Religion and Washington: Sally Quinn's New Pairing

By: Michelle Levi
Topics: Washington Unplugged

Longtime Washington journalist and headliner, Sally Quinn of the Washington Post joined Bob Schieffer on "Washington Unplugged" to talk about her popular Web site "On Faith" on washingtonpost.com which sheds light on a once taboo subject in Washington.

"I felt that religion was so much in the news that national politics and foreign politics, almost everything, abortion, gay rights the environment. Religion touched everything," Quinn said of the impetus for her idea. "I just did not feel that we were on to it the way we should," she said of the Washington Post.

Quinn said the backbone of the Post's Web site is a panel of theologians, writers and thinkers. "We have Buddists and Catholics and Jews and Evangelicals and Aetheists and Agnostics and Wiccans and Indian Chiefs..we have every possible representation," she said proudly.

Once weekly a "provacative" question is posed to the panel to incite discussion.

"I am really interested in helping people understand different people's faiths," Quinn said.

"There is so much misunderstanding," she lamented, which sometimes makes people "hostile or suspicious or at least resistant to that point of view."

Quinn said religion is losing its taboo in the capital city.

"It used to be that religion was something you never talked about in public," she said remembering a Washington hostess who said faith at the dinner table was "simply not done." Politicians had to be religious, but once back in D.C. the conversation ceased.

"I find now more and more people are interested in religion," she said.

Watch the whole interview above.

Click here for the full episode of "Washington Unplugged," which also includes an interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius on Obama foreign policy and submarine races.

Click here to watch Sally Quinn's "On Faith" interview with Bob Schieffer.