Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Meets Colbert

Worth a little notice, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend visits the Colbert Report and manages to hold her own. Dare I say even Colbert seems to get a chuckle out of the give & take. I don't entirely agree with Townsend's premise from her book, which she naturally only gets to mention briefly in the "interview". But there are aspects that she adds to the discussion on where and how politics and faith ought to meet.

As matters of religion and faith have been played out in the public sphere (what one might refer to as the civic religion), there has certainly been a diminished emphasis on building community and strengthening those around you. It's been replaced - by some - with a focus on tax-exempt status, two guys kissing in public, and exerting power over women through law when logic and persuasion won't hold.

By and large, those who push this view aren't the ones leading congregations across America. True, there's exceptions - and they have an annoying way of inflating their own impact. But the larger story has gone unreported in mainstream journalism. That's a story about a lot of different churches with a lot of different means of worship and ways of relating to whatever God they worship. It might be suffering for a lack of readers' relative interest, but that's something that you just don't see covered adequately in the media. What gets covered? Fights, disagreements, scandal, & hypocrisy. I won't make a single argument that those things don't deserve mention. But would it kill anyone to try and balance it out with what goes on in the real world?