SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE:

I wish campaigners had told us that they will do their best to steer us through a world that is a dangerous place with people trying to exploit each other.

If they’d told us the truth, instead of promising that if they win things will be fine, then we might believe them.

But if our American forebearers had voted their fears and not followed their consciences, we would still be British colonialists and would never have had this wonderful country.

Everyone should vote; it is our privilege and responsibility.

People of faith should make our choices based on “content of character,” as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. counseled and on time-tested, eternally trustworthy truths, Micah 6:8, for example: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good: And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly and thoughtfully with your God?”

After we “Fall Back!” Sunday morning with daylight saving time, at Saint Michael & All Angels, the Rev’d Canon Dr. George Regas will be our preacher at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.

On the Sunday before our 2004 presidential election, Regas preached a sermon at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena titled, “If Jesus Debated Sen. Kerry and President Bush.”

At its beginning he said, “I don’t intend to tell you how to vote. Good people of profound faith will be for either George Bush or John Kerry for reasons deeply rooted in their faith.”

The Internal Revenue Service took All Saints to court, claiming that its Rector Emeritus had told parishioners how to vote. The IRS dropped that suit.

Regas concluded his Oct. 31, 2004 sermon: “Bring a sensitive conscience...When you go into the voting booth, take with you all that you know about Jesus, the peacemaker. Take all that Jesus means to you. Then vote your deepest values.”

This is the message I trust he will bring to Corona del Mar tomorrow.

It is the wisdom I will pray when I vote Tuesday, and I wholeheartedly recommend to you his guidance in addition to my Election Day mantra: Vote your hopes, not your fears!

PETER D. HAYNES is the Very Rev’d Canon, Rector/Senior Pastor of Saint Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church in Corona del Mar.