There’s something in the way he smiles. . .
A Smile a Minute: Joel Osteen
Posted onJanuary 6, 2015 AuthorDean Robertson
Just as the year turned, my friend and student from nearly thirty years ago, Thomas Clay Jr., invited me to write short pieces for his blog on Facebook, American News X. I was in the process of submitting the manuscript of Looking for Lydia; Looking for God to agents and small publishers and trying to figure out the intricacies of the Internet.
I was also trying to figure out, for Thomas, the intricacies of writing “click bait” pieces for a satirical political site. I never quite mastered them.
It was in the few posts I wrote for him, however, that I learned the skill and a taste for writing short essays on deadline. It was in those posts, offered as something for an old teacher to do while she waited for some nibbles on her book, that this weekly blog really began.
The year at The National Enquirer ends with a predictable, barely audible, bang: popular televangelist rakes in money; profits roll in to a non-profit church; attorneys smell blood in the water.
Impressions: A line-up in my mind: One, the pastor of the largest mega-church in America; one a former deputy-director of the National Security Council; one, Secretary of State for two administrations. I remember pictures I have avoided for decades: the wolfish grins that don’t quite reach the eyes; the dead eyes. I recall having trouble staying in the room when Oliver North was on television. I recently saw a documentary about Donald Rumsfeld and could hardly keep myself from leaving the theater. The smile frightens me more than any gesture of overt aggression; it holds me in place; it mesmerizes.
The details hardly seem to matter.
Joel Osteen is making millions at his mega-church in Houston, Texas. His sermons, preached to crowds numbering in the five figures, are televised in 100 countries. The church is housed, after a 2003 purchase and multi-million dollar renovation, in the Compaq Center, former home of the NBA Houston Rockets. When the church moved into the Center, the New York Times covered the occasion.
Christianity in a sports arena is not a new phenomenon. This church has, instead of a cross or any other symbols of the religion that Osteen loosely espouses, “a cafe with wireless Internet access, 32 video game kiosks and a vault to store the offering.” This last reminds me of a scene in a 1972 documentary, “Marjoe,” in which a young tent revivalist sits on a bed in his motel room after a revival, counting piles of cash, smiling and chanting, “Praise the Lord, and thank you, Jesus.” Joel Osteen doesn’t have to count his own cash in a cheap motel room. Joel Osteen has a staff to do his counting and to store the cash in the vault at the Compaq Center. Why does Osteen, all too common a type in American culture, part of the landscape since the tent revival movement after the Civil War, seem so particularly egregious? Why does Jim Bakker, by comparison, seem quaint, almost harmless, hearing God speak to him in his bathtub?
I don’t pay much attention to Joel Osteen except to have seen and heard him enough to know I don’t like seeing or hearing him. He is a manifestation of the all-too-common and all-too-successful televangelist of a mega-church somewhere in the western United States. Like some of his predecessors, he rides in a limo, lives in a mansion, has a blonde wife who is his co-pastor, publishes New York Times best-sellers shelved under “inspirational,” “motivational,” or “self-help” at the bookstore. A glance at the titles, or at the titles of the hundreds of articles that have been written about him, tells me that Joel Osteen’s message is about Joel Osteen. Joel Osteen is a superstar, a salesman of the Positive.
Nothing new at all. A so-called Christian preacher, net worth in the millions, preaching the gospel, not of Jesus (whom he seldom mentions) but the gospel of worldly success, of well-being and, above all else, the gospel of feeling good (because we deserve it).
In a feature article in December of 2007, People magazine reported that Osteen had been paid a reported $13 million for one book.
The same article quotes Osteen as saying, “I don’t want to sound naive, but I was never in it for the money.”
My impressions remain the same: a preacher; an intelligence agent; a Secretary of Defense. That smile and those eyes, make my skin crawl.
Thomas Clay Jr. and his American News X site can be found at:
Looking for Lydia; Looking for God is not a 500 word piece of political satire.
Nonetheless, it’s a provocative read. You can buy it in hardback, paper, and ebook, on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online.
It’s time to start thinking about Christmas presents.
