Over the past forty years, churches have failed the faithful by privatizing God. They have morphed the great omniscient God of justice and love into a shriveled and sensually challenged elder with a pinched, bitter obsession with sexual practices.
Still, I would prefer that the take-home lesson from that time is not just that a Catholic could be elected but rather that the Catholic would pray to a God that has a big, broad range of interests worthy of a great country.
In my uncle John Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, he called on a God that is concerned that we “undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free.” The young President asked that we take on “tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself . . . for God’s work must truly be our own.” He called on faith in a God that sees the sweep of struggles that beset human kind and is unafraid to deal with them.
When my father Robert F. Kennedy returned from his visit to South Africa where he witnessed the ravages of apartheid he wrote an article titled, “Suppose God is Black.” He was less interested in a personal relationship with God than with the judgment of a Just God who demands that a society supporting unfair, unequal and immoral practices change and renew itself.
God asks us to take on LARGE challenges. How did God shrink to a personal service representative who helps you get thin, grow rich, or stop smoking? How did the God of Justice become a God of the smug who conspicuously display their rectitude by condemning the private practices of others? My father and my uncle believed in a God whom a political leader might call upon to rally the whole country, united behind large goals, with large purposes.
Over the next election cycle, the right relation of faith and politics will again be subject of fierce debate. There are signs that the religious community is awakening to more significant issues. Clergy have come together on genocide in Darfur, the pandemic of AIDS, torture, and global warming. But they have yet to reach critical mass and they are still not shining their light on poverty here in the United States.
So the candidates themselves will choose how they portray the Creator. Early signs are significant. Republicans seem to be finding a God that broods infinitely upon abortion and gay marriage. In contrast, the Democratic field has begun to remember the big and generous God that connects faith with the common good and the larger purposes worthy of a great nation.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's new book, "FAILING AMERICA'S FAITHFUL: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God with Politics and Losing Their Way," recounts her personal story in one of the most prominent Catholic families in America. Townsend, lieutenant governor of Maryland from 1995-2003, is the oldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy. She is chair of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland.
