Faithful members of Oprah Winfrey\u2019s TV flock know what\u2019s happening when guests start talking and their leader keeps saying \u201cAmen,\u201d \u201cPreach it\u201d or even, \u201cSister, I understand the whole God connection!\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The host wants the guest to start \u201ctestifying,\u201d a confessional process in which believers look for God\u2019s healing hand in life\u2019s hard lessons. Winfrey learned all about \u201ctestifying\u201d as a girl back in the Faith United Mississippi Baptist Church, where jealous peers often called her \u201cMiss Jesus.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
But here\u2019s the irony, noted journalist Marcia Nelson, author of \u201cThe Gospel According to Oprah.\u201d Winfrey has become a billionaire and one of world\u2019s most powerful women by baring her soul and urging millions of others to follow her example, resulting in what some critics call the \u201cOprahfication\u201d of America. However, it\u2019s almost impossible to answer this simple question: What does Oprah believe? <\/p>\n\n
\u201cShe sounds like a person who was raised in a Baptist church,\u201d said Nelson, who spent months digging into Winfrey\u2019s beliefs on suffering, gratitude, generosity, forgiveness and other spiritual topics. <\/p>\n\n
\u201cStill, it\u2019s hard to put a label on Oprah because she refuses to let people do that to her. \u2026 You\u2019d have to say that she looks a lot more like a Protestant than she does a Catholic, but what does that mean? It\u2019s hard to say what a person needs to believe these days to be called a \u2018Protestant.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n\n
Winfrey retains the ability to slip smoothly into the \u201cmother tongue\u201d she learned as a child in black churches, noted Nelson. For a few years as an adult, she attended the Trinity United Church of Christ, a progressive congregation in Chicago known as Sen. Barack Obama\u2019s home church. Then, during her \u201cRemember Your Spirit\u201d period in the 1990s, conservatives criticized her ties to Marianne Williamson (\u201cA Return to Love\u201d) and other \u201cNew Age\u201d writers who blurred the lines between Christianity and other faiths.<\/p>\n\n
The key is that Winfrey has been a trailblazer who symbolizes many contemporary religious trends.<\/p>\n\n
* Many Americans, said Nelson, are drawn to a \u201cpractical, how-to, self-help, just-do-it\u201d approach to faith and personal growth that meshes smoothly with the parade of counselors, doctors, writers and ministers \u2014 of every conceivable faith \u2014 featured on \u201cThe Oprah Winfrey Show.\u201d It\u2019s crucial that the host looks straight into the camera and says: \u201cThis works.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
Thus, noted Nelson, Winfrey has \u201cbeen roundly criticized for making the spiritual too psychological, too therapeutic, too soft, too easy, too self-centered. The gospel according to Oprah doesn\u2019t appear to require some kind of doctrinal commitment or a community to ensure that the life-changing \u2018Aha!\u2019 moment of decision is more than a new year\u2019s resolution that is quickly made in isolation and broken two weeks later.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
* The public loves complex, conflicted celebrities and Winfrey is the spiritual superstar. She quietly supports humble projects near home, yet courts publicity by flying off to start gigantic projects around the world \u2014 such as the new $40-million Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy near Johannesburg. <\/p>\n\n
She tells women to love themselves the way they are, but keeps offering weight-loss tips. She urges viewers to give to others, but also pamper themselves. Winfrey says women should embrace their maturity, but shows them how to look 10 years younger. She advises women on private moral dilemmas, but fiercely guards her own privacy.<\/p>\n\n
* One of the fastest growing segments of the population consists of people who call themselves \u201cspiritual,\u201d but not \u201creligious,\u201d noted Nelson. Winfrey clicks with media-driven, postmodern believers who stress the importance of personal experience and storytelling over the authority of religious institutions and doctrines. Meanwhile, many churches are trying to shed old names and labels, calling themselves \u201ccommunity churches\u201d and adopting other post-denominational names.<\/p>\n\n
The bottom line, said Nelson, is that for generations Americans were able to rally around a kind of tame, \u201cnominal\u201d Judeo-Christian faith that let them affirm a few common traditions and many old-fashioned values. But this has become harder after waves of immigration from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n
American is becoming more pluralistic on faith issues and that has always been just fine with Winfrey. She is all about spirituality, not doctrine. If she has a creed she keeps it hidden.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cOprah\u2019s clothes may bear labels, but her faith does not,\u201d noted Nelson. \u201cI don\u2019t know what her personal beliefs are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Faithful members of Oprah Winfrey\u2019s TV flock know what\u2019s happening when guests start talking and their leader keeps saying \u201cAmen,\u201d \u201cPreach it\u201d or even, \u201cSister, I understand the whole God connection!\u201d The host wants the guest to start \u201ctestifying,\u201d a confessional process in which believers look for God\u2019s healing hand in life\u2019s hard lessons. Winfrey […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1531,590,622,674,844],"class_list":["post-1420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-books","tag-new-age","tag-oprah","tag-postmodernism","tag-television"],"yoast_head":"\n