Oprah Theology: A Comparative Analysis of Oprah Winfrey's Worldview of Christianity and Biblical Christianity

By George B. Davis

Oprah Winfrey is one the most influential people of our time. Her extraordinary gift for connecting with people, combined with her ever-expanding empire, is extending her sphere of influence significantly. For millions, Oprah is perceived as the most credible source of information concerning just about anything. However, more than anything else, Oprah uses her elevated celebrity status to expound upon her deep-rooted spiritual beliefs to millions of unsuspecting viewers, many who claim to be Christian.

In Oprah Theology, author George B. Davis tells how the media maven aggressively and effectively integrates and sells her brand of New Spirituality through her speaking engagements, her book club, her magazine, her radio network, her television show, and now, her television network. Davis takes an exhaustive look at Winfrey’s claim that the core principles of her New Spirituality are based in biblical principles.

Oprah Theology gives readers insight into the woman who overcame extraordinary adversity to become a media mogul. Oprah Theology also offers a unique look at how she has influenced modern-day religion—a look that suggests things may not be as they seem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: May 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781664298316

George B. Davis

George B. Davis earned a master of arts degree in pastoral ministry and a doctorate in religious studies from Trinity College of the Bible and Theological Seminary. He is the founder of and minister at New Harvest Church in Wichita Falls, Texas. He and his wife, Dorotha, have three children.

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Copyright © 2023 George B. Davis.

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Unless otherwise noted, scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-9830-9 (sc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2023907532

WestBow Press rev. date: 05/09/2023

CONTENTS

Preface

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Woman, Oprah Winfrey: the Early Years

Oprah’s Early Years

Reunion with Her Mother

Oprah’s Broadcasting Roots

Summary

Chapter 2: The Oprah Winfrey Empire

Oprah’s Rise to Power

Oprah’s Contributions to Society

Lessons Learned from Oprah’s Achievements

Summary

Chapter 3: Oprah’s Spiritual Turning Point

Her Early Exposure to Christianity

The Point She Rejected Biblical Christianity

Her Fascination with New Spirituality

Influences That Shaped Her New Philosophical Perspective

The Ideology of Christ Consciousness

The Evolution to a Another Gospel

Summary

Chapter 4: New Spirituality versus Biblical Christianity

The Nature of God: Oprah’s View

The Nature of God: the Christian View

The Authority of the Bible: Oprah’s View

The Authority of Scriptures: The Biblical Christianity View

The Deity of Jesus Christ: Oprah’s View

The Deity of Christ: Biblical Christianity

The Suffering of Jesus Christ: Oprah’s View

The Suffering of Christ: Biblical Christianity

The Holy Spirit: Oprah’s View

The Holy Spirit: The Christian View

The Nature of Man and the Reality of Sin: Oprah’s View

The Nature of Man and the Reality of Sin: The Christian View

Salvation and Eternal Life: Oprah’s Worldview

Salvation and Eternal Life: the Christian View

Summary

Chapter 5: Review and Conclusions

Review

The Impact of New Spirituality on the Christian Community

Closing Comments

Bibliography

PREFACE

The past century has seen an exponential paradigm shift away from biblical Christianity and toward a postmodern worldview of Christianity. A philosophical ideology that accepts a diversity of belief systems, even systems in conflict with one another, is a major characteristic of the shift. There are significant numbers of professing Christians cozying up to a belief that all faiths are compatible with and equal to Christianity and all lead to salvation and eternal life.

According to Pew Research’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study, 66 percent of American Christians say many religions can lead to eternal life.¹ That is a fourteen percentage points increase from the 2008 report.² The survey’s indicates that as the church gravitates more toward politics and cultural pressures, it is proportionately losing its Christian influence in the world. ³ This redefinition of biblical Christianity reflects the influence of postmodernism that dispels absolutes. Truth and reality are subjective and individualized.⁴ The result is a mixture of philological perspectives and religious views that accept belief in anything, everything, or nothing at all.

The increasing gulf between biblical Christianity, neo-Christianity, and contending world religions has created a nondescript homogenized spirituality, especially in America. In many cases, religion, non-religion, and new concepts of spirituality have produced a theology of whatever works for the individual. This new form of religion is self-exalting and self-worshiping. Consequently, God/god is individually defined. In the search for spirituality, as opposed to a fixed standard of beliefs based on objective biblical truths, people are pursuing an intuitive experience-based kind of spirituality. Hence, many confessions of faith, or no confession at all, compete for equality.

