Christopher Reeve

Director/Actor

Reeve is probably best known for his role as Superman and an accident which left him paralyzed from the neck down.

Reeve was in Minneapolis October 27, 1996 speaking at the Courage Center, a support organization for the disabled. According to David Peterson's story in the October 29 Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the following exchange took place:

Q: Do you believe in the Lord?

A: Even though I don't personally believe in the Lord, I try to behave as though He was watching.

Peterson writes the audience responded with "Huge applause for a moment that was typical for its simplicity and candor."

A 1997 Cinemania gossip column titled 'Christopher Reeve: Inspirational Atheist' quotes his brother...

"Also at the In the Gloaming premiere was the film's director, Christopher Reeve, who managed to show up despite having undergone surgery only hours before to repair a broken arm. So where does the former Superman star get his undaunted courage? Well, according to his brother Ben, a nonpracticing Massachusetts lawyer who also attended the screening, not from God. 'We're devout atheists, so that wasn't it,' explained the ever-nonpracticing Ben." (column by Roger Friedman during the week of April 24, 1997)

A reader reports that the (1997?) 'Christopher Reeve: A Celebration of Hope' television special featured 'songs which mentioned God and Christianity'. What this suggests is not clear yet. Interested readers should send in any new info they find.

From a May 1998 appearance on Larry King Live on CNN (transcript)

KING: A lot of questions are coming in about faith, and the last time you were with us, I asked this, if you prayed and you said you thought that would be hypocritical; you didn't pray before this, why pray now? Has -- have you gotten any feelings of faith or God through all of this? Lot of people asking that.

REEVE: Well, believe it or not, I think that, y'know, God is not an entity that you find when you go to church and pray to God almighty, you know, and I always remembered that going to church as a kid, you know, and they talk about the vengeance of His terrible swift sword and His army, I said, "well that's kind of a scary guy." But I think that -- while I don't believe in God, per se, I believe in spirituality. And I believe that spirituality actually is automatically within ourselves, but we have to learn how to access it, and what that is, is realizing there is a higher power; there is...

KING: So it's not atheism?

REEVE: ... more than just us, there is an inner strength, there is something, y'know, that comes from -- I don't know where exactly it comes from, but it's -- it really is the best that humans can be and perhaps what it is -- perhaps really what it is love.

From a Barnes and Noble/America Online Chat with Christopher Reeve that occurred May 7, 1998:

Jessekay: In the book, your spirit leaves your body at one point and looks down on it from the corner of the hospital room. Do you draw any spiritual conclusion from that?

Reeve: I feel strongly that we are not our bodies. In fact, if a person says "my body," who is the "me" that is being referred to? Clearly, the spirit and body are two different things. And beyond that, I'm still searching for the meaning of it all.

with contributions from BB, RBT, DA and others

This interview prior to his death appears to be grounds for his removal from the Ambiguous category:

From http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=13712 . . .

RD: You went nearly 50 years without religion in your life. What made you recently join the Unitarian Church? Reeve: It gives me a moral compass. I often refer to Abe Lincoln, who said, "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. And that is my religion." I think we all have a little voice inside us that will guide us. It may be God, I don't know. But I think that if we shut out all the noise and clutter from our lives and listen to that voice, it will tell us the right thing to do. The Unitarian believes that God is good, and believes that God believes that man is good. Inherently. The Unitarian God is not a God of vengeance. And that is something I can appreciate.