Oprah Winfrey : America's most effective Pastor

The entertainment business is not usually thought of as a missionary enterprise, but talk–show host and media queen Oprah Winfrey is a woman on a mission. It says so right in her magazine’s table of contents: “This month’s mission . . .” The mission themes of the month in O, the Oprah magazine, are not exactly part of orthodox Christianity (“Fun,” “Couples,” “Freedom,” “Strength”), but Oprah does refer to God a lot (as in her April column: “I used to ask God to help me master a new virtue every year”).

At the center of Oprah’s mission, of course, is her daily TV talk show, which entered its 17th season this fall. Amid its hodgepodge of topics—female war correspondents, the decorating challenged, moms who are mean to their kids, crime victims who forgive their assailants, and, oh yes, the quest to lose weight—Oprah stresses a message: Make yourself happy.
Oprah’s work is about maximizing happiness for oneself and thereby for others. Make yourself happier, make your family happier, make your community happy, and better, by “using” your life. Far from being distinct, “happier” and “better” are pretty much synonymous in Oprah’s world. From a biblical standpoint, her teaching is idiosyncratic, like her name—a misspelling of Orpah, Naomi’s other daughter–in–law in the Book of Ruth.

Oprah has a prominent pulpit from which to preach. Her TV show has an audience of 22 million viewers. Her two–year–old magazine has a readership of 2.5 million and is generally hefty with advertising. (The May issue, for example, hit an astounding 304 pages with around half of them occupied by advertising.)
Authors and publishers would also testify to her golden touch. Of the 46 works of fiction picked by Oprah for her book club (which she recently closed down), sales averaged 1.5 million in 1999, the club’s biggest year. In this arena, Oprah’s roles as saleswoman and spiritual guru blend. She prescribed edifying books, many of them by women or people of color. The stories were strong on plot, character and moral awareness.

Phyllis Tickle, who was editor of religion books for many years at Publishers Weekly and likes to describe religion books as “portable pastors,” characterizes the Oprah books as “morally sound material, by and large, that is credible and enriching . . . Like most of what she does, you’re the better for having read them. Her tastes are very pastoral as well as literary.”

“I have enormous respect for Oprah,” Tickle continues. “Anybody who can better the living experience of thousands of people has to be respected. She may not be ordained but she sure is pastoral, and pastoral at a level that has a vast impact.”

With her conversational ease and casual style, Oprah comes across the TV screen as personal and personable, both pastor and best friend, authoritative yet approachable. “She is like a personal institution,” says Judith Martin, who teaches religious studies at the University of Dayton and has written on feminist spirituality.

So summing it all up, let’s just bring it down to ten reasons why Oprah is a compelling and successful spiritual teacher in spiritually eclectic and ever–practical America:

1. Oprah is easy to understand. She uses little words. You’ll never hear “postdenominationalism” or “hermeneutics” or churchy jargon on the show. Her regular magazine column, called “What I Know for Sure,” is simply written, and filled with her experience and reflections on that experience.

2. Oprah is very human. She admits to struggles with human temptations, like food. This distinguishes her from lots of other religious figures on television.

3. Oprah acknowledges the reality of suffering and also wants to do something to relieve it. At her prompting, people regularly tell wrenching stories of being abused or vicitimized. The woman known as the Central Park jogger, attacked 13 years ago in New York by a group of teenage boys, broke her public silence for an interview with Oprah in the April issue of O. Oprah’s 9–11 six–month anniversary show featured World Trade Center survivor Lauren Manning, a victim of serious burns. Suffering happens. Talking about it and exploring survivors’ resilience seems to help.

4. Oprah provides community of a sort. You can log on to www.oprah.com and pick from dozens and dozens of chat and support groups and message boards. (It’s true that virtual community and actual community are not the same things and have different benefits, but that’s another topic.) You can go to a bookstore and look for a book with an Oprah Book Club logo. Lots of others are reading that very same book.

5. Oprah encourages self–examination. The traditionalists might call it examination of conscience. A daily examen is a technique encouraged in Christian contemplation. Oprah would call it journaling or “something to think about,” her magazine’s feature that presents questions for reflection.

6. Oprah teaches gratitude. St. Paul says: “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6). Write those requests in your gratitude journal. “The gratitude journal is a wonderful idea as a supplement to people’s already formed spiritual life,” says Jones at Duke Divinity.

7. Oprah is a reminder service: a reminder of what is good, what is important, what one person can do. In this info–glutted culture, the busy need reminders. Remember what’s important. My husband, a pediatric nurse in a suburban Chicago hospital, gets an occasional small dose of Oprah. In patients’ rooms during morning hours, the Oprah show will sometimes be playing, watched by moms sitting with their sick children. He recently asked one Oprah watcher what she liked. She watched, she told him, for the information: safety for children, decorating, etc. This information was not necessarily new, she explained, but she liked to be reminded.

8. Oprah teaches morality by highlighting and encouraging role models. Oprah profiles those who make a positive difference. She and her viewers also bankroll some of them, though her Angel Network.

9. Oprah listens. Being heard is good for well–being. Catholics put this to work institutionally in what is popularly called confession and formally known as the sacrament of reconciliation. This same principle is at work in the 12–step program, which requires confession of character defects as a foundation for responsible change. Confess, repent and be healed. In Dr. Phil’s words, own it.

10. Oprah promotes forgiveness, and tries to demonstrate that it is possible and how it is possible. She regards it as a tool for survival. She has regularly spoken with survivors of crime—people who lost loved ones or were themselves victimized—and returned years later to check on their progress.

A recent show featured Sharmeta Lovely, a victim of rape, whom Oprah had interviewed ten years earlier. Oprah expressed amazement at Lovely’s stated willingness to sit down to dinner with her assailant. Yet Oprah often repeats a variant of this observation: “Forgiveness is something you do for yourself.” In closing her conversation with Lovely, Oprah urged, “Preach, girl, preach to me.”