Of them much is expected: many liberals fear mixing their religious convictions with their political ones. Not Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.

• Author: Glastris, Kukula Kapoor
• Position: Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way - Book review

Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Warner Books, 224 pp.

As Democrats continue their careful dance around the issue of religion's role in policy and politics, it's only fitting that a Kennedy should weigh in on the matter. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, formerly lieutenant governor of Maryland (and eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy), in her new book, Failing America's Faithful: How Today's Churches Are Mixing God With Politics and Losing Their Way, reminds us that the Democrats weren't always so skittish on religion as they are today. The two most recent Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, were (and are) devout Baptists who have always been unafraid to evoke their faith or use it as a guiding principle in their politics--much as Bobby Kennedy had always done. While John F. Kennedy was careful to put some distance between himself and the Roman Catholic Church during and after his run for the presidency, Bobby never did. Bobby's Catholicism was central to his mission in life, and it fueled his outrage at the injustices he saw. "My father walked his days with the suffering of the less fortunate on one shoulder and the Catholic teachings of social justice on the other," writes Townsend. "[W]e learned that to be religious was to be part of a community, and the purpose of our faith was to improve the world, [not just our own lives]." She recalls her father returning from trips to Mississippi and West Virginia--places in America where he saw children living in Third World conditions--shaken at what he had seen. "Families there live in a shack the size of this dining room," he said as the family ate together at a table set with linen and silver under a magnificent chandelier. "The children have distended stomachs and sores all over them because they don't have enough food. Do you know how lucky you are?" he asked. "Do something for our country," he implored, "give something back." It was an admonition the Kennedy children took to heart.

For Townsend as for her father, Catholicism has never been an abstraction. It has always been woven into every aspect of life. Bible reading and prayer was a twice-daily occurrence at home. All the children had the pictures of saints and containers for holy water in their rooms. Blessings were asked for everything from the consequential (Please, God, help Uncle Jack be the best president) to the mundane...