This past weekend, an historian remarked that the twentieth century in America will be divided into two eras. The first half of the century will have been defined by Franklin Roosevelt and the second half by Ronald Reagan.

I did not know Reagan well, but on the few occasions we met, I was struck by his personal gentleness and his compassion. He loved to tell the story of a ministry that we been involved in, Agape House in Jefferson City, Missouri, which houses people when they come to visit their family members in the nearby prison. He would talk about Agape House with a bit of a lump in his throat. He honestly cared.

But that?s not the reason he will define the second half of the twentieth century. He will define it because he had the boldness to make a sharp break with American foreign policy by calling evil by its right name. Whether it came from a well formed Christian worldview or from his unfailing intuition, Reagan defined good and evil in a way that reflected Christian truth, and this is what changed the course of history.

I was with Richard Nixon as he tried to navigate through an unpopular war in Southeast Asia and played the Chinese and the Soviets against one another to keep the communist bloc from uniting. We were tough with our military response in Vietnam but at the same time offered all kinds of goodies to the Soviets.

We believed that we needed to come to an understanding with the Soviets, to control the arms race, to co-exist without the constant threat of destroying one another, and to de-escalate the Cold War. Nixon knew that the Russians were willing to outspend us on arms, and he was not getting the support he needed from Congress. The best policy, we determined, was d?nte: Try to make agreements and stabilize the balance of power in the world.

President Ford embraced and even advanced exactly the same policy. So did President Carter.

But when Reagan was elected, all of that changed. He started talking about the ?Evil Empire.? At one time I thought he was being overly simplistic and said so in Christianity Today. But he was right; I was wrong.