Snake Oil or: It’s Only Poison if You Think It Is
Prosperity gospel has no basis in any faith-based tradition, it is not a spiritual successor to the Protestant reformation, and it is certainly not apostolic. Prosperity gospel is a part of the self-help industry, and uniquely American, having its foundation in this country’s particular mandate of Heaven–manifest destiny commingling with the pseudoscientific institution of New Thought. There is nothing new to prosperity gospel besides its value as a chiefly American export. This American expression of Christianity is the consummation of Calvin Coolidge’s famous saying, “the business of America is business.”
The business model for the contemporary, distinctly Americanized faith tradition is built upon the philosophy of the New Thought movement that formed in the late 19th Century and reached its apex in the years following the Great Depression. The proponents and founders of this movement declare that reality and thought are inseparable, and construction of one’s reality begins with the interior of their mind. This esoteric modality is not an American novelty, but its practice has become uniquely Western due to the influence our exceptional industrialism and individualism that solidified in this nation’s psyche at the turn of the century.
The New Thought movement was a bricolage of Eastern thought, Americanized for its modern audience, with the proponents of the philosophy declaring themselves spiritual successors to the ancients, developing a syncretic system of attainment based on Vedic, Buddhist, Taoist, and Greco-Roman philosophies, amongst other exotic spiritual traditions. And while those spiritual traditions were, and are, structured to support the individual’s attainment of nirvana or escaping Samsara, this system and its “adherents were impelled mainly by the motive of profit, and few were masters of its theology and metaphysics. Like Puritanism, it recognized the law of prosperity as a cardinal statute. By personal magnetism the adherent could attract, persuade, influence, or control his fellows, and success in business was assured” (Griswold).
America’s promotion of individualism and its Protestant formation made it easy for the New Thought movement to find suitable soil for growth and eventual overtaking of what we could generously call Christianity, but most understand it as prosperity gospel.
The face of this institution is the lay preacher, Joel Osteen. He is the son of televangelist John Osteen, hesitantly following in his father’s footsteps after his death. Joel Osteen has no formal training in theology, in fact, he does not have a degree at all having dropped out of Oral Roberts University where he studied communications. Regardless Osteen shows an aptitude for visual communication and a strong grasp on the teachings of New Thought. Osteen’s signature style over substance is on full display during his televised sermons wearing expensive and tailored suits, showcasing his beaming smile, and proudly presenting his perfectly manicured hair, “Osteen employs aesthetic rationales to construct an Imaged Other capable of separating what he calls God’s favored from the unfavored” (Winslow).
“No more, ‘I’ll never accomplish my dreams.’ No, ‘I have the favor of God,’” this phrase of favor is frequently used in Osteen’s sermons, where he illustrates the wrong think of the Imaged Other in contrast with positive self-talk of those favored by God. The reference to God is less reverent and more a vehicle for this positive thinking to take place. The “unfavored,” according to Osteen’s preaching, are simply members of the population that are not thinking well enough, they’re focused on the negative, they’re choosing to embody the Imaged Other. Regardless of whether those listening to Osteen’s sermons are embodying one or the other, this is manufacturing “Other” to sell an image. Americans value control over our own lives, we pride ourselves on rejecting fatalism and promoting individualism. Osteen’s preaching is not selling God; it’s selling self-determination.
“You are where you are today, in part, because of what you’ve been saying about yourself,” Joel Osteen’s opening remarks of one of his most popular sermons presents his unique take on Christian teachings; he delivers an uncomplicated message of consumable soundbites and displays “a keen eye for the theatrical value of a church service” (Jeffress). The theatrical nature of a church service is nothing new to the Christian faith, however, the stadium seating is all directed toward Osteen’s eye-shaped stage. Osteen utilizes the ability to be the central focus to confess New Thought teachings and become what the audience needs.
The sermon continues with a focus on the individual and their construction of reality, “Words are like seeds, when you speak something out you give life to what you’re saying. If you continue to say it, eventually, that can become a reality. Whether you realize it or not you are prophesying your future” (Osteen). This appeal to emotion puts the power in his audience’s hands, “whether you realize it or not you…” “You,” this is a word that in proper preaching is avoided for the same the reason Osteen uses it for emphasis. He is speaking from authority, he is distancing himself–creating the Imaged Other, thereby becoming that which is to be attained. He commands respect in his disarming fashion under the lights of his mega-church sprinkling Scripture into his message, “Proverbs six says, ‘We are snared by the words of our mouth,’ snared means to be trapped. Your words can trip you. What you say can cause you to stumble. It can keep you from your potential […] When you say, ‘I never get any good breaks,’ that stops the favor that was ordained for you” (Osteen).
In the waning years of the New Thought movement Napoleon Hill wrote, “If you think you’ll lose, you’re lost for out of the world we find, success begins with a fellow’s will – It’s all in the state of mind” (Hill 48). Hill is the bridge between the turn of the century movement and the self-help industry of the post-War decades. Osteen and Hill both profess the same message of the individual’s power of manifestation. This is the key distinction between prosperity gospel and genuine expressions of faith, this is the “gospel of acquisition” (Jeffress). Hill’s own words echo through Osteen’s contemporary sermon, “Don’t use your words to describe the situation. Use your words to change the situation” (Osteen).
