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Bringing religion into left-wing politics. (2:59)
 

Tavis: Kathleen Kennedy Townsend served two terms as Maryland's first woman Lieutenant Governor before mounting her own bid to become governor in 2002. She is also a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Clinton White House. Her new book is called "Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way." Lieutenant Governor, nice to have you on the program.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: Hey, great to be with you. Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to see you. Let me get to the book in just a second, if I might. After mentioning Alberto Gonzales ten times now in the last thirty seconds, let me start with your thoughts on this. Your connection to this is unique in that, again, one, you served as Deputy Attorney General in the Clinton White House.

Townsend: Yes.

Tavis: Your father, of course, we all famously know was Attorney General when your brother -

Townsend: - and they named the Justice Department after my father.

Tavis: They did. They absolutely did. What are your thoughts on the way this thing is shaping up or not shaping up, as it were?

Townsend: Well, I think it's outrageous what looks like is going on, which is that they're using the U.S. Attorneys as political tools. I found that out in my own campaign for governor when the U.S. Attorney was "investigating" my office and asked for three high-level indictments before Election Day, front page indictments. So they have very much politicized the office and I think ruined a system of justice in which we are supposed to go after people without favor.

Tavis: There are a lot of folk who were disappointed when you lost that governor's race and nobody expected a Kennedy to lose a race like that. I ask you now how much of an impact you think that - those charges were eventually dropped?

Townsend: They were dropped within twenty-four hours when the new U.S. Attorney came in and the Attorney General of the state of Maryland said there was no grounding for any of those charges. But it hurts you when you're attacked during a campaign as being corrupt.

Tavis: I was about to ask you. How much of an impact did that have on your losing that race, do you think?

Townsend: It had a significant impact. It impacts what people think of you and it impacts how a campaign runs when people are worried about whether they're going to be indicted, what they can say, what subpoenas are going through.

So this is a theme of this administration to use the Justice Department politically. You saw that George Bush himself said that we should go after the U.S. Attorneys because they're not investigating voter "fraud." That's a code word for going after Democrats.

Tavis: What's your sense of what ought to happen? Should Mr. Gonzalez step down?

Townsend: Immediately. I mean, I think it's the appropriate thing for that administration because you want to get it off the front page. You don't want day after day your top staff in the Justice Department taking the Fifth.

Tavis: I asked a guest on this program the other night. I'm trying to think of who it was. I've talked so much about Gonzalez of late, more than I want to, quite frankly. But that said, I asked a guest the other night why anyone believed that Alberto Gonzales could be a good Attorney General.

I asked that not to cast aspersion on him. But if we're looking for someone in that office, of all Cabinet offices, this person is supposed to be independent. There was nothing to my read that suggested, with all due respect to Mr. Gonzalez, that he could be independent in that role, particularly given his long-standing relationship to the president, all the jobs that George Bush has given this guy who he calls Gonzo.

I mean, the whole thing about the Guantanamo Bay torture, I just didn't see any reason to believe during confirmation hearings - of course, Republicans were controlling the Senate then and not Democrats - but I just didn't see any track record that suggested that he could be independent. Loyal, yes. But independent, no. I raise that with you now because, by that standard, one could have made the same argument - you know where I'm going with this -

Townsend: - I was going to say the same thing.

Tavis: One could have made the same argument that your daddy couldn't have been Attorney General because his brother was the president.

Townsend: Absolutely, and that's why my father didn't want to be the Attorney General because he thought he would be criticized for being political. But because of that, he decided to make the real effort to be as non-political as possible. In fact, he asked a Republican to be head of the Criminal Division, a Republican that went on to be Nixon's attorney.

So he saw it as his way to help his brother's legacy to show that you can have members of your family do things for the country and not just politics. George Bush obviously comes from a different tradition.

Tavis: To your family, let me honest with you. When I saw this book - I was up last night reading it. But when I saw this book when it first came across my desk, I knew that you and I should have a conversation, so I'm glad that you're here. But I also thought, "Why is Kathleen Kennedy Townsend writing a book about today's churches failing the American public?"

I certainly get, as anyone does, the Kennedy family's long-standing relationship and membership in the Catholic Church, but this book is more than just about the Catholic Church. I ask you, respectfully, what makes Kathleen Kennedy Townsend qualified to write a book about churches failing America?

Townsend: Because I have the passion to do it and because I care so much about how faith has been misused in the last twenty years and has lost its connection that we used to have between justice and the common good. You know, it's not just my own church and what's going on now, but throughout our history, we've always had our churches being voices for progressive politics from the Abolitionists to the Social Gospel Movement.

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jesuits had three hundred labor-organizing schools. We had the civil rights movement which we all remember was led by Reverend Martin Luther King. So we've had these great social justice traditions that have come out of the church. As a politician, I know how important it is in what kind of messages the church gives you, and they're failing right now to do that.

