Townsend: Calling all liberal Christians
by Colleen Keating
04-27-2007

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend knows religion. As a child, her mother took the entire family to Catholic Mass during the summer — not only Sundays, but every day of the week. She also knows politics. The daughter of Robert Kennedy, niece of John F. Kennedy and a successful politician in her own right, Townsend served for two terms as the lieutenant governor of Maryland.

Now, fed up with what she sees as a losing combination of religion and politics, Townsend has written a book chastising players on the left and the right. It’s called “Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way.” On April 17, she came to the Missouri History Museum to promote it, along with her unabashedly progressive Christian agenda.

I spoke with Townsend on the phone as she was on her way to the airport. The morning’s events had gone well and her book had generated so much interest that she had been speaking with the press all day. Still, she sounded bright and energized as we talked about her topic: encouraging religiously liberal Christians to step to the forefront of American politics. But she says her book is not only addressed to them: “It’s both for Christians and non-Christians so we can understand that we have a progressive faith tradition that’s gone underground. We need to resurrect it,” she says, laughing at her own pun.

Townsend begins “Failing America’s Faithful” with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, an example of the kind of faith-based mercy she’d like to see practiced more. Her argument is that Republicans and conservative Christians have focused on private moral issues, like gay marriage and abortion, in contrast to the biblical emphasis on fighting injustice and poverty. The Democrats don’t get off the hook for Townsend, however.

“The challenge in the Democratic party is that they have focused on programs and policies about particular issues,” she says, but goes on to criticize their narrow perspective. “We have to envision something larger, that brings people together, to sacrifice for each other. And in this country, in which so many people claim to believe in God, it seems appropriate to appeal to spirituality.”

I asked Townsend about the rise in atheism, or at least its public face, with writers like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett successfully selling the message that God does not exist. Does she view them as bad news? This lifelong Catholic admits that atheists are interested in impacting poverty, have long marriages and are “fine, upright citizens.” Still, she says, “There is a yearning for belief in all of us, and without grounding in some belief system, you can be caught up in another ‘-ism.’”

Religious people are not immune to being enslaved to what Townsend calls ‘-isms’ or ideologies. She believes that the Catholic Church, while her spiritual home and a source of comfort, is afraid of women and obsessed with sexuality, to their detriment. In her vision of a human and just society — emerging out of the principles of Jesus — gays and lesbians would be able to get married if they wanted to. She’d like to see the church change its position on this issue, although she doesn’t think the government ought to force churches to perform same-sex weddings.

Townsend sees hypocrisy in the hierarchy on another issue: abortion. “Statistics show abortions go down when Democrats are in power,” she said, alluding to the fact that the Church has threatened to excommunicate pro-choice politicians. If they were really concerned about women, they wouldn’t take such a hard line. “This is a church whose traditions talk about love, and what they are doing is antithetical to the Christian tradition,” Townsend says.

Does this mean she wants the debate about public policy to become a debate about religious ideas? Not necessarily, although “people ought to articulate why they’re doing certain things,” even if those reasons are religious in nature. Yet Townsend continues, correcting herself somewhat: “It shouldn’t be like someone saying, ‘Because I said so.’ Although I hope I can run my family that way, it’s not the way to run a country.” She laughs again.

Her immediate family is made up of her husband, David Townsend, and her four daughters. She herself is the product of a traditionally large Irish Catholic family, as the oldest of eleven children. One famous story about that family’s history is essential to Townsend’s understanding of religion and politics. After her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated, her father gave the then-12-year old girl a note. It read: “As the oldest of the Kennedy grandchildren — you have a particular responsibility now — a special responsibility to John [her cousin] and Joe [her brother]. Be kind to others and work for your country. Love, Daddy.”

Being kind to others and working for her country is the theme that Townsend sounds out repeatedly in “Failing America’s Faithful,” what she calls her “reveille.” It doesn’t occur to her to be bitter because her voice is faint in the clamor of today’s hostile politics. She has no sense of being persecuted, either by the religious conservatives or the secular left. “It’s part of my genes,” she says, “Taking a victim stance isn’t part of my personality, my being.” Instead, taking up the theme her father began in that note, Townsend says, “It’s important to fight back.”

Her hope for the fight in 2008 is Hillary Clinton, despite the many parallels that pundits have tried to make between her father, Robert Kennedy, and Barack Obama. She supports Clinton because “she is smart and has enormous experience.” Townsend believes that Clinton could “walk right into the White House and start governing.” And the comparisons between Robert Kennedy and Barack Obama?

“My father had been Attorney General of the United States, involved in government and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Townsend objects, commenting on what she sees as Obama’s inexperience. Although she adds, “Obama is exciting because he represents another opportunity for people who have been left out of the political process. It’s a very exciting time.”

For Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, that excitement is not about another political victory, but a chance to fulfill Jesus’ command in the New Testament. At the end of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, after a traveler shows mercy to a wounded man, Jesus tells the listening crowd, “Go, and do thou likewise.”

You can e-mail Colleen Keating at ck.write@gmail.com.

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