The attack on Christianity is nothing new, but the intensity the church faces today has increased exponentially, and with unprecedented boldness. Every Christian should be concerned about this rapid abandonment of biblical Christianity. The lure of a kind of spirituality that is free from restraint and void of moral absolutes is attractive, consuming, and, as a result, causing many to depart from the faith or redefine Christianity in terms more congruent to cultural and societal norms. Scripture repeatedly cautions Christians to not believe every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world (1 Jn. 4:1). Those who are charged with caring for the flock of God must stand on the wall and give clear warning to God’s people of God of the pending and present danger of this new spirituality."

This book seeks to do just that.

ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

The hallmarks of Oprah Winfrey’s success include her persona, communications skills, and extraordinary likability. Rising from the depths of poverty and adversity, she has catapulted to that of renowned film producer, philanthropist extraordinaire, magazine publisher, and the highest-rated talk show host in American television history.⁵ The Oprah Winfrey Show, O: The Oprah Magazine, Oprah’s Angel Network, and her 2011 partnership with Discovery Communications, which launched what is now the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), give testimony to her sustained success. At that time, Oprah anticipated OWN would add another seventy million homes to her audience. The venture provided twenty-four-hour access to her network, which expanded her spiritual influence significantly.⁶ In 2008, she ranked number one in celebrity pay ($275 million), and in 2022 she was listed at number ten of America’s richest self-made women,⁷ according to Forbes.com. She also ranked number one among television viewers from June 2007 through June 2008.⁸ Oprah’s extraordinary power of communications and unprecedented ability to capture, hold, and shape the minds of her audiences in a wide variety of ways was finally paying off.

Concurrent with her rise to power in the entertainment industry is Oprah’s emergence as an influential spiritual leader. Ann Oldenburg, writing for USA Today, reported that Oprah had risen to a new level of guru.⁹ Her unique ability to influence a diversity of people on spiritual issues worldwide is unmatched by any other television personality to date. She appears to be an expert on the plethora of life issues presented on her television program, and her audience assumes she is also a reliable source regarding spiritual matters.¹⁰

Oprah’s unique combination of authoritative voice and casual, approachable style appeals to many.¹¹ She offers audiences a new type of spirituality that promises to transcend the suffering and pain associated with the trials and tribulations common in life.¹² In a culture where everyone seems to be a victim of some kind, that is a powerful promise. As such, Oprah is hailed as a symbolic figurehead of spirituality, a moral monitor, America’s pastor, and "today’s Billy Graham."¹³ Her emerging popularity as a spiritual leader has led at least one person to say, albeit jokingly, God is a black woman named Oprah.¹⁴ Oprah’s spiritual influence has become the epitome of her ever-increasing empire.

Before she left show, her stated goal was to provide spiritual teachings to her audience. She said, I look on the show as my own ministry. I want it to free people from their fears and constraints. I want it to teach them.¹⁵ Since Oprah acknowledges that her intend was to influence people spiritually and that she professes to be a Christian, the question is, what brand of Christianity is Oprah preaching? Is Oprah’s view of Christianity consistent with biblical Christianity?

This book examines, compares, and analyzes Oprah’s public comments to determine whether the philosophical framework, assumptions, and presuppositions she advances are compatible with biblical Christianity.

CHAPTER ONE

THE WOMAN, OPRAH WINFREY:

THE EARLY YEARS

Surveying Oprah’s early years provides insight into what makes Oprah, Oprah. This chapter examines her early years, reunion with her mother, and her broadcasting roots.

If ever there was a rags-to-riches story worth telling, the life of Oprah is one. One of the most respected and influential people in the world today, Oprah Winfrey came from impoverished obscurity in rural Mississippi. Her successful navigation through a maze of tragic circumstances to become the self-assured woman who graces the cover of every issue of O, The Oprah Magazine is remarkable and applaudable. Few people have risen above a childhood like hers, much less to become world-renowned.¹⁶

