Townsend's new book urges Christians to help the poor

Townsend would have been governor had she not suffered a stunning defeat in 2002. Instead, she has spent the past three years contemplating religion and politics and proposes a rewrite of the social contract.

In a slim book, ‘‘Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way,” Townsend outlines how Christians should redirect their religious leaders away from divisive issues and toward caring for the poor.

‘‘The megaphone of the Bible has been focused on the disenfranchised. ... That’s where God’s priority is. It should be our churches’ as well,” she says.

Townsend’s 206-page jeremiad, out this week, fires shots right and left.

‘‘The right pretends that virtuous activity occurs only in the sphere of private behavior, not through government intervention,” she writes.

A paragraph later she asserts: ‘‘Among the leaders of the left, we find a different malady. They are obsessed with keeping religion out of the public sphere, demanding a perfect purging of faith from public life far beyond what our Founding Fathers means by ‘separation of church and state.’”

A personal touch

While the book blasts Democrats and Republicans, Catholics and Protestants, it also is a memoir with an intimate look into a family that has been a part of American politics for more than 50 years.

Townsend tells how her father wrote a note to her on the day her uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was buried, reminding her of her responsibilities as the eldest Kennedy grandchild.

The note ended: ‘‘Be kind to others and work for your country. Love, Daddy.” Daddy, of course, was Robert F. Kennedy, who, like his brother, was assassinated.

Townsend says one of her favorite parts of ‘‘Failing” is a story from 1968, when her father and Ronald Reagan were interviewed by the British television journalist David Frost. Frost asked both men why people were put on Earth. Reagan’s answer: ‘‘for individual fulfillment.” Bobby Kennedy’s answer: to help others.

‘‘And that’s a classic question: Why are we here? And it helps take us back to first principles,” Townsend says, sitting forward in one of the coffeehouse’s easy chairs.

As she writes fondly of a Roman Catholic Church that valued service to others, she laments that the modern-day church is now ‘‘building walls to keep the evil world out.”

Here begins the new social contract — or at least a proposition to shred the codicils put in place over the past 40 years. She calls on Catholics and Protestants to live in that world and regain the spirit that launched a dozen progressive causes: child labor, prison reform, women’s voting rights, abolition, civil rights.

‘‘If our churches can begin to be guided again by the compass of the cross — which points to faith, hope and love — they will begin to walk down a new path of purpose,” she writes.

The disconnect

Although she’s best known as Maryland’s lieutenant governor, Townsend’s back story provides the framework for someone pondering the intersection of public life and private faith.

She once considered becoming a nun. In college, she spent time on an Indian reservation in New Mexico. She fought for Maryland public schools to force students to fulfill service learning requirements.

In the interview, Townsend says part of the reason she wrote the book is to remind people of the history of the progressive church and its role in social reforms. ‘‘We’ve got this great tradition, but unfortunately, it’s been forgotten,” she says.

And she wrote the book because she wanted to show the connection between faith and the common good.

‘‘There was an argument that religion should stay out of politics. And I think we’ve seen that that’s not feasible and really not appropriate,” Townsend says. ‘‘What is politics about if not to create a better society?”

Too often, religion in politics has focused on three issues: abortion, gay marriage and stem cell research. Those are issues, she says, that have ‘‘privatized” religion, kept believers thinking inward rather than outward toward others who need help.

The faith community isn’t barren of solutions. In the book, she describes how Rick Warren’s Baptist church in Lake Forest, Calif., grew to 16,000 members, and for 25 years he had never thought religion had a place in helping the needy.

He repented, Townsend writes, after considering the many children afflicted with AIDS in Africa. Now he reverse-tithes, she says, giving away 90 percent and keeping 10 percent.

But a more lasting solution would be for the faithful to return to church, and then to speak out, Townsend says.

She writes that churches provide not only the spiritual framework of a new progressive movement but also the infrastructure.

‘‘The churches have such an opportunity to shape what we think is good and bad, what is right and wrong, how we should act, how we should relate to one another. So if you think about how to create a good society, you can’t just look at politicians. ... We have to look at moral leaders,” she says.

No looking back

If things were different, Townsend would be one of those politicians. In 2002, she was the Democratic gubernatorial nominee in a state where Democrats outnumbered Republicans 2-1. Maryland hadn’t had a GOP governor since 1968.

And she lost.

Former governor Parris N. Glendening (D) called it one of the worst-run campaigns he had ever seen. So does she ever ponder the missteps?

‘‘Of course. But I’m not going to get into the what shoulda-woulda-coulda is,” she says.

And she deflects a question about how she feels about the defeat of Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), who beat her back then.

‘‘One tries when one is being spiritual to not take pleasure in people’s defeat, but to move on and take joy in Martin O’Malley’s victory,” Townsend says.

Since 2002, she has remained busy. Townsend is chairwoman of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland; that’s how she can be proud of the university’s efforts in Africa.

She serves on the Council on Foreign Relations, and on the boards of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Points of Light Foundation and the National Catholic Reporter.

The interview comes only days after Al Gore won an Oscar for his documentary, ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth.” Gore — another Democrat who lost a big election — is a politician who has shown there’s life after defeat.

‘‘There are lots of ways to serve, and I love politics, but I love writing, and I love working on other issues,” Townsend says. ‘‘There are all sorts of other ways to get involved.”

Her book is not meant to boost publicity so she can enter another political race.

‘‘I’m happy with what I’m doing now, and I’m not intending to run for public office,” she says. ‘‘I want this book to be taken seriously for what it says and not seen as a vehicle for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend. It would diminish it, and I want the message to be strong.”