Talking About Faith

You have to wonder why up to 60,000 callers try each day to place their moral dilemmas before Dr. Laura, as the sharp-witted Laura Schlessinger is known to fans of her nationally syndicated radio talk show.

Often sounding like a no-nonsense nun skewering the lame excuses of an errant pupil, Schlessinger wilts callers daily with blunt cross-examinations and doses of religious morality.

To refer to religious values and moral codes on an ostensibly nonreligious program aired by secular stations carries some risks, she acknowledges.

And yet her morality-based commentary appears to be one reason that in only three years she has expanded her base on KFI in Los Angeles to millions of listeners on 400 stations.

She now holds the No. 2 spot in talk radio. Dr. Laura has passed Howard Stern and is fast approaching No. 1-ranked Rush Limbaugh, according to Michael Harrison, publisher-editor of Talkers Magazine, the talk show trade journal. His publication estimates that Limbaugh has 19 million to 21 million listeners weekly, and Schlessinger has 14 million to 16 million. For most of her 25 years off and on Southern California radio, Schlessinger said, “if a caller got into religion, I’d say, ‘Let’s leave that; that’s not the venue here.’ ”

Five years ago, however, Schlessinger started taking her part-Jewish background seriously, leading to her formal conversion at a Woodland Hills synagogue last year.

She receives regular speaking invitations to synagogues and has made repeat appearances at the Los Angeles Catholic Archdiocese’s annual Religious Education Congress and at the Rev. Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove.

“In some cases her insights are more penetrating than what one hears from church leaders,” the liberal Protestant magazine Christian Century said recently. For listeners tired of hearing complainers shifting blame, the magazine said, “Dr. Laura’s insistence on responsible behavior is sweet vengeance and novel entertainment.”

Schlessinger sometimes surprises callers with her analysis and advice.

On a recent program, one caller said most family members were against extending a baptism invitation to a sexually active grandmother who would undoubtedly bring “her temporary stud” to the ceremony.

Schlessinger took issue: “Sometimes through these very significant, life’s steppingstones moments, people get revelations. We don’t want to disconnect grandma on the off chance that grandma gets her act together experiencing this holy event.”

Schlessinger, 50, had a Jewish father and an Italian mother in a Brooklyn household that was nonreligious and proud of intellectual achievement. Dreaming of teaching science at the university level, she earned a doctorate in physiology at Columbia University--the “doctor” in Dr. Laura.

While teaching biology at USC, she switched career goals by becoming certified in marriage, family and child counseling.

A chance call to a Los Angeles talk radio program hosted by veteran broadcaster Bill Ballance led to guest appearances, then a series of her own shows. When she and husband Lew Bishop, an ex-USC professor who now manages her career, had their son, Deryk, 11 years ago, she quit radio work for nearly four years.

Her interest in Judaism was sparked by a 1992 television documentary on the Holocaust.

Inquiring about membership in 1995 at Temple Aliyah, a Conservative synagogue in Woodland Hills, she was told by Rabbi Stewart Vogel that, by tradition, Jewish identity is passed along through one’s mother. Thus, she would have to take a course at the University of Judaism and go through Jewish conversion rites.

Her lapsed-Protestant husband expects to complete his conversion process by the end of the year.

“I get a ton of mail from priests, ministers and pastors who say ‘thank you, thank you’ after I explain how important it is that a family have a monolith of beliefs, rituals and practice,” she said.

But she is criticized by some Christians for saying that gays and lesbians should not be castigated for wanting intimate companionship. “I am not following Jewish law here, but my conscience does not allow me to say somebody should be alone,” she said.

On the other hand, Schlessinger risks criticism from the gay community by saying the sacrament of marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and that same-sex couples should never adopt babies--only hard-to-place older children, if any.

“So, I’m always making somebody unhappy,” she said.

KFI, which has broadcast her program from noon to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday, started running all three hours of her live show this week. The program is headed for stations in South Africa and England.