Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon

by Kathryn Lofton

“Today on Oprah,” intoned the TV announcer, and all over America viewers tuned in to learn, empathize, and celebrate. In this book, Kathryn Lofton investigates the Oprah phenomenon and finds in Winfrey’s empire—Harpo Productions, O Magazine, and her new television network—an uncanny reflection of religion in modern society. Lofton shows that when Oprah liked, needed, or believed something, she offered her audience nothing less than spiritual revolution, reinforced by practices that fuse consumer behavior, celebrity ambition, and religious idiom. In short, Oprah Winfrey is a media messiah for a secular age. Lofton’s unique approach also situates the Oprah enterprise culturally, illuminating how Winfrey reflects and continues historical patterns of American religions.

Genres: Nonfiction, Religion, Biography, School, Grad School, Sociology

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this book at times infuriated me with its descent into theory and imprecise scholarly jargon, mainly it was a delightful examination of Oprah and her empire as a lens through which to see religion in modern America. As such Oprah is both unique, as product and preacher, and is an archetype for the modern religious/spiritual experience amid a world of choice. Spiritual experiences in Oprah's world are intimately tied to consumer purchases and personal conversions and Lofton's chapter titles provide an overview of her scholarly approach (Practicing Purchase: The Prosperity Gospel of Spiritual Capitalism; Celebrity Spirit: The Incorporation of Your Best Life; Diverting Conversions: The Makeover as Social Rite; Preacher Queen: The Race and Gender of America's Confessor; Reading Religously: The Reformations of Oprah's Book Club; Missionary Gift: The Globalization of Inspiration with an excellent conclusion and pointed epilogue on the Oprahfication of Obama). This is not a biography, though Oprah's confessional television offers her own biography for consumption. The chapters can stand alone, but Lofton ties things together wonderfully in her conclusion. Her research was broad in religion, sociology, consumer culture, as well as American religious history. It also demanded a great deal of TV watching and reading of O the magazine. Not work I could have pursued, but the resulting book is full of Oprah at her self-affirming best. Lofton, at her best, introduces the wide scope of American religious history to bear on Oprah, and does it with provocative and even fun language. The theoretical bogs down parts of early chapters, but she becomes more direct as the book progresses. If I do not always agree or sometimes find her ideas under-formed (she ties Oprah's Book Club to the Protestant Reformation, but leaves that thought under-examined in her chapter), it overall is so full of ideas about how the modern, secular world, engages with religious ideas and corporate consumerism that it has to be recommended highly.

[Kristian Petersen · Rating 5 out of 5]

In December of 2011, Oprah Winfrey appeared on The Dr. Oz Show to talk about her new big plans and her inspirations for the future. Oprah replied, “For me at this particular time in my life I recognize that everything is about moving closer to that which is God. And without a full, spiritual center — and I’m not talking about religion — I’m talking about without understanding the fullness from which you’ve come, you can’t really fulfill your supreme moment of destiny. And I think everybody has a supreme moment of destiny.” Oprah has been providing the path to achieve this (Aha!) moment for decades now through the rituals of contemporary consumer culture and spirituality that enable individuals to live their best life. Kathryn Lofton, Professor of Religion at Yale University, cleverly unravels Oprah’s story within the broader context of American religiosity and the academic study of religion in her book Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon (University of California Press, 2011). In this excellent work, Lofton contends that modern religion is not something distinct that we can analyze but should be conceived of as the interaction of various modalities, which are often bracketed off as “Spirituality,” “Commodity,” and “Corporatism.” In our interview we explore various topics, weaving in and out of the content of the book, covering politics, public policy, ritual, capitalism, 9/11, among many others. We also had time to discuss freq.uenci.es, a co-curated project funded by the Social Science Research Council, as well as the various reactions to the project from critics on The Immanent Frame. Lofton was a delight to talk to as you can tell from her engaging presence but for those who have not yet read the book be reassured that her personality and sharp insight shines throughout the text. It was a joy to read and there should be no wonder why she has received such a wide response by commentators.
http://newbooksinreligion.com/2012/05...

[Alaina]

Liked some sections, disliked others. Loved the section on Oprah’s book club—thinking about how books become decoration or accessories for universalist narratives of female self-discovery. "Reading here does and will matter, but it matters in its collaborative role with other things, things that interrupt, always; things with other gerunds, with other practice imperatives." Why do women always feel the need to “connect” with fictional characters and see themselves in plotlines? I’m over it. Reading can be so much more than therapeutic.

