America's Most Famous Catholic (According to Himself): Stephen Colbert and American Religion in the Twenty-First Century by Stephanie N. Brehm (review)

On the heels of the presidential inauguration in January 2017, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert became the number one rated late-night talk show on network television; a position it has held ever since, which speaks to its hosts' gifts for political satire and social commentary. That Colbert, as one of the most prominent media figures in the United States, is also a practicing Catholic—who regularly speaks publicly about his faith—makes him a glaring anomaly in the almost exclusively secular realm of mainstream American culture. Stephanie Brehm's America's Most Famous Catholic is one of the first attempts to analyze, in depth, the significance of Colbert's media presence as it relates to the American Catholic experience.

With that said, it should be noted that the book is primarily a case study of Colbert's previous television incarnation, Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, wherein he portrayed the titular host "Stephen Colbert," a bombastic, politically conservative talk-show host in the style of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, a figure decidedly unlike the left-leaning persona that the "real" Stephen Colbert has traditionally presented to the public. Indeed, a significant component of the book comes out of Brehm's delineation of the character COLBERT—as she identifies the televised character in the text—from the actual man, Stephen Colbert. Brehm utilizes the dual figures of Colbert/COLBERT to be representative of the larger American Catholic situation, as she says, "by being both a character and a real person simultaneously, Colbert/COLBERT embodies the contradictions and heterogeneity in the Catholic Church" (60).

The book approaches its subject through the lens of both media ethnography and discourse analysis. Brehm deconstructs and examines multiple comic scenes from The Colbert Report, which she integrates with lived religious methods in order to present an account of contemporary American Catholic identity, as well as the role of humor and "infotainment" in the life of the contemporary Catholic.

Brehm places Colbert in his role as Catholic media authority as a direct descendent of both pre-World War II (and virulent anti-Semite) radio priest, Father Charles Coughlin and 1950s television priest, Fulton Sheen. She simultaneously links Colbert with Catholic comedians such as George Carlin and Louis CK, through his satirical criticisms of the institutional church, and argues that Colbert's integration of the two roles allows for innovative modes of catechesis along with new means of exchange between lay Catholics and the church hierarchy.

Brehm coins the term, "Colbert Catholicism," which she puts forth as a sort of "via media" between conservative orthodoxy and progressive dissent, utilizing humor as a means of speaking about Catholic issues and the lived Catholic experience. She contends that "Colbert Catholicism" should not be understood as a new religious movement or sociological category, but rather can be helpful "when one is discussing individuals, like Colbert, who use satire, comedy and humor to understand their own religious identity and investment in religious institution" (119).

The book's strength is in its explicit utilization of Colbert/COLBERT as an ethnographic analogue for the lived experience of the American Catholic. Brehm does well in both linking the dual personas of Colbert to both sides of the American ecclesial spectrum, while simultaneously arguing for comedy and humor as the middle ground by which to transcend those established binaries.

One of the book's key problems is that though it briefly examines Colbert's current show, the book's primary focus, The Colbert Report, is no longer easily accessible for viewing by the general public and has been off the air since 2014, a very long time in the realm of media analysis. The book's analysis of comedy and humor is scattered and shallow, appealing to a plethora of psycho-social sources without ever appearing to...