“To win the big stakes in this changed world, you must catch the spirit of the great pioneers of the past, whose dreams have given to civilization all that it has of value, the spirit that serves as the life-blood of our own country – your opportunity and mine” (Hill 23). Napoleon Hill’s words points us to the spirit behind New Thought and our culture’s prosperity gospel, which is the life-blood influencing these American philosophies, manifest destiny. Manifest destiny plays its part in the prosperity gospel as it did in years of the conquering of this country, where God becomes the nation’s momentum rather than its focus. God becomes the reason we’re favored and why we deserve to be among the favored. God is opportunity; therefore, God is whoever Joel Osteen says He is, and this God blesses those who bless themselves, “Prosperity Gospel preachers […] define the market in spiritual terms as a natural extension of God’s law. For those who adhere to this theology, the market provides the template for spiritual accountability” (Winslow).
Joel Osteen defines the market using his own success, he speaks from a position of authority and emotion arguing in favor of God’s law: the gospel of acquisition, “When we acquired this place, the former Compaq center, it was a dream come true” (Osteen), in every sermon Osteen refers to the church his congregants are sitting in as tangible evidence of whatever New Thought philosophy he is selling that week, but by demonstrating his own acquisition he provides the basis for what Dr. Heinz Kohut “refers to as idealizing transferences and mirroring transferences” (Miller & Carlin), in which an individual projects good qualities onto another and uses the projections as a means to see themselves, respectively.
Joel Osteen subtly illustrates the divide between what he has and the Imaged Other here, talking about how “we,” now it’s “we,” acquired the Compaq center, “We were so excited. Our builders drew up plans […] and said it was going to cost $100 million dollars to renovate […] My first thoughts were, ‘That’s impossible’” (Osteen), but then he gives his audience what they need, those qualities of godliness and confidence that the audience project onto him, “I told our team, ‘I don’t see a way, but I know God has a way’” (Osteen). The reality of Osteen’s message is all around his audience. He becomes that mirror in which his audience sees themselves. They fashion their identities off what he preaches, they can become like him.
Joel Osteen has rebutted this image of him being a prosperity preacher, but just because someone says something, doesn’t make it so. There’s no telling how many people Joel Osteen has helped, “his sermons air in over 200 U.S. markets and over 100 around the world” (Jeffress), and this is in no way trying to detract from the power of positive thinking and people “’looking for some inspiration, some encouragement’” (Jeffress), quoting Osteen. There’s nothing wrong with that, but there is something wrong with preying on desperate souls seeking something more than the mundane, selling them an image of what they could be with a different mentality.
This type of preaching dangerously skews into victim blaming territory, a criticism lobbied against the New Thought movement as well. God, in this theology, “has created you to be a victor, not a victim” (Osteen). This isn’t necessarily God’s message, but it is the law of attraction, “You are what you think, not what you think you are.”
The most blatant issue that prosperity gospel runs into, being a successor to the New Thought movement and an expression of the self-help industry, is that no matter what language is used: Christian, Vedic, or hieroglyphs, it is still a system meant to acquire material things the individual desires. Joel Osteen has been described as a preacher of “energetic, New Age gospel of hope and self-help” (Jeffress), he is not in the business of selling a Christian message, but he is successful in selling an image–an image of the favored, one in which an individual can step into if they believe hard enough and think more positively. He is selling you “You.”
Osteen is a businessman, contorting Christian thought to sell books that do little to distinguish themselves from the writings of New Thought, that ultimately “accord with the traditional American philosophy of success. They banish luck and reaffirm the economic potency of character. Faith in equality of opportunity is sustained. The bulk of the literature contains little but esoteric directions for making money” (Griswold).
Citations:
Griswold, Alfred. “New Thought: A Cult of Success.” American Journal of Sociology. Volume 40, Issue 3. 1934, 309-318. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/216744.
Hill, Napoleon. “Think and Grow Rich.” Srishti Publishers & Distributors, 2020.
Jeffress, Michael. “A Study of the Demographics, Exposure Levels, and Perceptions of the Viewing Audience of Pastor Joel Osteen, America’s Most Popular Preacher.” Journal of Media Critiques. Volume 3, Issue 12. 2017, 291-303. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael-Jeffress/publication/322303458_A_Study_of_the_Demographics_Exposure_Levels_and_Perceptions_of_the_Viewing_Audience_of_Pastor_Joel_Osteen_America’s_Most_Popular_Preacher/links/5a529177458515e7b72cb02c/A-Study-of-the-Demographics-Exposure-Levels-and-Perceptions-of-the-Viewing-Audience-of-Pastor-Joel-Osteen-Americas-Most-Popular-Preacher.pdf.
Miller, Christine; Carlin, Nathan. “Joel Osteen as Cultural Selfobject: Meeting the Needs of the Group Self and Its Individual Members in and from the Largest Church in America.” Pastoral Psychology. Volume 59. 2010, 27-51. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11089-009-0197-7#citeas.
Winslow, Luke. “The Imaged Other: Style and Substance in the Rhetoric of Joel Osteen.” Southern Communication Journal. Volume 79, Issue 3. 2014, 250-271. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1041794X.2013.872173.
“Your Words Become Your Reality | Joel Osteen.” YouTube, uploaded by Joel Osteen, 7 January 2016.
Witness, NM 