‘Family Values’ Called Smoke Screen : Politics: Pepperdine University president says lack of spirituality is at core of nation’s problems. He implores leaders to stop rhetoric and start taking action on moral issues.

George Bush and Bill Clinton have both attempted to use the “family values” debate to their advantage this campaign season, with varying degrees of success.

But Pepperdine University President David Davenport said he believes that family values is just a catch phrase for a problem that is rooted in a loss of spiritual values.

“One crisis our country is facing is that we’ve lost the spiritual roots of our basic values, and a consensus of what values we want our society to have,” said Davenport, who teaches two courses on politics and religion at the Christian university in Malibu.

At one time, Davenport said, values such as right and wrong, a concern for others and a concern for the world were provided by family, religious organizations and schools. But the power of those institutions has declined.

“One crisis our country is facing is that we’ve lost the spiritual roots of our basic values, and a consensus of what values we want our society to have,” said Davenport, who is entering his eighth year as president of Pepperdine.

“The Republicans were looking at the decline in moral values when they introduced family values,” Davenport, 41, said during a recent interview. “We’ve learned that the family is not the main source of those values anymore. Instead of articulating a need for a moral consensus and a return to spiritual roots, Dan Quayle grabbed a convenient handle.”

Davenport, who is also a lawyer and former minister for the Churches of Christ, teaches “Strategy and Rhetoric of Modern Presidential Campaigns” and “Issues of the Day, Some Christian Perspectives,” which examines the role of Christians and politics.

Rhetoric about family values began when the vice president condemned sitcom character Murphy Brown for having a child out of wedlock, saying she epitomized the lack of family values in liberal Democrats. Republicans continued with attacks on Hillary Clinton for choosing a career over staying home full time to raise her daughter. Democrats insist they are “pro-family,” but say they recognize the variety in American families while “cherishing their own religious traditions.”

The call for a return to family values has faded, replaced instead by a call from Republicans for a return to traditional or American values. But that shift, Davenport says, is not much better.

“It’s more inclusive, but still too vague,” said Davenport, who calls himself a moderate. “There are people who aren’t traditional but who have good values.”

Davenport takes issue with the way religion is being used in the presidential campaign. He said that while Clinton and Bush say they are religious and believe in God, they don’t articulate how they would apply those beliefs to specific problems facing the nation, such as the environment or civil rights.

Davenport said his students also believe religion has been used as a tool to manipulate voters. Many of them think, he said, that the family values issue launched by the Republicans was a masked attempt to attack the character of Clinton and distract voters from the economy.

A slightly higher percentage of Christian voters appears to believe that Clinton will do more than Bush to support family values, according to a poll released Thursday by VISN, the New York-based interfaith cable network. Thirty-eight percent of the 718 registered voters polled in 50 states said that Clinton would be the strongest supporter of family values, compared to 35% who said Bush and 6% who said Ross Perot.

The survey was conducted Oct. 8 and 9 by the New York polling firm Blum & Weprin, which found that “the issue of religion, which has been a focal point of Republican politics for the last 12 years, is not helping Bush in this year’s campaign.”

Among other findings, the poll found that 46% of the voters who attended church five or more times last month supported Clinton, compared to 34% who said they favored Bush. Clinton led Bush by 11% overall among the religious voters polled.

Davenport said he believes Christians need to be a part of government and the political process, though not in the way they are now.

“There is a view that God and government are enemies and that if you serve one, you must steer clear of the other,” he recently wrote. “People say you can’t legislate morality. But it is done all the time and generally without involvement of God’s people.”

But Davenport objects to Christians who make one issue, such as abortion, their sole cause in the political arena. Being a Christian, he said, means looking at the world in a global perspective. Rather than focusing on one issue, he would like to see Christians become more involved in mainstream politics.

“Gathering around abortion and making that a litmus test for a candidate is wrong,” he said. “It is not the purpose of Christians in politics to enforce God’s laws on a whole society of people.”

Instead, Davenport would like to see Christians bringing the principles of love, justice, tolerance and caring for one’s neighbor into the government process.

If the country cannot agree on Christian or spiritual values, it should look toward civic values, which can govern how people treat each other, he said.