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Tavis: I'm pleased to kick off our second season here on PBS with a special program on morality and the role of religion in American public life. Let's get right to our distinguished panel tonight.

Up first, Dr. Richard Mouw, professor of Christian philosophy at the Fuller Theological Seminary here in Pasadena.

Up next, Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie, president of the council of bishops for the AME Church--the first woman to hold that distinguished position. She's based in Nashville.

Up next, Rabbi Michael Lerner of San Francisco, founder and editor of 'Tikkun' magazine.

And finally, here, a legend in Los Angeles, the Reverend Cecil L. 'Chip' Murray, just retired after 27 years as pastor of the world-famous First AME Church. Glad to have you all here and happy New Year.

Let me start with-- I'm not one who's big on numbers, but this number's fascinating for me. And actually, I don't even need to run through all these numbers, but I think you all know as well as I do that so many Americans told the pollsters at least--I'm not sure I believe all these polls. But so many Americans told pollsters with regard to last year's election that they voted on moral values. They cast their vote on moral values.

I'm having a difficult time, Rabbi Lerner, trying to juxtapose what they told the pollsters with the world that we live in, with the proclivities that we have. So, the first question: do you believe these folk when they say they voted on moral values?

Rabbi Michael Lerner: Yes, I do. There is a real spiritual crisis in American society, and it's a crisis that's rooted in the materialism and selfishness of the competitive marketplace and the experience that people have all day long, where they learn that the bottom line is to maximize money and power. People do that, and they come out of that workplace and bring that into their personal lives and then find themselves surrounded by an ethos of selfishness that really upsets them.

But here's the interesting and contradictory reality. We both don't like that-- in fact, feel dirtied by having to make it in the real world, where the real world is dominated by that ethos of selfishness and materialism--and yet simultaneously feel that's the only way we can be, because that's what everybody else is going to be. So this split in people makes for, on the one hand, being realistic means going along with materialism and selfishness and trying to look out for number one and make it for yourself, but on the other hand, it leaves people feeling like they want some other way of escaping that.

And so they're very responsive when somebody in the political sphere is willing to talk about some kind of spiritual values or some kind of ethical values that transcend that. And unfortunately, in this election, you only heard that coming from the right-wing side of the political spectrum. You did not hear that discourse coming from the Democratic side, so even though from my perspective the Democrats actually maintained and actually came from a deep moral and spiritual place, they didn't articulate it in a way that could respond to the crisis that people were feeling in their lives.

Tavis: Reverend Mouw, I'm not even sure I want to ask a question. I just saw your eyes twitching 2 or 3 times, so I'm not going to ask anything, but I assume the rabbi said something you wanted to respond to.

Reverend Richard Mouw: Yeah, no. I think that--I agree with much of what he said. I really think, as I talk to the kind of people who gave the kind of answer that you cited, many of them are just deeply concerned about how are we going to raise our children in this world. They're concerned about the radical implications of the sexual revolution, and we're getting into the whole Kinsey thing again. And I think that that did start something in our culture that was a very disturbing thing for a lot of us who care about our children and our grandchildren, and a fragmentation of life, a ways in which personal values have gotten disassociated from a lot of the other kinds of issues that people face.

Tavis: Bishop McKenzie--I'm sorry.

Reverend Cecil Murray: When we come into the religious community with morality-- right and wrong--all right, that's right. But there's one thing better than right and wrong, and that's good and bad. So you have the right-wing religious community: what's right, what's wrong. But there was a time when they were anti-females, when they were pro-slavery, when they were pro-war. So I think the religious sector has to reach for what's good or bad as compared to what's right or wrong, because what's legal is sometimes not good.

Tavis: Let me ask you though, Reverend Murray, and I don't ask this question but I'm wondering whether or not, in the world we live today, whether or not there really is still a distinction between what's good and bad, a distinction between what's right and wrong. I think one could argue legitimately we live in a world where people make their own decisions about what's good and bad, what's right and wrong for themselves, for their children. Is there a universal definition of those things anymore? Where do we start?

Rev. Murray: There cannot be a universal definition, but the religious sector and the private sector must sort of talk to each other about it, and we cannot just assume the religious sector is doing what is good, even though it's doing what's right. Because it may be doing what's legal, but it's not doing what's fair or equitable or good.

Tavis: Before I submerge deeper, Bishop McKenzie, let me ask you whether or not you believe, to the question I asked Rabbi Lerner, whether or not you believe that we are a nation that really values our morals, values our ethics. And I ask that against the backdrop of your being a bishop of the AME Church. I guess if everybody believed that, one of two things would happen: Your churches would be overflowing more than they are, or you would have nobody up in there, because we'd be such good people we wouldn't need to come to church on Sunday. There's somebody lying here.

