Joel Osteen is a television preacher with
a fairly mainstream pitch. A
prototypical Pastor Nice Guy, he is amongst the most popular of the current practitioners.
On
the surface very little of what he does or professes would seem in any way objectionable.
In fact, being non offensive and photogenic is his entire gig.
And it’s a heck of a gig. By conservative estimates Osteen is a
millionaire thirty five times over. He preaches
and broadcasts out of a former indoor stadium in Texas. Many of his books sit atop the New York Times
Best Seller list.
He’s something of a small
industry. Osteen’s just started, but he’s well on his way to authoring a
library on every self help motivational topic. The church he leads averages
38,000 weekly attendees. (How many of that number are actually church members
or what membership in his church might be is not publicized.) He has his own feed on satellite radio. His wife and brother
are also in on the act. At its core, however, the operation is a fairly typical
TV ministry. Television is the focus and
the organization buys time in every major media market in the United States,
plus markets in an additional 100 countries.
Osteen does his share of barnstorming, but
he stays fairly close to the mega church in Houston. He seems to crank out
about 24 broadcasts for syndication per year, with each broadcast receiving
several airings. Osteen is big on using reruns and for this reason few of his
sermons light on topical subjects.
Osteen is standing on some broad
shoulders, is the product of a progression advents in mainstream Evangelical
evolution. Osteen himself doesn’t claim to be self made. There is more to
Osteen than meets the eye, only some of which he’s willing to admit to.
Mostly Osteen is the beneficiary of
reduced expectations on the part of his audience. There was a time when a preacher being worth
tens of millions of dollars might seem untoward. Nor is there any real
equivalence to his remuneration. The
head of the Episcopal Church of Houston, with maybe the same amount of
attendees (if not more) does not net tens of millions of dollars per year. Nor
would someone leading a business of the same size in the private sector rake in
the sort of wads Joel does. Only the tax dodge laden world of proprietary religion
offers these sort of rewards. And Osteen is near the king of the hill.
But why pick nits? There are plenty of people
making it rich in proprietary religion. No one stuck a gun to anyone’s head and
made them give Joel money. And Joel doesn’t seem to beg for money on TV, as
many of his peers do. Just because Catholic priests and others with similar
sized congregations seem content to live middle class doesn’t mean Joel has to.
That people are willing to accept this is dismal and astonishing. If one is
willing to dismiss this as in any way acceptable, then the rest of Osteen’s act
goes over fairly well.*
For a theological leader, Joel is a little
light on the theology. Much of the charismatic bent to his church’s teaching
were jettisoned with his father’s passing. Joel’s father John was a bit of a
faith healer Catholic hater in the true southern mold. All of that is missing
from the church Joel has crafted. You only see vestiges of it here and there.
As with publishers, we track churches by
their roots. Osteen’s church is essentially a split off from the Oral Roberts
organization. Both Joel and his father received their training at Roberts’
institution. John Osteen split from Oral Roberts and later the Southern Baptists
before founding the church Joel currently leads. For some reason churches in
this mold shun the use of crosses. (Anti-Catholic bigotry.) Like Herbert W.
Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God, Joel uses the globe as his trademark.
The similarities to the Armstrong movement
largely end there. ** John Osteen had a cult bent, using classic moves such as
founding his own fake college. Joel
Osteen, by contrast, has shed most of the cult trappings. Joel’s more about
unabashedly making a buck than he is about founding his own theology.
Joel Osteen is a collage artist, sticking
cropped and cribbed bits of pop psychology and motivational theory onto Robert Shuller’s act. Shuller was the
original happy talk pastor, the founder of a now dissolved TV ministry he
started in a drive through movie theater. Shuller’s operational paradigm was
that he was trolling for the most common of sinners, the truly un-churched. To
reach this market, Shuller crafted a non judgmental message: God loves everyone
unconditionally. Beyond that, Shuller
was essentially a neo-Catholic. Once his happy talk got the sinner in the door,
Shuller’s approach was to inspire the sinner to better things rather than to
reprove sin itself. ***
Osteen obviously sees the appeal of
Shuller’s approach, although Osteen’s market is quite different.
Blessed are those who strive for upward
mobility.
They’re called Strivers. These people are
the target of every cult out there. We used to call these people Working Class,
by which is meant the working poor or the lower middle class. Not poor enough
for food stamps. Not rich enough to drive a new car. It’s not a broad section
of humanity, but it is where the shelf space is, cult wise.
There are two proven approaches to
addressing this audience. (1) Tell them achievement in this world doesn’t count
for anything. (Which would be biblical.) The cult move here is to sell them on
some substitute for worldly achievement: access to a heaven denied to others,
rulership or a special position in the coming new order or some other fantasy. (2)
Tell them you can make them rich. Or that God will solve their problems.
Joel Osteen is a firm proponent of the
second Magic Jesus approach. Given that this is tact is not supported by much
in the Bible, Joel and his fellows often stray. In a recent televised sermon
Osteen flat out told his audience to “Leave the losers in your life behind.” By
this he meant people whose presence won’t help get you to where you happen to
want to go in life. While this might be fine self help or even anti-addiction
pap, it goes against what Jesus teaches. If possible it is opposite to every
single one of the teachings of Jesus.
Unless every copy of the Bible I have
encountered in my life has been rigged or I am a hopeless retard, helping the
losers is a mandate, how one expresses one’s love of the Savior. Of particular
import are the losers most close.
I’m no real Bible guy here, but Osteen’s
little self help crib job made me blink. What sort of man of God is this? And
he did go on and on about it, blithely unaware that he was contradicting a core
standard of Christian ethos.
On the other hand, maybe the losers never
cross his mind when he heads home each night to his twelve million dollar
mansion.
(*) Jesus didn’t leave
much in the way of instructions on how churches were to be run or who could
serve as priests in the new covenant order. So I suppose anything might be fair
game. On the other hand, He had some nasty things to say about the prospects of
the rich achieving salvation.
(**) There are some
allusions to Garner Ted Armstrong and Joel Osteen which could be drawn. Both inherited
television ministries and expanded them. Both are pretty boys. Osteen actually
made more radical changes to his church than Garner Ted did to the Worldwide
Church of God. In my view Garner Ted
Armstrong is the more talented, but also much more sinister. Osteen has
actually cut his wife into the act, almost to a co-equal degree.
(***) Shuller’s approach
may have been his own, but his theology was not. He was speaking on behalf of a
denomination with a distinctly non judgmental bent.
Note: I did not flat out
call Osteen a cult leader. He’s just a simple huckster, albeit phenomenally
successful. Cult leaders are a bit more domineering. He hasn’t set up his
organization to spread from coast to coast. Although I am sure he sells special
access to people willing to foot his bills (he and the wife thank these folks
at the ends of their broadcasts) he seems hardly out to create a denomination.
That said, on his web page Joel Osteen helpfully lists local churches which he
approves of. Almost all of these are non affiliated churches led (or co-equally
led) by husband and wife teams. (Much like his own church.) At least one of
these churches, the Chicago northwest suburban Life Changers, is a flat out
cult. So I am leery of him. I have also seen roadside posters for his TV
program, stuck in lawns mattress sale style, in my neighborhood. This indicates
that he has some street organization.
(By the way, having a
bunch of affiliated churches is a great way to keep your books on the best
seller list. Especially if each church is assigned a quota of books they need
to buy each month—from a retail store. Ask L. Ron Hubbard.)
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