During his early Hollywood years, [Reagan] seems not to have attended services very regularly, but Kengor quotes numerous people as being impressed by Reagan's religious convictions at that time.

The author ... very carefully explains Reagan's "religious truancy" -- his puzzling lack of church attendance while serving as president -- by arguing that he was sincerely reluctant to distract congregations with a celebrity's presence and large, intrusive security detail.

--S. T. Karnick, review of Paul Kengor's God and Ronald Reagan: A Spiritual Life at National Review Online

Early in The Brothers Karamazov, after Father Zossima dies, people come to see his body in the hope that it has healing power (Dostoevsky says these people are "far from being all of the humbler classes"). Many people expect that Father Zossima's body literally will not decay in death.

The desperate need conservatives have to see Ronald Reagan as not just a right-wing hero but God's agent on earth has always reminded me of this need to see Father Zossima as more than human.

Why do right-wingers torture the facts to make Reagan into something he never was? Why do they find a Reagan who skipped church because he just didn't feel like going as intolerable as the revered priest's corpse giving off a stink?