Bishop Vashti McKenzie: Well, we would say, yes, you would still need to come, because just being good doesn't necessarily qualify you for eternal life, but that's another program for another day.

Tavis: I'm in trouble now if you're saying that, but anyway, go ahead.

Bishop McKenzie: I think that we are confused. Our pursuit of happiness has been, along with what Rabbi Lerner said, according to our materialistic, our consumerism--that's what we want. That's what we consider the pursuit of happiness, in ignoring the other process that we value, things that you can't buy--love, dignity, integrity, respect-- not just for ourselves, for our community, for the people that we live in. So there seems to be a great disconnect between what we say we believe and what we actually do, and our actions really prove what we believe. So I think we hold on to the ideal. This is a good thing to believe in this. This is a good value. This is a good thing. And this is what we all ought to be upholding, but our actions betray us.

Tavis: Dr. Mouw, while some celebrate, though--while there are those who celebrate the fact that people are once again finding their faith--they're reconnecting with their morals and values. Again, if we're to believe what these election results tell us, one, I guess, could celebrate the finding again of faith in America. On the other hand, a lot of folk are not celebrating that, because it is starting to mix, in a rather uncomfortable way for some, this notion of religion and politics, church and state, that we are told are supposed to be inseparable. Are you concerned about this?

Dr. Mouw: I'm not too concerned about it, actually, because I really think that a lot of the folks that are being accused of trying to impose their values or trying to impose their religious perspective--I don't really think they want to do that. You know, many of these same folks who have been so put down by the elite are people who, I'm finding in the evangelical world, the white evangelical world, a lot of folks who are deeply concerned about AIDS in Africa. They're supporting WorldVision and other organizations that are dealing with hunger and homelessness. Even the Promise Keepers organization did a lot to promote concern for racial reconciliation, so that I think that there's--people are looking for ways in which they can put together their political lives, their family lives, but also the deep moral concerns that they have about other human beings.

Tavis: Mm-hmm. I wonder--back to your point you made earlier, Rabbi Lerner, I want to pick up on why it is though that the right engages itself politically unapologetically, and let's face it, in a much more successful way, depending on how one defines success. Certainly with regard to this election, they won. The left lost. But the religious right engages itself unapologetically and knows how to do this. The left, one can argue, is almost afraid to say G-o-d. And maybe that bespeaks why they aren't so good at playing beyond 17 states, rather then seeing red all across the map as we saw on election night. What's wrong with the left? Why don't they get it where this notion of faith and selling it is concerned?

Rabbi Lerner: Well, first of all, I think you're absolutely right. And there's a tremendous problem there, because on the one hand, people on the left that I've spoken to--and I come from the liberal and progressive world and very affirming of that world and its values. But many of them say, 'How can they be talking about values when these people who claim to talk about values and caring about, for example, human life, they don't care about the suffering of poor people-- the starvation, the fact that there are over a billion people on this planet who are right now starving, in deep trouble? According to the United Nations, 29,000 kids die every single day, every single day on this planet from inadequate food and health care. So how can they claim to be caring about anybody? What kind of values are they talking about?'

I think the people who make that argument, although they have a very good point, are missing another point, and that is that there really is some hunger for a framework of meaning and purpose to people's lives that transcends the marketplace. And the left has been allergic to that. It has had a certain hostility towards religion. Now, on the one hand, that hostility I can understand insofar as religion in the past has been patriarchal, sexist, homophobic.

I understand that upset, but unfortunately too many people in the liberal and progressive world have thrown the baby away with the bath water. They've said that because of the bad history of religion, because of the way in which religious wars were fought, because of the intolerance that religious communities have shown in the past, we don't want to have anything to do with it, and we want to protect the public sphere from all these values that they're going to insert into it.

But meanwhile, what they succeed in doing is not really protecting the public sphere, because the right is already in the public sphere with its religious and spiritual values, and the liberals and progressives who say, 'We don't want that to happen,' keep their own values out. They don't keep right-wing values. The right is triumphing in the public sphere.

Tavis: The problem I have with this, Reverend Murray, though, is that traditionally, historically, the left has been able to use--pardon the phrase-- the African American church, the black church, as it were, to advance its agenda of peace and justice and a number of other issues. They've been able to advance the political agenda vis-*-vis the black church. The Republicans got smart, figured this out. In this election, they went to the black church and were able to pick up a few percentage points in the black community. Why is it? What happened? What did I miss about how the right figured out how to use the institution of the church, as it were, better than the black folk who've been doing this through the Democratic Party for so many years?

