Nancy Reagan & God

Yesterday was Nancy Reagan’s funeral, and The Washington Post ran a reminder story of the controversy surrounding her astrologer, Joan Quigley, who died in 2014.  After Don Regan was fired as White House chief of staff his 1988 memoir angrily exposed how plotting President Reagan’s schedule was complicated by Nancy’s insistence that she first consult Quigley. Referred to Nancy by mutual friend Merv Griffin, on whose 1970s talk show Quigley was a regular, Quigley was an old money California Republican who thought Ronald Reagan from the start had a “brilliant” horoscope foretelling his greatness.  Quigley had claimed to Griffin that she could have warned the President that the day he was shot in 1981 would be dangerous, a claim Griffin passed to Nancy.

Obsessed with her husband’s safety, Nancy began anxiously seeking Quigley’s counsel, evidently believing that reading the stars could help protect him from future danger.  Nancy’s memoir recounts that she had sought spiritual reassurance from longtime friends Billy Graham and Don Moomaw, the Reagans’s longtime California Presbyterian pastor.  But she ended up relying on Quigley as a “crutch,” as the astrologer also became a good “friend” and sort of “therapist” who counseled Nancy about her children and aging parents.  Nancy’s memoir professes agnosticism about astrology but offers no regrets since the guidance from Quigley didn’t hurt and her husband remained safe.  She noted that she was open to astrology because of a lifetime spent with show business people, including her actress mother, who were often susceptible to “superstititions,” not fully believing them but “hedging their bets.”  Her husband, who as a former actor had his own playful superstitions, had warned her that the astrologer would be a problem if ever exposed, and Nancy admits in her memoir she had politically miscalculated.

Exposure of Nancy’s astrologer created controversy especially among Evangelicals, who had been among President Reagan’s strongest supporters.  Billy Graham, who recalls Reagan as the President to whom he was closest, was “amazed” by the revelation, not thinking Nancy was so “guillible.” He phoned her to speak “frankly.”  She responded that media accounts were only 10% true.  He urged her to “seek her guidance from the Lord instead.”  Other Evangelicals distinguished between Reagan’s strong faith and his wife’s less public beliefs,  McLean Bible Church Pastor Lon Solomon at the time said “most of us cherish the notion that Reagan trusts Jesus Christ. It has never been confirmed that she does.”

Nancy mollified some of these concerns late in the presidency when tearfully addressing an evangelical youth gathering, recounting how her husband several years earlier had urged her dying, troubled stepfather who had lost has faith to trust in the Lord, which led her stepfather to die peacefully.  Her mother had been Presbyterian but her stepfather, after being defrauded as a child out of a Sunday school prize in favor of a rich boy, had rejected Christianity until his apparent deathbed conversion.  Nancy’s mother was Presbyterian.  Reagan was raised Disciples of Christ but after marrying Nancy began eventually attending Belle Aire Presbyterian, an affiliation continuing until their deaths.  As a widow worshipping alone in recent years she invited secret service agents to join her in singing from the hymnal.  Rev. Moomaw, a friend and pastor of over 50 years, although now himself elderly, presided over a small family service for Nancy before the public funeral. His successor, Rev. Michael Wenning, who died in 2011, was also close to the Reagans and presided at the President’s funeral.

A Time magazine commentary after the 1988 astrology controversy observed that President Reagan had a confident faith in Providence while Nancy seemed more uncertain.  The controversy recalls Mary Todd Lincoln’s seeking out mediums for seances to contact her deceased little son.  Her husband skeptically indulged the habit.  Like Nancy, Mary was Presbyterian but the consolation of her faith was insufficient for her grief.   The mediums were largely proven to be frauds though they did warn of Lincoln’s safety, including one medium who had first hand knowledge of John Wilkes Booth, who himself had also sought his service to contact the dead.

Mary Todd emotionally degenerated further after the horror of her husband’s assassination, although she seems not to have relied on mediums again.  Nancy had sought supernatural assistance via astrology to avoid her husband’s assassination but the habit seems to have ended when publicly exposed.  Hopefully she found greater comfort in her faith and is now at peace in the presence of the husband whose wellbeing was her supreme concern.