Tavis: One could argue, though, respectfully, that the church, as it were, is still very much involved in politics. It's just a kind of church, a kind of involvement that Kathleen Kennedy Townsend might not like, but one can't really argue that the church is sitting on the sidelines. They're as involved now as they ever were. It's just a different kind of church with a different kind of message.

Townsend: And that's the problem.

Tavis: Okay.

Townsend: The God in the church that I grew up with was a big God, a God that cared about justice, that cared about war and peace, that cared about poverty and civil rights. You know, when my father went to South Africa in 1966, he came back and wrote an article for “Look” magazine saying, "Suppose God is Black?" Because he wanted to say that this was not just a personal God, you and me and how are we doing today, but how do we construct a just society?

Today, the churches focus on three issues. That's the public agenda. Abortion, same-sex marriage and stem cell research. They're not dealing with the larger questions of how do we construct a just society and I think that's a failing on their part.

Tavis: Is it a failing on their part, that is to say - and I'm pointing in the right direction here - is it a failing on their part, the folk over here on the right, because they're not raising these issues or the issues that we want to see addressed, or a failing of the folk over here for not raising these issues?

They certainly have the same kind of platform if they want it. Their mouths work the same way. Their feet walk the same way. They could certainly have a movement generated around these issues if they wanted to. So why are these folk being vocal and these folk being so not vocal?

Townsend: Good question. If you're asking why has the left not been vocal -

Tavis: - that's what I'm trying to say (laughter).

Townsend: Very eloquently (laughter).

Tavis: You're a mind reader (laughter).

Townsend: If that's what you're getting at, partially because they have said that we should get religion out of politics. My argument is, no, we should get the religion that asks for justice for all back into politics. They have been afraid of faith, people on the left. And what I hope to do with this book is say, "Hey, remember that's the great tradition. Reclaim it for our own."

I think that's happening today. I think if you look around, the Democratic politicians are actually talking more about their faith. There are people like Jim Wallis, who I'm sure you know, the Sojourners, who has a greater following today than they had ten years, but it's still a struggle.

I wrote this because I wanted people to understand that, you know, there are twenty-one hundred passages in the Bible that say to care about the poor, the sick, the hungry, the least among us, and why aren't we hearing about those? The focus of the churches that you hear about aren't even written about in the Bible.

Tavis: I wonder whether or not you are hopeful, to your point now, about anybody on the left, although I can't say the left. That's a whole other conversation. Democrats who have -

Townsend: - fair enough (laughter).

Tavis: Ain't nobody on the left, quite frankly, follows percentages in this thing. But that said, the Democrats who are running for the White House, anybody on that platform that you think is going to have the courage to raise the kinds of issues that you raise in the text?

Townsend: I hope so. I think John Edwards, for instance, is talking about health care. I think Hilary Clinton is reaching back into her faith and talking about what we need to do for children. And I think Barack Obama has been extremely eloquent on his religious background. So you're seeing a revival of the religious left.

It's slow and it's partially that the churches - as a politician, it's easier to point fingers at the churches to say that it's part of your responsibility to talk about those broad values. You know, we've got to get away from this sort of individual God, this personal, private God, and talk about something greater. You know, if you ever pray the Our Father, it's all about our Father, us. There's no "I" in it.

I think our churches should try to help us to create as a community that tells us to love our neighbor, to see the divinity in each of us and in our friends and in the people we know and even in our enemies rather than only think about what's good for me today. I think, too often, the God that we see is a God that makes us thinner, stops us from drinking, or richer, and I think we should have a God that asks us how we treat everybody.

Tavis: I wonder how you see this kind of playing out if the religious left rises up in the way that the religion right has risen up whether or not there won't be all-out religious war in America?

Townsend: I don't think so because I think that, if you deeply believe in faith, what you've seen is already things breaking up among the Christian right. The National Association of Evangelicals are splitting with the James Dobsons and the Jerry Falwells on global warming. They're splitting about torture. So you're seeing that people are beginning to understand that the Christian right can't just be in the hands of the Republican Party, that they have to actually think, "What would God have us do?"

Tavis: I wonder, finally, whether or not you think that this is perhaps the most propitious time for the religious left to come to life, given that at this moment as we sit here, the religious right really isn't happy about the choices they have for president, so much so that they're begging Fred Thompson to run and he's trying to figure this thing out. But I wonder whether or not you think that this moment really creates an opportunity for the so-called religious left to rise up again?

Townsend: I think so, but I really wish that they hadn't gone underground for the last forty years. I think our country would have been better if they had raised their voices for forty years. But they're raised now. I hope that, you know, my book and others will say, "Look, we've got this great tradition. Let's reclaim it and let's call for justice."

Tavis: She's a part of that great and grand tradition of caring about the least among us. Her name, of course, is Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. Her new book is "Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way." An honor to have you on the program.

Townsend: Hey, it was great to be with you.

Tavis: Nice to see you. I enjoyed it.

Townsend: Thank you so much.