Rev. Murray: Tavis, being on the right does not equate to being in the right. For instance, the separation of church and state. We talk a lot about the bully pulpit, and that would indicate the preacher with the Bible in one hand and a stick in another hand. And it is essential to America that we keep the separation of church and state. There's a price to pay, but when you have that Bible in one hand and that stick in another, soon both of them are going to end up in one hand. And we run a high risk of the right wing taking over the bird and causing the bird with one wing to fly in circles, because here you are going to protect people. Then the question comes-- who will protect us from our protectors?

Tavis: But how did they get better at it, the right? How did the right get better at using the church as a vehicle?

Rev. Murray: They use God. You can't beat God. Here's the Bible, and the word says... Yeah, but they also read out of that word that slavery was all right. They also read out of that word that war is all right. They also read out of that word that you're condemned if you have AIDS. So we keep changing. It's easy to grab a hold of God's garment and a stick, and that's where we get in trouble.

Dr. Mouw: doesn't Dr. King have the Bible in one hand and convince all of us that justice could roll down like a mighty stream? I mean, there...

Tavis: Sure.

Bishop McKenzie: One of the rules of engagement is, is that we have to vilify the persons that we are against. One of the things that happened between the right and the left is that when the African American church community stands up and says, 'This is what we value. This is what we believe. This is what we're for,' then all of a sudden, that's now a violation of your 5013c, and we're going to send people to sit in your churches and sit in your pews, and we're going to listen to what happens on Sunday morning and to be sure that you don't violate your nonprofit status. Now this becomes adversarial. So now people-- there's intimidation, there's fear, so I can't say the G-o-d word, and I have to be careful about what I do.

But then on the other side, doing the absolute same thing, you're not vilified. Your 5013c is not threatened. And when you listen to the sermons that led up to the election--oh, right in the midst of it--if you believe this word, then you cannot support anyone who comes close to dividing this word wrongly or any shadow of it. So they're doing the exact same thing, except for on one side, it's OK. It's mom and apple pie and the flag, and this is what we're going to go for. And on the other side, oh, you're in violation of your 501c3 status.

Tavis: Dr. Mouw, I guess the question is what is the danger? If you see a danger... What's the danger? If you give credit to the right-- For the sake of argument, let me just do this. Let's give credit to the right, the religious right, for at least raising the issues of morals and values and ethics. We want a president of integrity and high moral standard, you know, and integrity and character. Let's give them credit for raising those issues. What's the danger though in raising those issues almost exclusively in the context of 2 issues--gay marriage and abortion? What's the danger in there?

Dr. Mouw: Oh, I think there's a real danger simply because the biblical perspective as I understand it is a much broader perspective. I care deeply about those issues, and I'm conservative on those issues, but I also care about hungry people and homeless people. I care about people who have been ravaged by war, and I care about the kind of thinking that often goes into invading other countries and the like, so that these are important issues.

But, you know, that whole question of religion in public life... I mean, Abraham Lincoln talked a lot more about God than just about anybody else up until George Bush, but Abraham Lincoln did it in the context of calling for healing, calling for forgiveness. He wanted to appeal to the will of God as something that could bind up the nation's wounds. And I'm not against talking about God in public life. I like Jesse Jackson. I like Bishop Tutu. I like Martin Luther King. Lyndon Johnson stood before the Congress and said on civil rights, on the Civil Rights Act, God is on our side.

Tavis: I take you at your word, as one on the right, when you say to me that you care about a variety of issues, not just abortion and gay rights, but there's other issues as well. I guess the question is why it is that your brethren cannot convince America of the same. That is to say, why can't the religious right convince America that they do care about the least among them?

Dr. Mouw: Yeah.

Tavis: Those who are socially, politically, economically disenfranchised. Why can't they sell that?

Dr. Mouw: Well, I think that's been a defect, that we have so zer...d in on sexual issues, on the sexual revolution, which I think is an important issue, and I don't think it's something that we can just dismiss. But at the same time, we have to be concerned about children that have gotten out of the womb, but are having a miserable time in life. We have to be concerned about children around the world who are suffering from AIDS orphans in Africa and the like. And I think there's a growing concern among many of the people who talk about personal values. There's a growing concern. Saddleback Church--Rick Warren, best-selling author of 'Purpose Driven Life.' The next 40 days, they're going to feed every homeless person in Orange County 3 times a day. I think that's a wonderful thing, and there's a model there.

Tavis: Let me pick up on that notion and give Rabbi Lerner a chance to expound upon this. What is behind-- I was just reading The New York Times the other day, an article that talked about, for lack of a better word, the revolution that is taking place around books like 'The Purpose Driven Life' by Rick Warren. There's a whole cottage industry, and I don't even want to call it a cottage industry, because it's a multi--it's like a billion dollar industry now of books and tapes, et cetera--product and the like around the notion of empowering people around the issue of spirituality. What's driving that?

Rabbi Lerner: Well, as we say at Tikkun, there is a fundamental meaning need that is just as important as any material need. It is a hunger to transcend the selfishness and competitiveness of the materialist marketplace and to connect one's life to some abiding purpose. Now, that need has been spoken to onlyoprimarily--in the right-wing churches, but I believe that there is a common ground that both liberals and progressives and serious religious people could go for. And that, in my view, would be a very progressive, but also a spiritual politics that could unite us, and that is to call for a new bottom line in American society.

Right now, institutions are judged efficient, rational, and productive to the extent that they maximize money and power. I say that the new bottom line has to say that those same institutions are judged efficient, rational, and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, kindness and generosity, ethical and ecological sensitivity, and our capacities to respond to the universe with awe and wonder. Take that as your criteria, and you would see that almost every institution in American society is inefficient, irrational, unproductive. They don't tend to produce loving and caring people. They don't tend to produce ethically and spiritually and ecologically sensitive people. They don't encourage us to respond to the universe in a nonmanipulative way, but to respond to the universe with awe and wonder.

Tavis: Let me--

Rabbi Lerner: We need a new bottom line, and that new bottom line could unite right and left in a whole new spiritual politics.

Tavis: There's my sermon. I ain't got to go to church this Sunday. Bishop, I ain't gonna see you on Sunday. I got it already.

Reverend Murray, let me ask you though, given what Rabbi Lerner just lays out now, and he articulates what the agenda ought to be, but tell me what the religious left, the progressive left doesn't get about how to sell that.

Rev. Murray: I think the religious left gets it better than the religious right. Please forgive me.

Tavis: You don't believe that. You don't believe that. The right's selling this thing. The left lost on these issues, Reverend.

Rev. Murray: Yes, but it's selling it for right now. Where will it be in a half a century or a century? Where will it be down the road? Here we have religion and politics: North Pole, South Pole. Please keep them there. Please don't let the holy people take over the nation. Please let the left stand up and say, 'Well, that's a little too much;' the right stand up and say, 'Yes, that's a little too much.'

Let the dialogue continue. It's like North Pole, South Pole, but in between you have magnetic lines of flux joining them all. Let's keep the magnetic lines of flux, but let's keep them poles apart, because it was the religious right that says it's all right to go to war, killing each other here. Here's--as you said a while ago, when you look at the fact that 70 million people will die of starvation this year, 400 million are suffering malnutrition right now--the religious right has said that slavery was all right. 98 churches bombed in a little over one year--the religious right, there. Even took up the cross in the name of the religious right.

Rabbi Lerner: But that hypocrisy--

Tavis: Rabbi Lerner, let me jump in real quick. With all due respect to these 2 fine sermons here, Bishop McKenzie, it still is not lost to me that--I'll do this right quick here--that whether you talk about the black community or the Latino community, the black or the brown community, both of these communities have always been more, traditionally speaking, more conservative on the moral questions, more liberal on the social questions. If, in fact, that dynamic is true, and it is, one could use that to argue that in the coming months and years, the right, the political right is going to fare even better with black and brown folk on these conservative questions.

Bishop McKenzie: It just may happen if we don't learn how to say what we really want to say. The problem is one of getting our agenda forward, is the problem that it's not popular. It doesn't make money. It doesn't push any hot buttons. It will not bring any campaign funds in the door. Peace and loving people and kindness and humanity, the bottom line--that's not popular. They're not going to have a campaign for that. That's not going to raise any money. The candidate's not going to win on that. Feeding hungry children, starving and homeless people-- that's not going to win any campaigns. But if you say homosexuality, sexual freedom, those are hot buttons that people push, and that's what gets their agenda open.

Tavis: I got to say it's time to go, but you pushed a lot of buttons up in here tonight, so... Dr. Mouw, thank you. Bishop McKenzie, thank you. Rabbi Lerner, thank you. Reverend Murray, thank you, as well.

Thank you for joining us.