Televangelism

Joel Osteen is America's most popular televangelist and pastor of the country's largest congregation, Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. The 54-year old has been preaching since 1999, and his sermons air in over 200 U.S. markets and over 100 around the world. This study provides a brief introduction to the man and his ministry and reports the results of a self-selective survey (N = 403), employing analysis of variance and correlation analysis to examine relationship between viewer exposure to Osteen and perceptions of him and his message through five measurement scales. Key demographic variables are also considered for interaction effects.

One of the more perplexing exegetical difficulties faced by adherents of American-style premillennialism has to do with the question of what role the United States will play in the coming apocalypse. Despite the nearness of the eschaton and the critical role that the United States seems to play in foreshadowing it, the Mediterranean-based apocalypse scenario that lies at the heart of most premillennialist exegesis seems to leave little room for the Western hemisphere. How could the most powerful nation in the world, the single greatest political influence in the modern Middle East, be a non-entity at the time of the End?
This paper is an attempt to survey the various responses to that question from within the premillennialist camp. After surveying early attempts to situate the United States within an apocalyptic milieu—whether positively, as the fulfillment of prophecies concerning eschatological Israel, or negatively, as the dark paradigm of eschatological Babylon—I will focus on what appears to be the dominant interpretation among premillennialist forecasters at present: the United States is not mentioned in biblical apocalypse scenarios because it has somehow been erased from the halls of geopolitical power prior to that time. Such a seemingly pessimistic approach, however, paradoxically allows its proponents significant freedom in predicting the future history of the American empire. As I will argue, premillennialism’s very failure to find the United States U.S. within the pages of Revelation invests the nation with chameleon-like agency, freeing it from the fatalism often implied in apocalyptic speculation—and creating the conceptual space for meaningful engagement with the political process.

Explanations of religious change in terms of a religious market metaphor often employ one of two approaches: (1) the supply-side approach, which stresses both the role of restrictions and deregulations in the religious marketplace and the innovative contributions of religious suppliers as perpetrators of religious change, or (2) the demand-side approach, which attributes religious transformations to modified consumer needs and perceptions as well as to broader developments in the cultural sphere that account for shifting consumer desires and sensitivities.18 In this essay, I argue for a combined approach that sets both sides—production and consumption—in relation to each other. Presuming contemporary consumer culture to be broadly encompassing and inescapable, thoroughly permeating everyday practices, I also presume that it frames and shapes processes of production and consumption. Successfully marketed religious products are the result neither of a genuine contribution ex nihilo on the side of religious suppliers nor of passive social actors uniformly consuming these products.19 Producer and consumer inhabit a social and material world that enables and simultaneously restricts, a world that structures and simultaneously is structured by knowledge regimes and practices. A case study of Joel Osteen as a religious brand and his “message of hope”—the product on offer—will show how both production and consumption are tied to broader cultural patterns and discourses that structure the social world and the ways that actors on both supply and demand sides engage that world.

This study names and examines the Renewalist (Pentecostal-charismatic-neocharismatic) strain of Christian Zionism using the International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem, as a primary lens into this global movement. The major finding in this dissertation is the contemporary emergence of a Jewish-Christian ethnonationalism, suggesting changes to the way nationalism is manifest in a global age, changes to certain segments of Christianity, and the emergence of a distinctive global political and religious culture centered around the existence of the state of Israel.

Scholars of Christian Zionism have long associated the Christian Zionism with the 19th century, largely American theological movement known as premillennial dispensationalism. This association is erroneous in that it does not recognize earlier and different sources of Christian
Zionism, nor does it recognize alternate, contemporary forms of the movement. Such undifferentiating associations have consequences for scholarly approaches to understandings related to the socio-political activities of Christian Zionism globally, the history of Christian Zionism, millennialist Christianity, and the Christian appropriation of the state of Israel and Jewish religion, culture, and even persons. Using the ICEJ as a primary example of Renewalist Zionism, this dissertation examines the ways this Christian Zionism manifests in other historical  and contemporaneous forms of Renewalist Christianity. This work includes ethnography of the ICEJ’s annual Feast of Tabernacles celebration held in Jerusalem, Israel and attended by thousands of Christians annually. A further ethnography of the ICEJ-USA’s constructed pilgrimage and tour to Israel explores the expressions and practices of Renewalist Zionism on the ground in Israel. The ways that charismatic authority is constructed, the interplay of text, contemporary political realities, and Renewalist spirituality, and the role of global Christian media are also examined in detail. Furthermore, using the sociological theories of cultural globalization and social memory, Christian Zionism is theorized as a subjective ground for truth for its adherents in a relativizing, global age characterized by transnational flows and local, socio-political particularizations.

oel Osteen is America’s most popular televangelist and pastor of the America’s largest congregation, Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. The 52-year old has been preaching since 1999, and his sermons air in over 200 U.S. markets and over 100 around the world. This essay provides a general introduction to the man and his message and provides a rhetorical analysis of a popular episode of Joel Osteen’s television program informed by viewer opinions collected through two self-selective surveys (N = 971).

