In N.H., Gore puts the focus on religion

By Jill Zuckman, Globe Staff, May 23, 1999

DURHAM, N.H. -- Vice President Al Gore launched a new phase of his presidential campaign yesterday as he invoked an Old Testament story in a call for young people to master the temptations of evil and sin.

In a somber address on a sunny, celebratory day, the vice president reminded the 2,400 students graduating from the University of New Hampshire of the ceremony taking place at Columbine High School in Colorado.

"We are still trying to understand, as a nation, why there are empty chairs at that graduation ceremony," Gore said, referring to the April 20 rampage that took 15 lives.

While the nation is prospering, Gore said, there are new challenges for families, children, and society. "What can we do, all of us, to build a future in which all children choose good over evil?" he asked.

The vice president's address, delving into a theme rarely addressed by Democratic politicians, represents an attempt to accelerate his campaign and introduce the public to what the Gore campaign says is the essence of his thinking and personality. It also adds some emotion and sweep to an agenda that is just beginning to take shape, with more talk of education and values, and less talk of traffic congestion.

Elaine Kamarck, Gore's senior policy adviser, said Republicans should not have a lock on religious issues. "The Democratic Party is going to take back God this time," she said of the 2000 race.

Gore is expected to elaborate on this theme in a speech tomorrow to community activists in Atlanta by expounding on the need for religion and faith-based organizations to help fight juvenile crime and drug addiction in much the same way they helped welfare mothers return to work.

Yesterday's discussion of faith, both in Durham and at a forum on safe schools at Dover High School, was prompted partly by the violence at Columbine High School.

Teaching children right from wrong, acting when signs of trouble appear, taking guns away from children and criminals, and demanding more responsibility from parents, Gore said, are all important. But there is more to be done, he said, to change "a toxic culture that too often glorifies violence and cruelty."

Many children, said Gore, feel disconnected from, and rejected and disrespected by, their communities.

"In my faith tradition, I am drawn to the story of the first murder," Gore, a Southern Baptist who attended divinity school, said to the 20,000 people gathered for the UNH graduation.

In the book of Genesis, Cain's offering to God was rejected, while Abel's was accepted, he said. God asked Cain why he was angry.

"If you do well, will you not be accepted?" Gore said God asked. "And if you do not do well, sin lieth at your door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it."

At Dover High School, Gore said the student shooters in Columbine faced sin at their door in the form of Hitler's disciples and teachings of hate on the Internet.

"They still had the duty to resist it or overcome it," Gore said. "It seems to me that they surrendered to it rather than mastering it and overcoming it.

"All of us have the capacity for both good or evil," he said, comparing it to the ability to fight off an infection. "If a child feels connected and feels loved, . . . then that child is going to be less vulnerable to the sin that comes along."

In an interview after the speech, Gore said he has never tried to impose his religious beliefs on others.

"I've never worn my own religious commitment on my sleeve," he said. "I just think we have enough people from other parts of the ideological spectrum doing that and I don't really go for that."

But he said he has always been drawn to religion, and he has not hesitated to affirm his faith when asked. Over the years, however, Gore said, a cynicism about religion has emerged where "anybody who believed in God and had a strong religious faith was sort of weak-minded and irrational and silly. I always felt that was an unfortunate mistake."

He also said that while he does not reject people who have embraced atheism, "I don't agree with it."

Gore's venture into religion is unusual for a Democrat, said John C. Green, a political scientist specializing in religion at the University of Akron.

"The Democratic Party has developed a large, secular constituency of nonreligious people who don't react particularly well to religious language," Green said. In the Republican Party, on the other hand, references to religion are obligatory, he said, particularly with regard to abortion restrictions, prayer in school, and opposition to gay rights.

With the shootings at Columbine and the disgust over President Clinton's sexual escapades, Green said there is a vast hunger for spirituality, meaning, and morality in everyday life.

"Addressing moral concerns can be very effective politically and a way to thwart attempts of Republicans to occupy middle ground by using religious language," Green said.

In raising the subject of good versus evil, Gore pointed to the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, as choosing evil.

"The story from Genesis does have some parallel," Gore said in the interview. "These boys described themselves as outcasts and felt rejected. They became vulnerable to a choice that can be characterized as good and evil."

As he prepares to propose a greater involvement for faith-based organizations tomorrow, Gore said each family needs to make its own choices when it comes to religion.

"I don't think somebody from the government ought to be prescribing what religious beliefs any family should take," he said.

But as a parent, Gore said, "I think there is abundant evidence that if religious observance is consistent with the value system of that family, there are lots of benefits to children if they are taught those values and traditions from their earliest years on."