From aerial views of his jaw-dropping mansion to the cut of his navy suits, he always looks like a man with a good reason to be smiling. Joel Osteen represents the Christian 1 percent. It does.īut there are three main reasons long after this controversy passes, Joel Osteen will still be the preacher America loves to hate - and perhaps for Christians more than others. And, for those who don't mind waiting a few minutes after the service, he will shake your hand and tolerate your comment about how his hair looks even better in real life. He is the cheery advertisement for the 606,000-square-foot Lakewood Church and, with the gorgeous Victoria by his side, tours the country in packed-out arenas to bring "A Night of Hope" - a religion-lite, inspirational speech set to music. I've been studying the American prosperity gospel for more than a decade, and I have come to the stunning conclusion that Joel Osteen seems to be a pretty nice guy. So what is it about America's grinning preacher that everyone hates so much? In fairness, the city of Houston has more megachurches than any other metropolitan area in the country, with dozens of big-church celebrities to thrust into the spotlight at a time like this. With his yachts and jets and endlessly-smiling mouth offering promises of "Your Best Life Now" (that's the name of his best-selling book), Osteen was already a subject of contempt among Americans, in general.īut in the past few days he has been lambasted as being, at best, sluggish in providing emergency aid to those suffering from the disaster and, at worst, a hypocrite who cares more about people's wealth than welfare. The question over whether Osteen's 38,000-member Lakewood Church has sufficiently aided in the disaster relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Harvey has, once again, made America's prince of the prosperity gospel into an object of social media contempt. Iloff also emphasized neither Joel or his wife Victoria, who is also active in the church, do not receive salaries from Lakewood and the PPP loans did not “provide any personal financial benefit to them whatsoever."Twitter is loathing Houston's megawatt-smile, mega-pastor Joel Osteen right now. “However, as the shutdown persisted month after month, given the economic uncertainty, Lakewood finally applied for the PPP loan and has been able to provide full salaries and benefits including health insurance coverage to all of its employees and their families.” “Believing the shutdown would only last a few weeks, Lakewood did not initially apply for PPP assistance during the first half of the program,” Iloff said in a statement. 18, the church lost out on substantial donations. The spokesperson, Donald Iloff also said since services were closed from March 15 until Oct. The Hill reports Lakewood Church received the third-biggest loan in the Houston area, which a church spokesperson told the Houston Business Journal was used to pay 368 full- and part-time employees. But the Lakewood loan, according to the Houston Chronicle, is the first time a church has received financial aid from the government. The federal loans were given to help employers pay workers and cover daily operations as the COVID-19 pandemic continues impacting businesses. Pastor Joel Osteen and his Lakewood Church in Houston are taking heat after it was revealed his megachurch received a $4.4 million Paycheck Protection Program loan as part of the federal CARES Act, KTLA sister station KXAN in Austin, Texas reported Tuesday. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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