[Maddie Brown]

def interesting. beautifully written in a very gender studies way

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a first book so influential that it earned her a full professorship at Yale, Lofton interrogates the relationship between the sacred and the secular, arguing that Oprah - the icon, the product, the myth, and the empire - comprises a modern American religion. Drawing from primary sources garnered from throughout the Oprah empire (the TV show, the magazine, the website, the store, etc.), this work is positioned at the intersection of religious studies and studies of American consumer culture. As she dissects Oprah's gospel, Lofton reveals the relationship between these seemingly incongruous fields - and how by studying Oprah, we can learn much about American women and their discontents, as well as the role of religion in modern American life.

[Sara Hunter · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this book one star because I really didn't think it was all that great. I love anthropology, I love religious studies, and as such I thought I'd really love this book. I did not. I found it to be stultifyingly boring. To be fair, parts of it were interesting; unfortunately they were few and far between. I was hoping this book would deliver much more than it did, and I've never been happier to be done reading something.

[Roger Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best things about academics is that they often do necessary research on things we find uninteresting. Although I wanted more analysis throughout the body of this text, Lofton really comes through in her conclusion and epilogue. Putting Oprah into the broader contours of American evangelical, revivalist, and New Thought movements - as empty as they may seem - only accentuates the historical and spiritual emergence of one-dimensionality and neoliberal cruel optimism.

[Dan Gorman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oprah is a shaper and a product of the consumer economy. She packages a plurality of cultural trends and products for easy consumption by her viewers and readers. In the process, she makes things sound simpler and less complicated than they really are. Oprah is a missionary of self-actualization, but she wants people to consume her products. Americans are living out her method for selfhood, instead of creating their own.

[Nils · Rating 3 out of 5]

A serviceable cultural history of Americans' abiding conflation of spiritual redemption and material acquisition, of which Oprah is the modern-day avatar. Lofton's evidence suggests that what both Oprah and the earlier preachers and writers in the same vein had in common was not theology or religious practice; rather, it was that all of them represent separate reactions to the abiding pecuniary incentives created by Americans' abiding demand for a gospel of success.

Yes, cultural history; but what this book is not, however, is an intellectual history of Oprah (whatever that could possibly mean), and where it attempts to be that, it fails. For example, the connection Lofton makes between Oprah with Finney is not an intellectual one -- that is, there is no dialog between them, no indication that Oprah sees herself as appropriating, critiquing, reworking, or even aware of the existence of Finney. Whatever continuity theres is between these two is not a matter of intellectual heritage, but of popular culture across centuries of American religious-material practice. Likewise, when Lofton does try to place Oprah in an intellectual tradition (of the New Thought), the effort is strained: she notes how Oprah's book "references" earlier scholarship, but (perhaps wisely) avoids engaging in a close textual analysis of that "referencing," to see whether the intellectual engagement was profound, or simply garnish on top of an essentially commercially motivated product.

[Daniel Silliman · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot here--a lot to think about, a lot to process, a lot to fight with.

The core argument, as I take it, is that the practices of consumer capitalism (as represented by the queen of daytime talk shows) affect, effect, determine and delimit a modern sensibility of spirituality. At the same time, she argues, this spirituality sustains (late modern/neoliberal) capitalism. That's a fascinating claim.

[Wes Bishop · Rating 5 out of 5]

A solid study of the media empire "Oprah" and how it relates to American religious history. Exploring the interplay between capitalism, American Protestantism, and "self-help" spiritualism, Lofton offers a way to rethink our common misunderstandings of the purported divide between the "secular" and "sacred."

[Jimmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good. Lively prose. I buy the overall arguments about religion in modernity. I wish there had been a little more theory and abstraction; without those, it's difficult to get perspective on something so current. The situating of oprah in traditions of ritual, missions, etc. was persuasive, though.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

It struck me that this book is dated in that Oprah is not the giant she was when she appeared on TV daily. I'm not sure if the hoards of women who adored her still have that same strength of attachment to all things Oprah.

[Sarah]

http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Addi...

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, but it is dense and a bit harder to get through.

[Anna Groover · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I definitely buy Lofton's argument for the most part and found it all incredibly interesting and nuanced, I sometimes had a difficult time focusing on the writing. Lofton is a wonderful and lively writer, but this is an academic text and descends into theory quite a bit. The fact that I had a difficult time focusing on the text is probably more a fault of mine than of Lofton's.