Salvation with a Smile
Joel Osteen, Lakewood Church, and American Christianity
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- USD 34.99
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- USD 34.99
Descripción editorial
Joel Osteen, the smiling preacher, has quickly emerged as one of the most recognizable Protestant leaders in the country. His megachurch, the Houston based Lakewood Church, hosts an average of over 40,000 worshipers each week. Osteen is the best-selling author of numerous books, and his sermons and inspirational talks appear regularly on mainstream cable and satellite radio.
How did Joel Osteen become Joel Osteen? How did Lakewood become the largest megachurch in the U. S.?
Salvation with a Smile, the first book devoted to Lakewood Church and Joel Osteen, offers a critical history of the congregation by linking its origins to post-World War II neopentecostalism, and connecting it to the exceptionally popular prosperity gospel movement and the enduring attraction of televangelism. In this richly documented book, historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere carefully excavates the life and times of Lakewood’s founder, John Osteen, to explain how his son Joel expanded his legacy and fashioned the congregation into America’s largest megachurch.
As a popular preacher, Joel Osteen’s ministry has been a source of existential strength for many, but also the routine target of religious critics who vociferously contend that his teachings are theologically suspect and spiritually shallow. Sinitiere’s keen analysis shows how Osteen’s rebuttals have expressed a piety of resistance that demonstrates evangelicalism’s fractured, but persistent presence.
Salvation with a Smile situates Lakewood Church in the context of American religious history and illuminates how Osteen has parlayed an understanding of American religious and political culture into vast popularity and success.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sinitiere (Holy Mavericks) explores the people, place, personality, Pentecostalism, and prosperity of Lakewood Church in Houston, Tex., focusing on its central personality, Pastor Joel Osteen, as an exemplar of evangelical Christianity and present-day American religion. Combining historical research, documentary investigation, and the observations of participants, Sinitiere situates the stirring success of Lakewood Church (the U.S.'s largest megachurch) and Joel Osteen Ministries within the broader American evangelical and neo-Pentecostal context. He depicts the church as distinctively positioned to benefit from currents in contemporary Christianity through its harnessing of multiple media platforms and the powers of positive confession and thinking in place of grander expressions of Lakewood's historical "charismatic core" divine healing, speaking in tongues, prophecy under Joel's father, John Osteen. Although Sinitiere does not talk to Osteen himself, he is able to deduce much from his sermons, conversations with Lakewood members, and the greater critique of Christianity's "crisis of authority." Readers interested in American Christianity, especially those who have seen Joel on television, read his books, or been blown away from the bombastic experience that is worshipping at Lakewood Church, will enjoy this work.