The Prosperity Gospel: No Heart, But Living Well,...

 

 Whoa - Jesus is NOT protecting Joel Osteen - check this out:

Ann and Meade "Come To Jesus" Lawrence should hear this. Oh Hell, what am I saying? 

 They'll just rationalize a way to hawk it on Amazon,...

In The Name Of Jesus

 

 That reprehensible Texas con man, Joel Osteen, was the target of an equally reprehensible but elaborate internet hoax, that had him delivering this cool-assed message to the public:

As many of you may know, and may have heard in the news recently, many of my sermons have deviated from traditional Christian doctrine. I have been accused of altering the ‘message’ to fit my own doctrine and dogma. Others have accused me of preaching ‘feel good Christianity’. I have also been accused of profiting greatly from my ministry, with my books and television deals. 

Many of their criticisms are legitimate. 

What they don’t know is that deep down in my heart, for a number of years now, I have been questioning the faith, Christianity and whether Jesus Christ is really my, or anyone’s, ‘savior’. 

I believe now that the Bible is a fallible, flawed, highly inconsistent history book that has been altered hundreds of times. There is zero evidence the Bible is the holy word of God. In fact, there is zero evidence “God” even exists. 

No God worth believing in is going to send you to Hell for not believing in him. Not even the worst sinner and scum of the Earth deserves eternal torment in Hell. In fact, God is more likely to congratulate you upon entering Heaven for doubting, questioning and not believing the religionists and their flimsy facts, demands of blind faith and lack of hard evidence. 

Fortunately, once the hoax was discovered, Osteen reportedly said "Fuck it," laughed a little, and then promptly went back to fleecing the public,...

Christians & Atheists Together (Cooler Than Jesus,...)

I'm surprised I hadn't seen this before, because The New York Times' Ross Douthat seems to have hit the NewAge nail on the head, only he calls it being "a nation of heretics." I know it's NewAge because he lists many of the traditionally NewAge phenomena - prosperity preachers (Joel Osteen, specifically) self-help gurus, and Deepak Chopra - while also saying these are things, both, Christians and atheists can despise.

Got that? The NewAge disaster is something we can agree on! 

I just want to be sure readers understand, because people are always asking me what I'm going on about, when I'm long past wanting to repeatedly going back into TMR's archives to find posts that explain it. (I've "moved on" as the NewAgers say.)

Anybody still want to know what TMR is railing about? 

This is (partially, but mostly) it,...

ADDED - A few observations:

Notice how this discussion is progressing:

Both Bill Maher and Ross Douthat understand the subject matter. It's not like when I discuss Mormonism with folks online, who seem compelled to defend it, without knowing anything about it. Also, Maher and Douthat aren't bullshitting - there's no attempt to one-up each other, and Douthat doesn't get insulted, sidetracked, or attempts to change the subject to behavior, merely because Maher swears or something. They are two serious scholars of religion and "spirituality," taking each other and the subject seriously.

It's wonderful, and I'd like to see more of it - especially online.

Don't Pray For Me: Pray To Me

"This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I do what it says I can do. I am about to receive the incorruptible, indestructible, ever-living seed of God, and I will never be the same. Never, never, never. I will never be the same. In Jesus' name. Amen."

- The prayer/chant being used in Joel Osteen's Pentecostal church - the largest in the country - which Slate.com's Chris Lehmann says has a "curiously infantile quality" ("Never, never, never") matched with a "vividly sexualized power". (Claiming you're "about to receive the,...seed of God" will make some people sit up and notice. That line, alone, is probably why Slate lists this story under the heading "Faith-Based: Religion, Spirituality, and Sacrilege.") Lehmann continues:

"While Joel Osteen has never formally trained as a minister, he is heir to a theological teaching—the movement known as Word-Faith. Word-Faith holds that believers possess, in divinely sanctioned snatches of scripture, the stuff of miraculous self-healing and prosperity—an odd turn for the Pentecostal movement, which first took root in some of the poorest (and blackest) stretches of the West and Southwest. Then again, the Word-Faith tradition is also part of a much broader movement toward therapeutic healing in American Protestantism—including the Mind Cure and New Thought teachings of the late 19th century that produced Christian Science, the positive thinking homilizing of Norman Vincent Peale, and all manner of New Age folderol, up through The Secret and The Prayer of Jabez.

Great. More cultish New Age nonsense and, like the push through environmentalism, these silly Pagan impulses have further infected the Christian churches. (Aren't Christians supposed to know better? Some of the best writing I've seen, on the hollowness of New Age beliefs, has been done by Christian groups,...mind you - I don't buy into their shit either - but they make their points and I get my knowledge of the New Age where I can find it. Oh well:) Here, as the blackest modern black man, is my own contribution to the prayer/chant scene for Osteen's New Age masses:

"Please, Jesus, shut these idiots up. Blind them with the whiteness of Osteen's smile. Let his smarminess wash over them like a particularly bad fart. Let them see such people for the simple-minded used car salesmen they are, while continually filling their Holy Books with ever more book-sized holes. Do this, in my name, and I promise to continue helping these poor ignorant slobs to never be mindless followers again. Never, never, never. That's the very least you could do - if you could actually, at least, 'do' anything. Amen."

And now, back to our regularly scheduled dose of religious reality:



P.S.

This post owes a huge debt to Scotteriology, a great religious blog I just ran across today, and will be adding to my blogroll soon.