James Glover II / Star staff Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate, adjusts his microphone while preaching at Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks on Sunday morning.

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James Glover II / Star staff Mike Huckabee plays his bass guitar with the Calvary Chapel church band during services Sunday in Thousand Oaks.

Faith and politics rubbed shoulders in a packed Thousand Oaks church Sunday when former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee preached about the intersection of morality and government, led prayers and thumped out riffs on a Fender bass guitar.

The one-time Arkansas governor, who conceded the Republican nomination to Sen. John McCain earlier this month, took the pulpit for three morning services at evangelical Calvary Chapel Thousand Oaks. He urged people to base their lives on the biblical teaching: Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

"If we all live by that one law, we need no other laws on the books," he said.

The ordained Southern Baptist minister who surged into presidential contention by winning the Iowa caucuses in January knows leaders of the Thousand Oaks church from a national movement aimed at mobilizing evangelical pastors and their congregations. They asked him to preach. He said yes, scheduling the trip for a weekend when he was already in Southern California.

Huckabee sat on the church's raised stage at 7 a.m. in a white button-down shirt, quietly rehearsing with a worship band. He's a classic rocker who plays in a group called Capitol Offense, which has opened for Willie Nelson and REO Speedwagon.

After rehearsal, Huckabee said government leaders have no right to impose their religion on others. But he also complained that politicians and Americans in general sometimes try to disconnect faith and morality from the rest of their lives.

"The duplicity is what bothers me. ... It's the guy who says I love God on Sunday and then acts like he's never met him the rest of the week," he said.

Despite speculation about a run for the vice presidency, Huckabee said he's been given no indication that he is being vetted by McCain, R-Ariz.

Huckabee said he's not ruling out the possibility of a second run for the presidency four years from now.

From the pulpit in a dark suit without a tie, Huckabee addressed services that attracted church members, outsiders and county leaders, including Sheriff Bob Brooks and Supervisor Peter Foy. Huckabee cited scandals that have felled politicians like former governors Eliot Spitzer and Jim McGreevy, and said personal character is the ultimate issue that has to be debated in public.

When people and societies ignore morality, they trigger chain reactions, he said. Police departments need more officers. Prisons need more beds. Society needs more laws. Children grow up not understanding right from wrong.

"It's not that a village raises a child, it's virtues that raise a child," he said.

The way to change government is for people to change the way they live, governing themselves by treating others as they want to be treated, he said.

"If we make up our own definitions of what's right and wrong, the results are a disaster," he said, criticizing societies that tell people to believe and do what they want and to tolerate everyone else's choices.

People have to stop being thermometers that merely gauge and reflect moral climate and establish an understanding of what's right and wrong, he said.

"What we need in America and across the world are thermostats," he said, later praying for people to ask God for moral guidance.

Outside the church, congregants and others used Huckabee's words to support their own contentions that faith, morality and government need stronger connections.

Irma Janssen, a Nevada resident visiting family in Thousand Oaks, focused on the November presidential election.

"When I look at the people who are running, I stop and think how many of those people can I trust?" she said. "Is their word their moral code of honor?"