I happened across this article on salon.com that takes Oprah’s latest psecudo-spiritual schlock to task. It appears that she’s jumped on the bandwagon of people following a book called The Secret that’s cribbed from the Word of Faith movement people but put a secular slant on it.

Now I’ve never been a fan of Oprah, and this is one of the reasons why. For a person who has the power to deeply impact such a large audience, she displays an incredible lack of intellectual responsibility. It seems like time and time again these ridiculous fads crop up on her show or on her book list. It’s almost as if she’s the gatekeeper for what her watchers will accept but doesn’t actually do any rigorous gate-keeping. In fact, it appears that she’s set herself up on top of the “pyramid scheme” this time, as it were. I suggest you read the article first for more information, then come back here.

There was one quote from the book that caught my attention, and I’d like to go over it in depth in this post, if you’ll allow me. Here it is:

“Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and Jesus were not only prosperity teachers, but also millionaires themselves, with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of.”

This line of thinking seems like something that has no doubt come out of the Health-and-Wealth-gospel circles, but with it from such a fresh source I can’t help but respond. Let’s consider each of these in turn.

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