President Reagan's "Evil Empire" Speech to the National Association of Evangelicals

Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida
March 8, 1983

Reverend clergy all, Senator Hawkins, distinguished members of the Florida
congressional delegation, and all of you:

I can't tell you how you have warmed my heart with your welcome. I'm delighted to be
here today.

Those of you in the National Association of Evangelicals are known for your spiritual
and humanitarian work. And I would be especially remiss if I didn't discharge right now
one personal debt of gratitude. Thank you for your prayers. Nancy and I have felt their
presence many times in many ways. And believe me, for us they've made all the
difference.

The other day in the East Room of the White House at a meeting there, someone asked
me whether I was aware of all the people out there who were praying for the President.
And I had to say, ``Yes, I am. I've felt it. I believe in intercessionary prayer.'' But I
couldn't help but say to that questioner after he'd asked the question that -- or at least say
to them that if sometimes when he was praying he got a busy signal, it was just me in
there ahead of him. [Laughter] I think I understand how Abraham Lincoln felt when he
said, ``I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I
had nowhere else to go.''

From the joy and the good feeling of this conference, I go to a political reception.
[Laughter] Now, I don't know why, but that bit of scheduling reminds me of a story --
[laughter] -- which I'll share with you.

An evangelical minister and a politician arrived at Heaven's gate one day together. And
St. Peter, after doing all the necessary formalities, took them in hand to show them where
their quarters would be. And he took them to a small, single room with a bed, a chair, and
a table and said this was for the clergyman. And the politician was a little worried about
what might be in store for him. And he couldn't believe it then when St. Peter stopped in
front of a beautiful mansion with lovely grounds, many servants, and told him that these
would be his quarters.

And he couldn't help but ask, he said, ``But wait, how -- there's something wrong -- how
do I get this mansion while that good and holy man only gets a single room?'' And St.
Peter said, ``You have to understand how things are up here. We've got thousands and
thousands of clergy. You're the first politician who ever made it.'' [Laughter]

But I don't want to contribute to a stereotype. [Laughter] So, I tell you there are a great
many God-fearing, dedicated, noble men and women in public life, present company
included. And, yes, we need your help to keep us ever mindful of the ideas and the
principles that brought us into the public arena in the first place. The basis of those ideals
and principles is a commitment to freedom and personal liberty that, itself, is grounded in
the much deeper realization that freedom prospers only where the blessings of God are
avidly sought and humbly accepted.

The American experiment in democracy rests on this insight. Its discovery was the great
triumph of our Founding Fathers, voiced by William Penn when he said: ``If we will not
be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.'' Explaining the inalienable rights
of men, Jefferson said, ``The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.''
And it was George Washington who said that ``of all the dispositions and habits which
lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.''

And finally, that shrewdest of all observers of American democracy, Alexis de
Tocqueville, put it eloquently after he had gone on a search for the secret of America's
greatness and genius -- and he said: ``Not until I went into the churches of America and
heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and the genius
of America. . . . America is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, America will
cease to be great.''

Well, I'm pleased to be here today with you who are keeping America great by keeping
her good. Only through your work and prayers and those of millions of others can we
hope to survive this perilous century and keep alive this experiment in liberty, this last,
best hope of man.

I want you to know that this administration is motivated by a political philosophy that
sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches,
neighborhoods, communities -- the institutions that foster and nourish values like concern
for others and respect for the rule of law under God.

Now, I don't have to tell you that this puts us in opposition to, or at least out of step
with, a prevailing attitude of many who have turned to a modern-day secularism,
discarding the tried and time-tested values upon which our very civilization is based. No
matter how well intentioned, their value system is radically different from that of most
Americans. And while they proclaim that they're freeing us from superstitions of the
past, they've taken upon themselves the job of superintending us by government rule and
regulation. Sometimes their voices are louder than ours, but they are not yet a majority.

An example of that vocal superiority is evident in a controversy now going on in
Washington. And since I'm involved, I've been waiting to hear from the parents of young
America. How far are they willing to go in giving to government their prerogatives as
parents?

