Joel Osteen the "new face of Christianity!"

Yikes! Well, this isn't new here at Streak's Blog, but it is still disturbing. If this guy is the new face, I will pass. With him and Bush, Christianity doesn't need external enemies.

'The Smiling Preacher' Builds on Large Following (washingtonpost.com): "Osteen is called 'the Smiling Preacher,' and he is perhaps the hottest commodity in the world of multimedia religion these days. His is the new face of Christianity, upbeat and contemporary, media-smart with a heightened sense of entertainment and general appeal.

The charismatic, nondenominational church he inherited from his late father six years ago has quadrupled in size, and today is the largest and fastest-growing in the country, welcoming upward of 30,000 visitors a week, according to Church Growth Today, a research center that follows church trends. Osteen's television broadcast is shown in every U.S. market, reaching 95 percent of the nation's households, and in 150 countries.

See? Bigger is better. If you have more people there, that means you are better and right. Of course, Britney Spears sells out concerts and people would probably still pay big money to see Michael Jackson.

This summer, he will move his church into Houston's 16,000-seat Compaq Center, former home of pro basketball's Houston Rockets. The $92 million renovation is, Osteen says, 'a leap of faith' that if he builds it, they will come.

Also incredibly fitting. Moving into a huge place of entertainment (if you count the Rockets as entertaining, that is) is fitting. Kind of like when Journey Church moved into an old Wallmart. From one house of consumption to another!

All this from a man who dropped out of Oral Roberts University after one year and never received formal theological training -- although he does note that religion is the family business and he benefited greatly from on-the-job training. (He was ordained through his father's church in 1983.)"

Oh, my very favorite graph. A) I love the assumption that had he completed his degree at Oral Roberts, he would have received a "formal theological training." Hah. That makes me laugh. B) I love that theology is so very shallow that he can just pick it up from his late father--who hardly probed the depths of theology. And C) I can't get over the fact that he dropped out of Oral Roberts. How hard can it be to go to school there? It obviously isn't that he was looking for intellectual depth, after all!