British review of a hard right-wing "Christian" book
"Become a Better You" by Joel Osteen, televangelist
Cheesy smiles: one on the front cover; two on the back. Cheesy stories: every couple of pages. Self-fulfilment advice for complacent and inexplicably sad rich people. Veneer level: Christian truisms follow each other like rides at Disneyland. Spiritual nutrition? Well, even pot noodles are better than nothing if you are starving. The subtitle is ‘7 keys to improving your life every day’.
Maybe these should have been jotted on an email and circulated around offices full of real people so we could all have had a laugh. If this really is the modern equivalent of the spiritual movement Jesus started, then we of all people are most miserable. Happily, it isn’t! The fact that tens of thousands flock to Joel Osteen’s cathedral to hear him pontificate each week, and many more on TV, demonstrates that the culture he represents really is as shallow and selfsatisfied as we all suspect. Some may say this stuff has its place. We hope that soon it will have had its day.
High: Apparently faultless and inoffensive like the complexion of a cover-girl.
Low: Apparently faultless and inoffensive like the complexion of a cover-girl.
Reviewed by Hugo and Sharon Anson, directors of the Grassroots Trust.
Simon & Schuster / £12.99 / 9781847371102
Brought to my attention by Jane Dean, contributor to this blog
I have seen this pretty boy on TV and what he has to say is so banale that I wonder he doesn’t burst into laughter himself. There is a bottomless demand, it seems, for reassuring blah, peppered with statements of the obvious. It is not Mr. Osteen that is the problem, however – – he is just making a handsome living telling his congregation what they want to hear. What is scary is the presumed intelligence and education of his flock. Not very high. You can see that there is an incentive on the part of the Christian Right to keep things as they are. Real education is a threat; it makes you think for yourself.