Let me state the case as briefly and simply as I can. An organization of citizens, sincerely
motivated and deeply concerned about the increase in illegitimate births and abortions
involving girls well below the age of consent, sometime ago established a nationwide
network of clinics to offer help to these girls and, hopefully, alleviate this situation. Now,
again, let me say, I do not fault their intent. However, in their well-intentioned effort,
these clinics have decided to provide advice and birth control drugs and devices to
underage girls without the knowledge of their parents.

For some years now, the Federal Government has helped with funds to subsidize these
clinics. In providing for this, the Congress decreed that every effort would be made to
maximize parental participation. Nevertheless, the drugs and devices are prescribed
without getting parental consent or giving notification after they've done so. Girls termed
``sexually active'' -- and that has replaced the word ``promiscuous'' -- are given this help
in order to prevent illegitimate birth or abortion.

Well, we have ordered clinics receiving Federal funds to notify the parents such help has
been given. One of the Nation's leading newspapers has created the term ``squeal rule'' in
editorializing against us for doing this, and we're being criticized for violating the privacy
of young people. A judge has recently granted an injunction against an enforcement of
our rule. I've watched TV panel shows discuss this issue, seen columnists pontificating on
our error, but no one seems to mention morality as playing a part in the subject of sex.

Is all of Judeo-Christian tradition wrong? Are we to believe that something so sacred can
be looked upon as a purely physical thing with no potential for emotional and
psychological harm? And isn't it the parents' right to give counsel and advice to keep their
children from making mistakes that may affect their entire lives?

Many of us in government would like to know what parents think about this intrusion in
their family by government. We're going to fight in the courts. The right of parents and
the rights of family take precedence over those of Washington-based bureaucrats and
social engineers.

But the fight against parental notification is really only one example of many attempts to
water down traditional values and even abrogate the original terms of American
democracy. Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is
acknowledged. When our Founding Fathers passed the first amendment, they sought to
protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall
of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself.

The evidence of this permeates our history and our government. The Declaration of
Independence mentions the Supreme Being no less than four times. ``In God We Trust'' is
engraved on our coinage. The Supreme Court opens its proceedings with a religious
invocation. And the Members of Congress open their sessions with a prayer. I just
happen to believe the schoolchildren of the United States are entitled to the same
privileges as Supreme Court Justices and Congressmen.

Last year, I sent the Congress a constitutional amendment to restore prayer to public
schools. Already this session, there's growing bipartisan support for the amendment, and
I am calling on the Congress to act speedily to pass it and to let our children pray.

Perhaps some of you read recently about the Lubbock school case, where a judge actually
ruled that it was unconstitutional for a school district to give equal treatment to religious
and nonreligious student groups, even when the group meetings were being held during
the students' own time. The first amendment never intended to require government to
discriminate against religious speech.

Senators Denton and Hatfield have proposed legislation in the Congress on the whole
question of prohibiting discrimination against religious forms of student speech. Such
legislation could go far to restore freedom of religious speech for public school students.
And I hope the Congress considers these bills quickly. And with your help, I think it's
possible we could also get the constitutional amendment through the Congress this year.

More than a decade ago, a Supreme Court decision literally wiped off the books of 50
States statutes protecting the rights of unborn children. Abortion on demand now takes
the lives of up to 1.5 million unborn children a year. Human life legislation ending this
tragedy will some day pass the Congress, and you and I must never rest until it does.
Unless and until it can be proven that the unborn child is not a living entity, then its right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness must be protected.

You may remember that when abortion on demand began, many, and, indeed, I'm sure
many of you, warned that the practice would lead to a decline in respect for human life,
that the philosophical premises used to justify abortion on demand would ultimately be
used to justify other attacks on the sacredness of human life -- infanticide or mercy
killing. Tragically enough, those warnings proved all too true. Only last year a court
permitted the death by starvation of a handicapped infant.

I have directed the Health and Human Services Department to make clear to every health
care facility in the United States that the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 protects all
handicapped persons against discrimination based on handicaps, including infants. And
we have taken the further step of requiring that each and every recipient of Federal funds
who provides health care services to infants must post and keep posted in a conspicuous
place a notice stating that ``discriminatory failure to feed and care for handicapped
infants in this facility is prohibited by Federal law.'' It also lists a 24-hour, toll-free
number so that nurses and others may report violations in time to save the infant's life.

