Here's an e-mail from a Rightwing Vegetarian…
…Ronald Reagan was a deeply spiritual man, but not a religious one. Do you understand the difference between the two? Peggy Noonan's book on Reagan details Reagan's spiritual outlook. In fact, Reagan often spoke of the power of PRAYER. I do it all the time (but I called it meditation). And no, I don't go to church either. Does this make me a bad person in your book?
Absolutely not. I think there's a whole raft of areas, including consensual sex between adults and spirituality, where the opinions of others are not only inappropriate but largely worthless. Only you really know what goes on in your heart and soul, and no one else has enough insight to judge it, nor do they really have the right. I don't think going to church makes someone a good person or a bad person, nor does not going to church. On the other hand, if you lecture people about the virtues of going to church and then don't go yourself, or if you don't go and you lie and say you do, you shouldn't be surprised if they question your sincerity and honesty.
Did he go back to the same classroom every week? The classroom would have to be secured for one visit, and anyone planning anything probably wouldn't be able to pull something off from one quick visit. If he goes to the same church every week, the secret service would have to essentially occupy and take over the church in order to secure it. I mean come on, you have to know better.
No, I guess I don't know better. It seems to me that if the Secret Service can make it safe for a President to go into a school full of children, they can make it safe for the President to visit a church. Or conversely, if it's dangerous for church-goers to be around him, it's irresponsible for him to go from classroom to classroom, thereby endangering those kids. It's not like it's a vital necessity for the President of the United States to get his picture taken with third-graders.
If varying the church from week to week would have made it safe, then Reagan could have gone to a different one each Sunday, which is I believe what Jimmy Carter did. And for those weeks when he didn't have time to go somewhere, Carter had a chapel set up in the White House, and another one in the Hickory Lodge at Camp David. The latter got a certain amount of attention during the famous Camp David Summit because both President Sadat of Egypt and Prime Minister Begin of Israel used the chapel for their own religious services. Reagan, who could have snapped his fingers and had an army chaplain delivered to his doorstep to deliver sermons, chose not to. Which is absolutely his right. I think it's absolutely okay that Reagan didn't want to go to church. I don't go to church (for obvious reasons) and haven't set foot in a synagogue since I was ten except for funerals, confirmations and the occasional Purim Festival. Nothing wrong with it.
I just think the story's an example of the kind of false image that was built up about Reagan…one that folks like Peggy Noonan are doing their darnedest to maintain. And of course, I also think any president going to visit a school is a very frivolous waste of an important man's working hours. George W. Bush apparently had time to read stories to kids, but not to read all the intelligence reports on Al Qaeda to himself.