In many parts of Africa, charismatic-Pentecostal churches are increasingly and effectively making use of mass media and entering the public sphere. This article presents a case study of a popular charismatic church in Ghana and its media ministry. Building on the notion of charisma as intrinsically linking religion and media, the aim is to examine the dynamics between the supposedly  fluid nature of charisma and the creation of religious subjects through a Ž fixed format. The
process of making, broadcasting and watching Living Word shows how the format of televisualisation of religious practice creates charisma, informs ways of perception, and produces new kinds of religious subjectivity and spiritual experience.
Through the mass mediation of religion a new religious format emerges, which, although originating from the charismatic-Pentecostal churches, spreads far beyond and is widely appropriated as a style of worship and of being religious.

Full title: ‘Calling’ and ‘Training’: Role Innovation and Religious De-differentiation  in Commercialised Indonesian Islam.

Abstract: This article explores parallels between emergent Islamic popular culture in the commercial arena in Indonesia and popular religion propagated through the mass media in Europe and North America. Focusing on two emergent types of emicly distinguished but eticly overlapping lay religious roles, that of the da’i (lay preacher) and the ‘trainer’, it shows how borrowing from globally disseminated genres of secular culture by Islamic lay leaders in the commercial arena in Indonesia partially blurs the boundaries between religiously marked and unmarked communications, despite the popularity there of Islamicly marked dress styles and consumables. This is suggestive of a similar, if partial, de-differentiation of the religious and other communication spheres in Indonesia such as Hubert Knoblauch found in Europe.

However, as in his reading of European popular religion, it does not further imply Weberian ‘disenchantment’, since leading exemplars of Indonesian Islamic commercialised ‘preaching’ and ‘training’, such as those examined in case material presented here, still focus consumers on the transcendent, while those proselytisers yet work to overcome the compartmentalisation of Indonesian selves in their differentiated modern society.

Over the past few decades, televangelism has emerged as one important media phenomenon, inter alia, among Muslim communities. As a phenomenon, televangelism is interesting in many respects; it is a manifestation of the phenomenon of "info-tainment" as televangelists integrate entertainment features such as sound effects and music in their sermons. It is also a manifestation of the rise of the celebrity culture as televangelists have become 'media celebrities' with thousands of hundreds of fans and followers on social media networks.

Thematically, this study is divided into two main sections. First. I delineate the characteristics of televangelism as a novel form of religious expression in which televangelists adopt a modern style and use colloquial language; and in which televangelists present religion as a source of individual change. I have argued that these features seem to have granted televangelists popularity particularly among Muslim youth who view televangelism as a new form of religious expression that is modern in appearance and relevant to their everyday lives.
The study has further highlighted the importance of digital media technologies in popularizing televangelists' programmes and sermons. Drawing on two case studies of popular televangelists, namely Amr Khaled and Hamza Yusuf, the study has shown that televangelists draw on a plethora of digital media tools to extend the visibility of their programmes including websites and social media networks. The study has found that televangelists' fans play an important role in popularizing televangelists' programmes. Moreover, the study relates televangelism to the rise of digital Islam. The study has argued that digitization and the increase of literacy rates have changed the structure of religious authority in the twenty first century, giving rise to new voices that are competing for authority. 

Having provided an explanatory framework for the phenomenon of televangelism, the study moves in the second section to critique televangelism as an 'info-tainment' phenomenon.

Drawing on Carrette and King's Selling Spirituality, one issue that the study raises is the extent to which televangelism fits into the modern form of 'spiritualities'. Rather than being a critical reflection of the consumer culture, modern spiritualities seem to 'smooth out' resistance to the hegemony of capitalism and consumerism. I have proposed that it is through a content-related analysis of televangelists' sermons that one can get a nuanced understanding of how the discourses of particular televangelists can possibly relate to dominant (capitalist) ideologies, how structures of power are represented in their discourses and what their texts may reveal about the socio-historical contexts of Muslims in the twenty first century.

This is my chapter in the book Faith and Language Practices in Digital Spaces.

This book shares the results of research conducted within and across the complex nexus of language, religion and the Internet. It identifies the dynamic and mobile ways religious practice and language interact online to modify, confirm, transform and consolidate linguistic resources and repertoires. In this way it makes a significant contribution to the work of the emerging sub-discipline of the sociology of language and religion and adds to the growing work on digital religion. It also showcases leading and groundbreaking researchers working on online examples of the complex relationships evinced by the sociology of language and religion.