In addition, recent legislation introduced in the Congress by Representative Henry Hyde
of Illinois not only increases restrictions on publicly financed abortions, it also addresses
this whole problem of infanticide. I urge the Congress to begin hearings and to adopt
legislation that will protect the right of life to all children, including the disabled or
handicapped.

Now, I'm sure that you must get discouraged at times, but you've done better than you
know, perhaps. There's a great spiritual awakening in America, a renewal of the
traditional values that have been the bedrock of America's goodness and greatness.
One recent survey by a Washington-based research council concluded that Americans
were far more religious than the people of other nations; 95 percent of those surveyed
expressed a belief in God and a huge majority believed the Ten Commandments had real
meaning in their lives. And another study has found that an overwhelming majority of
Americans disapprove of adultery, teenage sex, pornography, abortion, and hard drugs.
And this same study showed a deep reverence for the importance of family ties and
religious belief.

I think the items that we've discussed here today must be a key part of the Nation's
political agenda. For the first time the Congress is openly and seriously debating and
dealing with the prayer and abortion issues -- and that's enormous progress right there. I
repeat: America is in the midst of a spiritual awakening and a moral renewal. And with
your Biblical keynote, I say today, ``Yes, let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like
a never-failing stream.''

Now, obviously, much of this new political and social consensus I've talked about is
based on a positive view of American history, one that takes pride in our country's
accomplishments and record. But we must never forget that no government schemes are
going to perfect man. We know that living in this world means dealing with what
philosophers would call the phenomenology of evil or, as theologians would put it, the
doctrine of sin.

There is sin and evil in the world, and we're enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to
oppose it with all our might. Our nation, too, has a legacy of evil with which it must deal.
The glory of this land has been its capacity for transcending the moral evils of our past.
For example, the long struggle of minority citizens for equal rights, once a source of
disunity and civil war, is now a point of pride for all Americans. We must never go back.
There is no room for racism, anti-Semitism, or other forms of ethnic and racial hatred in
this country.

I know that you've been horrified, as have I, by the resurgence of some hate groups
preaching bigotry and prejudice. Use the mighty voice of your pulpits and the powerful
standing of your churches to denounce and isolate these hate groups in our midst. The
commandment given us is clear and simple: ``Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.''

But whatever sad episodes exist in our past, any objective observer must hold a positive
view of American history, a history that has been the story of hopes fulfilled and dreams
made into reality. Especially in this century, America has kept alight the torch of
freedom, but not just for ourselves but for millions of others around the world.
And this brings me to my final point today. During my first press conference as
President, in answer to a direct question, I pointed out that, as good Marxist-Leninists,
the Soviet leaders have openly and publicly declared that the only morality they
recognize is that which will further their cause, which is world revolution. I think I should
point out I was only quoting Lenin, their guiding spirit, who said in 1920 that they
repudiate all morality that proceeds from supernatural ideas -- that's their name for
religion -- or ideas that are outside class conceptions. Morality is entirely subordinate to
the interests of class war. And everything is moral that is necessary for the annihilation of
the old, exploiting social order and for uniting the proletariat.

Well, I think the refusal of many influential people to accept this elementary fact of
Soviet doctrine illustrates an historical reluctance to see totalitarian powers for what they
are. We saw this phenomenon in the 1930's. We see it too often today.

This doesn't mean we should isolate ourselves and refuse to seek an understanding with
them. I intend to do everything I can to persuade them of our peaceful intent, to remind
them that it was the West that refused to use its nuclear monopoly in the forties and
fifties for territorial gain and which now proposes 50-percent cut in strategic ballistic
missiles and the elimination of an entire class of land-based, intermediate-range nuclear
missiles.

At the same time, however, they must be made to understand we will never compromise
our principles and standards. We will never give away our freedom. We will never
abandon our belief in God. And we will never stop searching for a genuine peace. But we
can assure none of these things America stands for through the so-called nuclear freeze
solutions proposed by some.

The truth is that a freeze now would be a very dangerous fraud, for that is merely the
illusion of peace. The reality is that we must find peace through strength.

I would agree to a freeze if only we could freeze the Soviets' global desires. A freeze at
current levels of weapons would remove any incentive for the Soviets to negotiate
seriously in Geneva and virtually end our chances to achieve the major arms reductions
which we have proposed. Instead, they would achieve their objectives through the freeze.

