A Spiritual Awakening : Part 1

Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way
by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

For too long the subject of religion has been politicized by the right and largely ignored by the left, as American churches have become increasingly more concerned with what people do with their bodies than with their souls. Now Kathleen Kennedy Townsend issues a spiritual call to arms to all those who feel that churches in America today-Catholic and Protestant alike-are ...

The traditional role of the church in this country has been to promote the welfare of those in the community who depend on it-the poor, the sick, those in need. Yet American churches today are more involved in offering prescriptions for what one ought not to do than in working for the greater good.

Kennedy Townsend movingly recalls what it was like to grow up as the eldest Kennedy of her generation, a member of a prominent Catholic family at a time when both America and the Church were undergoing a revolutionary transformation. She documents how America's churches have been in the forefront of the fight for social progress: from the original struggle for independence, to the abolitionist movement, to the support of women's suffrage, better working conditions, and civil rights. And she shows how today's churches, allied with the political right, have created a new social agenda and have become obsessed with fighting legal and legislative battles about personal and private issues, while the neediest of our country are forgotten.

But opposition to this distortion of Christian traditions has been growing, and Failing America's Faithful provides powerful examples of individuals altering the current state of affairs, from prominent figures like Rick Warren to anonymous Christians who are heeding a call to help their neighbors.

This book's inspiring message is one of hope and spiritual renewal. Powerful and provocative, Failing America's Faithful demonstrates how Americans can reclaim their religious traditions and transform their churches, their lives, and this very nation.

Chapter 1

Now, more than ever before, we Americans are finding faith. We are improving our lives - learning through faith to be kind to ourselves, to our spouses and children, to our neighbors. We are giving charity through our churches. We are speaking about morality and values in a way we haven't done in a generation. If the great anxiety of moral folks since the 1960s was that America was in danger of becoming a country of empty values - an amusement park illuminated by self-interest, consumerism, and Hollywood-inspired ambition - they should no longer fear. The Passion of the Christ was one of the most popular films of 2004. Twenty-two percent of Americans said "moral values" was the most important issue for them in the 2004 presidential election - yes, a minority, but a huge number when you consider that we were also a country at war in a failing economy. This is not the 1990s decade of stock market bubbles and rampant materialism. This is the decade of faith.

And yet I wonder. In my lifetime, even while faith has expanded its reach, it has become narrower. When I was a child, we learned that to be religious was to be part of a community, and that the purpose of our faith was to improve the world, not just our own lives. In this theology, the individual prayer was a droplet in a global lake, rippling its effects out to the farthest edges of the pool. I was a teenager and young adult in the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s, when America was riven by cultural change. This turbulence touched my family daily. How did we respond? In our Catholic church and in our home we prayed to be good and virtuous.

We prayed for my uncle John Kennedy, and my father, Robert Kennedy, to be the best public servants that they could be. We prayed that our leaders would have the strength to go forth and help those starving children in Mississippi or West Virginia. (And yes, there are children in America whose lives are just as desperate today as they were when my father toured the country and told us, his blue eyes dark with outrage and his hands shaking, what he had found, hidden, in this great country.) And finally, we prayed that our government would have the good sense and good grace to put into place policies that would help not only us but also every person in America to live with dignity.

Today, that is not what I see. Don't get me wrong: You may pray and give money to your church, and give support through your church to all sorts of good causes, as do I. But fear and intolerance have taken hold. Instead of emphasizing the fact that we are all children of God, faith in America now divides communities. Virtue is something that takes place in your own home, in your church, and perhaps in your neighborhood if you are very lucky. The fastest-growing churches in the country - evangelical churches - tend to emphasize personal salvation over the creation of a more just nation. And many of those churches, along with my own Catholic Church, are using "moral values" as a code with which to attack those who don't believe as we do. Most of the millions of dollars congregants give to churches every year go not to help the needy outside of the church community, but for infrastructure and expansion of their own churches. Our priests and ministers send us out into the world to find others whose faith most resembles our own, not to work every day for those who need us most, regardless of their faith. Today faith builds walls to keep the threatening, encroaching world out, rather than moving us in ever-widening ways into the world that so desperately needs our help.

And our culture supports this inward turn. In the 1990s I was the lieutenant governor of Maryland, where I tried to make my drop of prayer ripple out. I spent my days pushing - pushing government officials, community leaders, businesspeople, schoolchildren - to support initiatives that promoted justice to the widest possible community: fighting drug use, reducing gun violence, putting into place character education, providing health care to children, protecting the Chesapeake Bay. These programs worked. When I ran for governor in 2002, the Washington Post praised me as a politician with a "moral compass." Nonetheless, I saw that these values did not turn people on. As I campaigned across the state, voters would shake my hand and then, as soon as I began to tell them what we had achieved and what needed to be done, I could see their eyes glaze over; they were simply not as excited about these results as I was.

I'm still asking myself, Why? Why did a majority not feel, personally, the suffering and the need of their neighbors and the commitment to make communities stronger? I don't have all the answers, but I know that we have gotten out of the habit of thinking of ourselves as part of the wider world. We no longer hear in our churches, or in our homes, the daily reminder that to walk in God's path is not just to pray or give charity, but also to work for justice for every creature on His earth.

This book is a reveille in which I hope to share the spiritual awakening that shaped my life and I hope will enlighten yours - giving us the courage to renew our country's great promise.

To some, spiritual awakenings come in a sudden flash of recognition and revelation. But my spiritual awakening, as I suspect is true for many others', has steadily unfolded over the course of my life as I gained a deeper understanding of the truths I learned as a youth. I knew as a young girl that God created me, loved me, and wanted what was best for me as He did all his creatures. With the passing of years, and the tragedies and challenges that I have had to face, I have had to struggle to reclaim my faith, and the strength to fight for justice that goes hand in hand with it.

Many times I have had to find hope even in terrible loss, and I have had to learn to immerse myself in life's challenges rather than to run away in fear. But these tests have only deepened my understanding of the power of God's love and the obligations that come along with it. Now, I'm struck with how it has given me the ability to look at the world with new eyes and see how truly blessed I and, indeed, all humanity is. I have seen how good the world can be and the responsibility we share to make it better for everyone.

Copyright © 2007 by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

About the Author

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the eldest child of Robert F. Kennedy, worked in the U.S. Department of Justice before serving two terms as Maryland's lieutenant governor. She has taught at Georgetown University and the University of Pennsylvania, speaks regularly on political and religious issues, and is engaged in philanthropic work. She and her husband have raised four daughters and live in Baltimore.