This article proposes a rethinking of religion and mediatization by differentiating between two intersections of religion and media, public religion and religious mediation. I argue that whenever religious change that can be usefully described as mediatization occurs it can best be captured as an effect resulting from the interaction of these two dimensions. Extending the debate on religion and mediatization beyond Christian North Atlantic contexts, I compare two instances of Islamic televangelism in India in order to illustrate the diversity of configurations of public religion and religious mediation even within the same regional setting and religious tradition. My analysis greatly complicates an assessment of mediatization as the subsumption of religion under an extraneous media apparatus, pointing at the highly uneven nature of media-related religious transformation and the ongoing domestication of contemporary media practices into established religious paradigms.

Abstract:

This monograph provides a critical overview and assessment of dakwahtainment or Islamic televangelism in post-reform Indonesia. Dakwah is an Indonesian word based on Arabic that means propagation of Islam – a religious duty for all Muslims. This monograph looks at what happens to Islamic propagation when, against the background of an increasingly materialist, consumerist, nihilistic and voyeuristic cul- ture of celebrity that is engulfing Indonesia, it is turned into media entertainment.
The monograph stems from an action research project on religion and gender in In- donesia, which was supported initially by the Catholic Organisation for Relief and Development Aid and extended with support from the Faculty of Dakwah of the State Islamic University of Sunan Kalijaga and Globethics.net. It is written in a semi- academic style to make the research more accessible and comprehensible for readers.

This article examines evangelical gender paradigms as expressed through a 700 Club cooking segment facilitated by Gordon Robertson, the son of Pat Robertson – founder  of the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), The 700 Club, Christian Coalition, and one-time presidential candidate. Several themes converge within this cooking show, including health and nutrition, family ritual, and gender roles. Using the cooking segment as data, I draw on scholarship on body, gender, family and ritual to argue that evangelical discourses are labile in their responses to recent socio-cultural shifts and suggest that ‘Sunday Dinners: Cooking with Gordon’ defies caricatures of evangelical gender formation and signals a shift to soft-patriarchy and quasi-egalitarianism, at least within public, visual discourse. ‘Sunday Dinners’ underscores the centrality of the family in evangelical discourse – even as conceptions of gender are in flux – as it seeks to facilitate everyday rituals via cooking and eating together.

Televangelism or preaching religion via television/YouTube is one manifestation of the global culture of ’infotainment’ where the domains of information and entertainment are blurred (e.g. van Zoonen 2005).
In this paper, I deconstruct strategies of self-presentation and construction of identities by three popular American Muslim televangelists that belong to three different generations, namely Yusuf Estes (born 1944), Hamza Yusuf (born 1958) and Ali Ardekani (born 1975).
Using a selected sample of their websites and YouTube videos, an eclectic approach of multi-modality (e.g. Kress and van Leeuwen 2001) and the Discourse Historical Approach (e.g. Wodak 2001)
will be used to deconstruct images, dress codes, colour schemes; and the discursive strategies used by televangelists to present themselves as ’media celebrities’, while constructing identities for their audiences.
Through exploring the above aspects, I will argue that one reason of the ’celebrity’ status of these televangelists is that each has constructed a distinct ’style’. Moreover, in many different ways, these televangelists have addressed the complexities of the socio-historical context of Muslims in the post 9-11 era.
Diverging from studies that have perceived ’info-tainment’ as intrinsically ’negative’ (e.g. see van Zoonen 2005:79 on politicotainment), I argue that televangelism has to be seen as a by-product of the broader interaction between commodification (of religion) and the rise of popular culture; and has to be evaluated in its own terms. I turn attention to media communication in the religious sphere, a domain little examined from a critical perspective.
Kress, G. and van Leeuwen, Theo (2001) Multimodal Discourse. The Modes and Media of Contemporary
Communication. New York: Bloomsbury
Wodak, R. (2001) The Discourse-Historical Approach. In Wodak, R. and M. Meyer (Eds.) Methods
of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: SAGE, pp 63-94.
van Zoonen, L. (2005) Entertaining the Citizen: When Politics and Popular Culture Converge. New
York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Keywords: Multimodality, Muslims in the West, Discursive construction of identity.

The Indian Government’s open policy on satellite television is attracting a plethora of American-based charismatic television ministries in India. This study, albeit based on preliminary findings from a limited study of church and Hindu community leaders, shows that Charismatic pastors are more positive about Charismatic televangelism than non-Charismatic pastors. Both groups, however, have strong reservations on issues like fundraising, dress code and western dancing. The high-caste Hindus revealed during the research that they were resistant to any form of Christian evangelism including televangelism. Besides caste, class, language and gender, televangelism faces cultural barriers in reaching Indians. The prosperity, success and healing doctrines of Charismatic teaching seem to appeal to Hindus from the middle to lower level economic classes. Concerns have been expressed, however, by Christian leaders that these Hindus who are attracted to Charismatic televangelism may be espousin...