A freeze would reward the Soviet Union for its enormous and unparalleled military
buildup. It would prevent the essential and long overdue modernization of United States
and allied defenses and would leave our aging forces increasingly vulnerable. And an
honest freeze would require extensive prior negotiations on the systems and numbers to
be limited and on the measures to ensure effective verification and compliance. And the
kind of a freeze that has been suggested would be virtually impossible to verify. Such a
major effort would divert us completely from our current negotiations on achieving
substantial reductions.

A number of years ago, I heard a young father, a very prominent young man in the
entertainment world, addressing a tremendous gathering in California. It was during the
time of the cold war, and communism and our own way of life were very much on
people's minds. And he was speaking to that subject. And suddenly, though, I heard him
saying, ``I love my little girls more than anything -- -- '' And I said to myself, ``Oh, no,
don't. You can't -- don't say that.'' But I had underestimated him. He went on: ``I would
rather see my little girls die now, still believing in God, than have them grow up under
communism and one day die no longer believing in God.''

There were thousands of young people in that audience. They came to their feet with
shouts of joy. They had instantly recognized the profound truth in what he had said, with
regard to the physical and the soul and what was truly important.

Yes, let us pray for the salvation of all of those who live in that totalitarian darkness --
pray they will discover the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that
while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual
man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the Earth, they are the focus of
evil in the modern world.

It was C. S. Lewis who, in his unforgettable ``Screwtape Letters,'' wrote: ``The greatest
evil is not done now in those sordid `dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not
even done in concentration camps and labor camps. In those we see its final result. But it
is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clear, carpeted,
warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and
smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.''

Well, because these ``quiet men'' do not ``raise their voices,'' because they sometimes
speak in soothing tones of brotherhood and peace, because, like other dictators before
them, they're always making ``their final territorial demand,'' some would have us accept
them at their word and accommodate ourselves to their aggressive impulses. But if
history teaches anything, it teaches that simple-minded appeasement or wishful thinking
about our adversaries is folly. It means the betrayal of our past, the squandering of our
freedom.

So, I urge you to speak out against those who would place the United States in a position
of military and moral inferiority. You know, I've always believed that old Screwtape
reserved his best efforts for those of you in the church. So, in your discussions of the
nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride -- the temptation
of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore
the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms
race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between
right and wrong and good and evil.

I ask you to resist the attempts of those who would have you withhold your support for
our efforts, this administration's efforts, to keep America strong and free, while we
negotiate real and verifiable reductions in the world's nuclear arsenals and one day, with
God's help, their total elimination.

While America's military strength is important, let me add here that I've always
maintained that the struggle now going on for the world will never be decided by bombs
or rockets, by armies or military might. The real crisis we face today is a spiritual one; at
root, it is a test of moral will and faith.

Whittaker Chambers, the man whose own religious conversion made him a witness to
one of the terrible traumas of our time, the Hiss-Chambers case, wrote that the crisis of
the Western World exists to the degree in which the West is indifferent to God, the
degree to which it collaborates in communism's attempt to make man stand alone without
God. And then he said, for Marxism-Leninism is actually the second oldest faith, first
proclaimed in the Garden of Eden with the words of temptation, ``Ye shall be as gods.''

The Western World can answer this challenge, he wrote, ``but only provided that its faith
in God and the freedom He enjoins is as great as communism's faith in Man.''

I believe we shall rise to the challenge. I believe that communism is another sad, bizarre
chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written. I believe this
because the source of our strength in the quest for human freedom is not material, but
spiritual. And because it knows no limitation, it must terrify and ultimately triumph over
those who would enslave their fellow man. For in the words of Isaiah: ``He giveth power
to the faint; and to them that have no might He increased strength. . . . But they that wait
upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they
shall run, and not be weary. . . .''

Yes, change your world. One of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Paine, said, ``We have it
within our power to begin the world over again.'' We can do it, doing together what no
one church could do by itself.

God bless you, and thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 3:04 p.m. in the Citrus Crown Ballroom at the Sheraton
Twin Towers Hotel.
Following his appearance before the convention, the President attended a Florida
Republican fundraising reception at the hotel and then returned to Washington, D.C.

Ronald Reagan, "Remarks at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals," speech, Orlando, Florida, March 8, 1983, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Public Papers, Reagan Library (accessed May 15, 2008).