Publisher’s Website<\/a><\/p>\nWhen Joel Osteen assumed the pulpit of Lakewood Church following his father\u2019s death in 1999\u2013wearing his father\u2019s suit, tie, shoes and clutching his Bible\u2013he did so with grand ambitions.\u00a0Osteen had been the television producer for Lakewood and, according to Phillip Luke Sinitiere in\u00a0this remarkably informative book, Joel Osteen\u2019s theological training derived almost entirely from\u00a0editing his father\u2019s sermons.<\/p>\n
Sinitiere doesn\u2019t pitch that observation as a criticism. Not at all. The author spends a great deal of\u00a0time exploring John Osteen\u2019s\u00a0\u201cTexas Theology,”\u00a0which evolved from\u00a0garden-variety Southern\u00a0Baptist to neopentecostal, complete with divine healing\u00a0and more than a dash of prosperity\u00a0theology. The elder Osteen’s\u00a0belief in divine healing grew out of the healing of his daughter\u00a0(now one of the pastors at Lakewood), but such convictions, of course, placed Osteen at odds\u00a0with the Southern Baptists\u2013his divorce from a youthful marriage didn\u2019t help, either\u2013so he\u00a0charted a more independent course. John Osteen\u2019s early affiliation with the Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International provided him with both an expanding network of\u00a0confederates as well as a national platform.<\/p>\n
Once in the pulpit, the younger Osteen enlarged his list of\u00a0influences to include John Maxwell\u00a0and Joyce Meyer, who in turn was influenced by Norman Vincent Peale\u2013not exactly theological\u00a0titans, but that, according to Sinitiere, is precisely the\u00a0point. Osteen\u2019s theology is simple, which,\u00a0together with his meticulously polished and multi-platformed presentation, accounts for its\u00a0popularity. Sinitiere believes that Osteen\u2019s prosperity teaching can be distilled into four elements:\u00a0\u201cpositive thinking, positive confession, positive providence, and finally, the promotion of the\u00a0Christian body as a site of improvement\u201d\u00a0(61).<\/p>\n
Sinitiere contends that, just as Peale’s\u00a0theology of positive thinking offered predictability in the\u00a0perilous early years of the Cold War, so too Osteen\u2019s contemporary articulation of New Thought principles “provides predictability in an anxious age of global terror,\u00a0late capitalism\u2019s ferocious\u00a0economic uncertainty, and dizzying technological change\u201d\u00a0(96). That formula, the author argues,\u00a0is much more attractive than\u00a0\u201cthe historically combative cultural politics\u201d\u00a0of the Religious Right\u00a0(105).<\/p>\n
The book\u2019s most riveting chapter showcases what Sinitiere calls Osteen\u2019s \u201cpiety of resistance\u201d\u00a0to\u00a0his critics. From E. W. Kenyon to the present, prosperity theology has presented a broad and\u00a0tempting target. Osteen’s evangelical critics pounced on a 2005 interview on\u00a0Larry King Live<\/em>, in\u00a0the course of which Osteen was not sufficiently condemnatory of non-Christians. The harshest\u00a0criticism directed toward him, however, emanates from the phalanx of so called New Calvinists,\u00a0principally Michael Horton, John MacArthur, and R. Albert Mohler. (The latter, president of\u00a0Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, comes from a denomination not known for its fidelity to\u00a0Calvinism. Carey Newman, a fellow Baptist and longtime Mohler observer, characterizes Mohler’s “conversion” as \u201crecent and expedient\u201d; he\u2019s a \u201ccalculated convert.\u201d)<\/p>\nThese New Calvinists, self-styled guardians of orthodoxy (albeit a peculiar form of orthodoxy),\u00a0prize theological certitude above all else\u2013which, of course, is what draws them to Calvinism;\u00a0one you accept Calvinistic presuppositions, you enter a theological vortex that explains\u00a0everything, that supplies answers to every question. The New Calvinists have been blistering in\u00a0their attacks on Osteen, accusing him of everything from Pelagianism and heresy to peddling a\u00a0\u201ccotton candy gospel\u201d\u00a0and functioning as\u00a0\u201can agent for Satan\u201d\u00a0(189, 193).<\/p>\n
For the most part, Osteen stands above the fray, refusing to engage his critics in the kinds of\u00a0disputations they so adore. The eagle, after all, doesn\u2019t hunt flies; Osteen\u2019s success speaks for\u00a0itself. Sinitiere finds a paradox here: \u00a0“spiritual sensibilities at the root of the prosperity gospel\u00a0tradition that Osteen represents have long frustrated those whose commitments to propositional\u00a0theology produce a clamorous resistance to change\u201d\u00a0(209). Osteen and his critics, in fact, are\u00a0remarkably similar.\u00a0\u201cOsteen\u2019s message of God\u2019s favor and goodness,\u201d\u00a0Sinitiere concludes,\u00a0\u201cis in\u00a0the end very similar to the predictability toward which his critics\u2019\u00a0propositional theology has\u00a0aspired\u201d\u00a0(209).<\/p>\n
So where does Osteen belong on the landscape of American religion in the twenty-first century?\u00a0Scholars dating back to the nineteenth century have talked about the Great Man theory, an\u00a0approach to history positing that certain individuals, through charisma, wisdom, intelligence,\u00a0or political skill, embody the tensions, aspirations,\u00a0and apprehensions of their age. In American\u00a0religious history, Jonathan Edwards has been advanced as\u00a0fitting that description, and Charles\u00a0Grandison Finney must also be part of that conversation.\u00a0There are perils aplenty to writing a biography of an individual still living, but Sinitiere\u2019s treatment of Joel Osteen suggests that the\u00a0smiling preacher should be part of any\u00a0larger conversation about religion in the twenty-first\u00a0century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Review: Salvation with a Smile Randall Balmer Randall Balmer\u00a0is the John Phillips Professor in Religion and Director of the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College. JSR Volume 18 Cite this Article Randall Balmer, “Review: Salvation with a Smile,”\u00a0Journal of Southern Religion (18) (2016): jsreligion.org\/vol18\/balmer Open-access license This work is licensed CC-BY. You are encouraged to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-348","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522,"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/348\/revisions\/522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsreligion.org\/vol18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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