Romney speaks at Christian university ceremony

LYNCHBURG, Va. -- Mitt Romney's Mormon faith has shaped his life, but he barely mentioned it as he spoke to graduates at an evangelical Christian university Saturday.

He barely touched hot-button social issues such as abortion and gay marriage, instead offering a broad-based defense of values such as family and hard work.

"Culture -- what you believe, what you value, how you live -- matters," Romney told graduates on Liberty University's campus. "The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and at the foundation, the pre-eminence of the family."

Instead of a conservative policy speech, Romney discussed his own family and offered a defense of Christianity, saying that "there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action." Still, he was inclusive: "Men and women of every faith, and good people with none at all, sincerely strive to do right and lead a purpose-driven life," Romney said.

He had one sustained applause line in a 20-minute speech delivered days after President Barack Obama historically embraced gay marriage. "Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman," Romney said to a cheering crowd of students who have to follow a strict code of conduct that considers sex out of wedlock and homosexuality to be sins.

The late Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Southern Baptist pastor, founded Liberty University in 1971 to be for evangelical Christians "what Notre Dame is to young Catholics and Brigham Young is to young Mormons," university chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said on commencement day. It's become a destination for GOP politicians looking to speak to the religious right, and Romney's campaign team, planning the speech long before gay marriage became a central issue, viewed it as an opportunity to address the kind of socially conservative audience that had been wary of him during the prolonged primary fight.