Looking back on the era in which evangelicals and political conservatives came together to reshape the American political landscape, Jerry Falwell praised Ronald Reagan as his “Christian hero.” Recalling their first meeting at the White House, “early in [Reagan’s] first term,” the minister departed the Oval Office convinced the newly elected President was “an answer to prayer.” Falwell, the founder of the Moral Majority and a key apostle of the newly mobilized “Christian Right,” rushed “to tell the evangelical world that a new day had dawned in America,” spreading the good news that the President of the United States not only valued the evangelical community, but he viewed them as indispensable allies in forestalling the “nation’s moral collapse."

Over the next two decades, the exultant glow of Falwell’s recollection and his faith in Ronald Reagan remained unshakable. Examinations of Reagan and his relationship with religious conservatives often commence with a form of this question: how did a divorced, moderate-drinking, former movie star turned politician come to epitomize the perfect American statesman for so many evangelicals? Falwell’s comments illustrate at least a partial answer. Reagan appealed to religious conservatives because he embraced their issues and was comfortable speaking their language—and, most significantly, evangelicals found him authentic.

The rise of Ronald Reagan and the revolution that bears his name coincided with the resurgence of conservative evangelicalism in the latter half of the twentieth century. Born (or reborn) in the early moments of the Cold War, both movements shared a compatible worldview: religious conservatives and Cold Warriors each regarded their cause as part of a cosmic struggle, employed a similar oratory of good and evil and expected apocalyptic consequences if they failed in their task.

Coming to personify the “new conservative” political movement, Reagan espoused a set of “timeless” values, “rights and wrongs” and absolutes. His message resonated with a swelling evangelical political activism during the 1970s and 1980s. Reagan, often called the “Great Communicator,” went to evangelicals and effortlessly connected with them, speaking their language; even more significant, he oftentimes employed the vernacular of evangelicals in the secular world. During the Reagan era, and beyond, the rhetoric of conservatism and the rhetoric of evangelical Protestantism was often the same.

Jerry Falwell, with a genius for political engagement based on religious principles, like Reagan, understood the emerging common cause. Falwell transcended the world of "televangelists" to bring together two powerful and historic currrents of American society and help refashion our political culture.