Petitions From Conservative Christians Urge the Reagans to Reject Astrology

A Los Angeles broadcasting executive delivered petitions containing 25,000 signatures from conservative Christians to the White House on Monday, calling on President Reagan to “say no to astrology in the White House.”

George Otis, president of High Adventure Broadcasting in Northridge, said in an interview that failure by President Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan to publicly reject astrology would “legitimize astrology and the occult and set our nation on a collision course with God.”

Reagan was in Toronto for the economic summit, but a White House aide who received the suitcase full of petitions said the President and First Lady were aware of the Bible-believing contingent’s alarm over the Reagans’ consultation of horoscopes.

Revelations of White House star gazing were included in a book published last month by former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, who wrote that Nancy Reagan had relied on advice from a San Francisco astrologer to influence the timing of the President’s speeches and travel. The President has not denied consulting astrological charts but insisted that he has never made any policy or decisions based on them.

‘Strong Statement’

The petition, copies of which were circulated to 40,000 individuals and 10,000 churches on Otis’ High Adventure mailing list, says that “since astrology is strongly condemned in the Bible with attendant severe consequences, I . . . as a Bible-believing, born-again Christian . . . ask that you (Reagan) make a strong statement assuring the American public, and the world, it will no longer be tolerated in the White House.”

To base forecasts on the belief that the heavenly bodies form patterns that influence human activities “is a fundamental conflict with our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution,” Otis declared in a telephone interview from Washington. “It’s ‘in God we trust’ or ‘in the stars we trust’; it’s one or the other.”

Otis, the former chief executive of Learjet Corp. in Southern California, has been a staunch supporter of Reagan since he was governor of California and campaigned for him in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections.

High Adventure, founded in 1972, is engaged in numerous conservative religious and political causes. Otis’ powerful radio stations, including several in the Middle East and a short-wave operation in Simi Valley, reach listeners in 122 countries.

Otis said he had been gathering signatures for the astrology petition since May 27 and expected to collect 125,000 more signatures within the next 60 days. Those petitions will also be delivered to the White House, he said.

Mariam Bell, an associate director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, said she had received the petitions from Otis. She turned them over to Reagan’s correspondence office, which screens communications to the President and delivers a sampling to him each week, Bell said.

The petition quotes several Bible passages, including Leviticus 20, Verse 6, in which God says: “I will set my face against anyone who consults mediums and wizards (astrologers) instead of me and I will cut that person off from his people.”

Astrology figures prominently in Eastern mysticism, which is part of the “New Age Movement” now popular in America.

“We love the President and the First Lady,” said Otis, whose stations carry Reagan’s weekly radio broadcasts. “But we want them to keep faith with the strong Christian support which they have by expunging this occult presence from the highest levels of our government.”