome” Holiday Inn in Salina, Kansas, in one of those
1970s-style hotels, where each room faces a cavernous atrium
for easy access to everything from shuffleboard to an indoor
pool. I landed at the Salina Municipal Airport the night before
in a Bell Helicopter 206L with my copilot, Dennis Lang,
after attending a family funeral in South Dakota. We were en
route back to Dallas, Texas, when the world, or at least most
Americans’ view of the world, changed in the span of a little
more than an hour. After an early and barely edible breakfast
served by a surly waitress in the atrium of the inn, Dennis and I
took a shuttle to the airport, arriving just as American Airlines
flight 11 hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New
York. Dennis, who is a helicopter pilot with many more hours
in the cockpit than I, looked at me and said, “Let’s get the hell
out of here before some knucklehead at the FAA [Federal
Aviation Administration] decides to shut down the airspace all
over the country.” Just as we were cleared for takeoff, United
Airlines flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. I pulled all
the power that helicopter had and headed south into clear blue
skies with only one thought in my mind: get home.
To stay informed in the cockpit, we listened to Peter
Jennings on ABC radio as we calculated our course, speed, and
fuel levels, in a long shot attempt to make Dallas in one hop.
Shortly after we cleared Salina to the south, the order Dennis
predicted interrupted Jennings’s reporting, arriving through
our headsets from Kansas City Center Control: “All aircraft
land immediately nearest airport.” As clear as that instruction
was, we digested it as any helicopter pilot might, with equal
parts of indignation and arrogance. Surely, we thought, that
ix