OPRAH’S EARLY YEARS

In 1954, the year Oprah was born, the US Supreme Court made its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, which was intended to end racial segregation in public schools. However, changing the law proved easier than changing people’s minds. Black Americans in 1954 had to navigate a racially charged, polarized, and hostile environment further exacerbated by the fact that many black Americans were still reeling disproportionately from the effects of the 1930s Great Depression. In 1954, a disproportionate number of African Americans lived in extreme poverty compared to their white American counterparts.¹⁷ Yet in retrospect, Oprah realized that the Brown v. Board of Education decision created hope that life could be better for black folks everywhere.¹⁸

Oprah was born in Kosciusko, a town in the heart of Mississippi, approximately seventy miles from the capital of Jackson. The town received its name from the Polish general Tadeusz Kosciuszko/Thaddeus Kosciusko, an ally of the United States during the American Revolution and a subsequent member of the Continental Congress.¹⁹ (Today, Kosciusko boasts the slogan, Come for the history, stay for the charm.²⁰) During Oprah’s childhood, however, Kosciusko was anything but charming for black Americans. Racial violence was the norm in this part of the state during the fifties.

In the 1950s, European Americans could molest African Americans with impunity in Mississippi. In Systematic Racism: A Theory of Oppression, author Joe R. Feagin highlights one of many Kosciusko incidents that illustrate how Mississippians in this period tended to turn a blind eye to the injustices perpetrated on black Americans. Feagin wrote, Three white men, who had been held in jail for a time for raping the stepdaughter of a black man, proceed to his house where they shot and killed a woman and two children in retaliation for imprisonment.²¹ This kind of intimidation was not the exception but the norm in those days. Fear coupled with extreme poverty and no hope for advancement resulted from generations of embedded prejudice that forced many African Americans to flee Kosciusko at first chance, not only in search of a better way of life in the north but also, in some instances, to literally save their lives.²²

Oprah Gail Winfrey was the illegitimate child of eighteen-year-old Vernita Lee and Vernon Winfrey, a twenty-year-old soldier stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama.²³ Oprah describes her parents’ one-time encounter as more or less a fling under a tree one afternoon.²⁴ Because of her promiscuous lifestyle, Vernita was unsure who impregnated her. Before identifying Vernon as the father, she blamed several men. However, Vernon was unaware that his one-time encounter with Vernita had produced a child until Vernita sent him a newspaper clipping announcing the birth of his daughter with her handwritten note demanding help in the child’s support.²⁵ Vernon denied that he was the father at first. However, as time passed, Vernon accepted full responsibility, even though there was no paternity test to prove that he was indeed Oprah’s father.²⁶

During the fifties, having an illegitimate child brought much shame and disgrace to the family. Therefore, Vernita managed to hide her pregnancy from everyone right up to the day she gave birth to Oprah. Sometime later, relatives told Oprah that her birth was not only a surprise to everyone but an enormous shame and regret.²⁷ Years later, Oprah anguished over the thought of being brought into the world unwanted. In her mid-thirties, she realized that being alone still made her worthy of being in this world.²⁸

Oprah is not the name that her mother intended for her.²⁹ Although Oprah’s original birth certificate reads Oprah Gail Winfrey, it does so by mistake.³⁰ Oprah’s great-aunt Ida, a devout churchgoer, actually named her Orpah, from Ruth 1:14.³¹ The family did not know the correct pronunciation of Orpah and transposed the letters r and p on her birth certificate because that is the way they pronounced it.³² Interestingly, as a child, Oprah despised the very name that today is a household name worldwide.

Home for young Oprah was an ancient and dilapidated³³ little pig farm, with no running water or indoor toilet, located on the outskirts of Kosciusko. Oprah’s chores were typical for people living on a farm: caring for the cows, feeding the hogs, and drawing well water for the day.³⁴ She remembers not having any toys to play with except her little corncob doll. As result, to entertain herself, she pretended to communicate with the farm animals.³⁵ However, her grandmother thought Oprah was a bit forward and sometimes talked a little too much.

Oprah stayed with her grandma Hattie Mae when her mother left the farm when Oprah was four and moved to Milwaukee, hoping to make more money. Grandma Hattie Mae believed in and practiced the old-fashioned credo, Spare the rod and spoil the child. Although Oprah was a bright child, she could be stubborn, rebellious, and spiteful, which often landed her on the receiving end of Grandma Hattie Mae’s country-style discipline. Whippings became a daily occurrence because she thought she could outsmart Grandma Hattie Mae.³⁶ Later in life, she admitted that by the time she was six, Grandma Hattie’s