Interlude: One Woman's Ideal Faith Community

Let's take a break from our "five things that make a faith worth having" series to look at one woman's related take.

A week ago, the Boston Globe reviewed a book called Sundays in America: A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith, by a journalist and disillusioned Catholic named Suzanne Strempek Shea.  She decided to go to a different Christian church, around the country, each Sunday for a year and see what she learned about faith.

The Globe reviewer, Rich Barlow, didn't love the book, finding it repetitive and shallow.  But Shea's conclusion seems at least interesting in light of our current discussion.  Here's a final paragraph:

And what does she conclude at the end of her road trip? I'm not giving away anything by saying that her ideal church would be a composite of the best ones she visited, "a community that welcomed me warmly, didn't give a whit about my politics or lifestyle, gave tons of whits about the social justice needs locally and beyond, contained little-to-no hierarchy . . . offered a spiritual message inspired by love rather than by fear, and did all this in an art-filled place that rang with awesome music."

How does her picture of an ideal church cohere with yours?