The Church of Oprah Exposed

One of the hottest videos on YouTube, having been viewed by close to 6 million people (!), is “The Church of Oprah Exposed.” I’ve commented enough on this here and elsewhere. Watch and enjoy.

I was watching Oprah’s Big Give the other night and I couldn’t help thinking, “Why not Virginia Tech?”

You see, each contestant was sent home to do “give back” in their home community. One of the contestants lives in Virginia. As he was driving home, there was a camera shot on the highway sign for Blacksburg, home of VT. Am I the only one who thought this? Wouldn’t doing something to heal that community be the biggest service to the place where he lived?

Today’s New York Times Magazine has an interesting article about the Kabbalah Centre. Reporter, Daphne Merkin, was given greater access to the Centre than I. Even so, we come to many of the same conclusions — it’s more marketing than religion.

Where we differ is that Ms. Merkin seems to believe that people are getting something of value from their experience at the Centre. More than disagreeing with Ms. Merkin, I disagree with Ben-Gurion University’s Boaz Huss who said in regards to the come-and-go attitude of students, particularly celebrities: “Being in there for two minutes is a significant part of what the center is about. In a spiritual marketplace, most of the consumers don’t stay long…People go freely, and most of the consumers are happy with what they get.” If consumers are happy with what they get than why are they leaving?

This attitude of shopping for a “newer, better” faith, perpetuates the need for marketing. The Centre has to keep getting people in the front door because hoards of people are going out the back.

The Kabbalah center is not alone in this. While we might love for them to just state that they are a store and not a spiritual center, that will never happen. It is anathema to the marketing model.

I haven’t had time to post as regularly as I’d like of late because I’m in the middle of the academic conference season (plus writing a new book….more on that at a later date).

I was at an (unnamed) religion and literature conference this weekend that I thought would be helpful in continuing to shape my thinking about the issues I deal with on this blog. Now, I’m a smart woman (with a name like Einstein you have to at least try to be) but I sat there for a day utterly glazed over by obscure and esoteric talks about minutiae.

The worst was the opening plenary session. It was an unfocused stroll through some random thoughts about coins and the crucifixion and I don’t know what else…and this was from a highly respected, even reportedly one of the two most popular (as in sense of being most available to the public) religion professors from the Harvard Divinity School. It was explained to me that the talk was supposed to be random thoughts, but that didn’t make it any better.

Now maybe it’s because I’m a communications scholar, but I thought the whole point was to — communicate. If being an academic is supposed to be about some narcissistic, self-indulgent belly button gazing, count me out.

My understanding is this Harvard scholar has done work in the area of feminist studies and religion and has helped the cause of women and I’m glad that is so. Maybe she was simply torturing her own and wouldn’t do this to the public at large. Even so. From my perspective, if the work we do is not about moving the conversation forward, if it is not about making people think and engage than what’s the point?

I want my money back.