Sermons on the Campaign Trail

Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren lately has been pointing a lot to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in explaining why he is talking so much--some might say preaching--about “religious values.”

King’s not somebody you’d ordinarily expect to be featured in a conservative Republican’s stump speech. Then again, promoting “religious values” is not your ordinary campaign plank for a gubernatorial candidate. This is uncharted territory.

Lungren suddenly may have a strong wind to his back and be breaking away from the pack. He also may be running off a cliff.

Whichever, people surely are noticing. When Lungren says--as he did during his official campaign kickoff last Wednesday--that “we have to be a religious people” to be successful as a society, that definitely separates him from the other gubernatorial contenders.

When he says, “The future of America and California lies in the conversion of hearts and souls,” and, “We must address the moral erosion and the neglect of virtues”--as he did to a state Republican convention here on Saturday--that generates loud applause from fellow conservatives. But it also raises the eyebrows of many moderates.

Lungren flatly dismisses the thesis that religious values, morals and character should be taboo topics on the campaign trail, let alone the family dinner table. And this is where he points to King, whose “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” Lungren calls “one of the most elegant, provocative and content-filled writings I’ve ever seen.”

In that 1963 letter--written on toilet paper and the margins of newspapers--King referred to Southern blacks as the “disinherited children of God.” In fighting for their civil rights, King wrote, they were “standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage--carrying our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers.”

Our Judeo-Christian heritage is the critical history Lungren is recalling. “You cannot look at the success of the civil rights movement without noting the tremendous role that appeal to spiritual values played in it,” Lungren told reporters Saturday.

“My feeling is that if we are going to deal with the crisis of violence among our youth . . . we have to go beyond police, prosecutors and jails. We have to do something that touches people where they really live.”

*

And just what, Lungren was asked, is that something he would do as governor? This time, he pointed to the conservative icon, Ronald Reagan. Like him, Lungren said, he would “speak to the better angels of the human spirit.” He would speak from the governor’s bully pulpit. And he would “interject a notion of shame in our society.”

Another reporter queried: Where does abortion fit into all this? That gets to the nub of the issue for many voters who support abortion rights and would be leery of any candidate who seemed to threaten them.

Lungren, a devout Catholic, is strongly antiabortion. And he says straight-out that as governor, he would oppose taxpayer funding of abortions, push to require parental consent for a minor’s abortion and fight to ban late-term abortions. But he contends that would exhaust his powers.

In general, however, Lungren lamented the “lack of appreciation for life.” Yes, what he’s talking about “includes abortion,” he said, “but it goes beyond abortion.”

This explanation clearly needs some work. It needs to fit into a much better sound bite.

*

“All I can do is be me,” Lungren said. “[Voters] can pick out phonies. The electorate will reject you if you are phony. . . . I’ve never found the public to punish [candidates] because they have strongly held beliefs that are rooted in principle.”

A candidate could be punished, however, if moderate voters thought he was promoting not only morality but an antiabortion agenda--and if they perceived him to be a preachy, religious zealot.

That’s why Thursday in Bakersfield, Lungren emphasized: “I do not mean--and I want the press to hear this--that I’m suggesting that I’d impose my Catholic tenets on you as a Baptist or as a practicing Jew. Rather, I’m suggesting that those common values we find in the human spirit which are best expressed in our religious practices, they have got to be part of the debate.”

In truth, Lungren surprised his strategists by venturing further than they had expected with the character issue--by using the “R-Word,” religion. “We were a tad concerned,” one concedes. They agree he must be cautious, but they also believe he has latched onto something powerful.

Indeed, perhaps voters are ready for a candidate who truly believes in something--anything--without first having to consult a pollster.