Televangelism or preaching religion via TV and YouTube represents
an interesting media phenomenon in which religious messages are
presented in an entertaining manner. Despite the novelty of
televangelism and its popularity, little attention has been paid to
the investigation of the features of this genre, which could allow
insights into the nature of this phenomenon and the reasons
behind its popularity. In this study, I focus on the case study of
the American Muslim televangelist Baba Ali who gained popularity
through a series of videos on YouTube. With insights from the
Discourse Historical Approach and the Framework of Visual
Grammar, I analyse four key aspects of Ali’s videos i.e. religious
invocation, video-edition and self-representation, use of humour
and interactivity. I demonstrate that Ali’s videos represent a novel
genre that embeds features of the sermon, video-blogs and
YouTube culture. Furthermore, I show that Baba Ali represents a
new type of a religious figure whose authority appears to
emanate from his ordinariness as he presents himself as one of
his audience; and from his playfulness. Thus, I elaborate on
contemporary Muslim televangelism and extend the application
of Critical Discourse Studies to religious discourse, a domain little
examined from a critical perspective.

The article can be accessed through the link below:
https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2017.1408477

Religious media plays a vital role in reforming and changing the socio-religious and cultural lifestyle of the society. This paper looks at the character of online Islamic evangelism, which targets Muslim youth of Indian backgrounds and addresses
the convergence of religious communication and modern media. Assessing the role of Islamic evangelism in the socio-religious and cultural lifestyle of young Muslims, it applies a content analysis to major Islamic media outlets online to find
out their approaches to evangelism, the traits and trends of Islamic evangelism, and consumption trends among Muslim youth in India.

Currently, religious broadcasting in Turkey is flourishing. Despite the variety it offers, religious broadcasting remains an under-investigated topic compared to other religious media. This paper analyses a particular form of religious broadcasting, televangelism, with particular reference to Adnan Oktar's television channel A9 TV. I argue that Adnan Oktar's televangelist practice stands at the margins of religious broadcasting and differs from other Islamic televangelists in various ways. I analyse both the visual and discursive characteristics of Oktar's televangelist practice.

This monograph provides a critical overview and assessment of dakwahtainment or Islamic televangelism in post-reform Indonesia. Dakwah is an Indonesian word based on Arabic that means propagation of Islam – a religious duty for all Muslims. This monograph looks at what happens to Islamic propagation when, against the background of an increasingly materialist, consumerist, nihilistic and voyeuristic cul- ture of celebrity that is engulfing Indonesia, it is turned into media entertainment. The monograph stems from an action research project on religion and gender in In- donesia, which was supported initially by the Catholic Organisation for Relief and Development Aid and extended with support from the Faculty of Dakwah of the State Islamic University of Sunan Kalijaga and Globethics.net. It is written in a semi- academic style to make the research more accessible and comprehensible for readers.

More than a university, Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma was also the headquarters for evangelist Oral Roberts’s electronic church. The electronic church in America, dominated by Christian evangelicals, used technology to spread the Gospel over radio airways and television signals to a dispersed audience. Yet evangelicals like Roberts also constructed ambitious campuses in real space and time. The architecture of Oral Roberts University visualized a modern and “populuxe” image for the electronic church in the 1960s and 1970s. The university’s Prayer Tower purposely alluded to the Seattle Space Needle, aligning religion and the Space Age, and the campus’s white, gold, and black color palette on late modern buildings created an image of aspirational luxury, conveying Roberts’s health and wealth gospel. Oral Roberts University served as a sound stage for Roberts’s radio and television shows, a pilgrimage point for his audience, and a university dedicated to training evangelicals in the electronic church.

Joel Osteen is America's most popular televangelist and pastor of the country's largest congregation, Lakewood Church in Houston, TX. The 54-year old has been preaching since 1999, and his sermons air in over 200 U.S. markets and over 100 around the world. This study provides a brief introduction to the man and his ministry and reports the results of a self-selective survey (N = 403), employing analysis of variance and correlation analysis to examine relationship between viewer exposure to Osteen and perceptions of him and his message through five measurement scales. Key demographic variables are also considered for interaction effects.

As online church services have become widespread since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, discussions about the importance of interactions within the congregation during church service have emerged. In this essay I discuss the compatibility of the traditional Reformed liturgy with its conveying medium whether it is a church hall, the television or Facebook live. I argue that the Reformed church service, where one-way communication is dominant is a format more congruent to Eco's paleo-television than to the interactive platforms of social media. I argue that the traditional, Reformed liturgy does not give enough space for its members to participate in the service actively rather than silently observe it, even when offline. Thus, I question whether the concern regarding the lack of interactions during remote church services is legitimate.