The Journal

Issue date: 4/19/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Max Gersh Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former lieutenant governor of Maryland, drew a crowd of more than 70 people April 17 to the University Center Sunnen Lounge for a presentation titled "Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way."

The right wing has co-opted America's churches. That was the theme discussed by the Holden Public Policy Forum's most recent guest, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.


Townsend, the former Democratic lieutenant governor of Maryland and the eldest child of former New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, spoke April 17 before more than 70 people in the University Center Sunnen Lounge. She discussed her Catholic political heritage and the modern role of religion in American politics, which she said has been corrupted by the far right's focus on polarizing issues rather than general human welfare.


"I think it's bad theology, bad for the people in the pews and bad for our country," Townsend said.


Townsend said religious figures have been at the center of every major progressive political movement in American history, from the original Great Awakening in pre-revolutionary days to the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. However, in recent years she said Catholics and Protestants have turned their attention away from rising class disparities and social injustices and have instead focused on abortion and same-sex marriage.


"We really were supposed to care for the least among us," Townsend said. "(God) is a god that is open and teaches love, not condemnation."


Townsend said Christian political organizations like Focus on the Family and the Moral Majority have allowed the political right to redefine right and wrong for many American Christians though television, radio and print media campaigns.


"(This attitude) didn't come from the ministers, it came from the Republican Party," she said. "When people say they're people of God, we've given them that pass."


Townsend also accused the Catholic Church's focus on abortion - the one sin only one sex can technically commit - as indicative of a deep-seated fear of women.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools