As Stephen Colbert signs off, America loses a prophet
(RNS) — I’ve never been a regular viewer of “The Late Show” because I’m usually in bed by 9 o’clock. But I’ve been feeling a growing sense of loss that Stephen Colbert’s last episode airs Thursday (May 21), not for late night television, but for something more serious: We are losing a great American prophet. I mean that in a technical sense. The prophet figure appears across religious traditions, and not as someone who primarily predicts the future. The prophet Amos wasn’t predicting anything when he said, “Let justice roll down like waters.” He was looking at what was actually happening — the exploitation of the poor, the corruption of the courts, the performative piety of the powerful — and refusing to look away. Prophets are intermediaries who stand between us and a truth we cannot yet see. They name what is real when institutions that are supposed to protect people are instead protecting power. In this time of political, environmental and tech-driven crisis, we need all the prophets we can find. Prophets aren’t usually …
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