Salvation with a Smile

Historian Phillip Luke Sinitiere’s Salvation with a Smile adds to the scholarship on evangelicalism, megachurches, and American religion with a close reading of the history of Lakewood Church and its two pastors, John Osteen and his celebrity son Joel Osteen. Sinitiere uses primary and secondary historical sources as well as ethnographic study and oral history interviews of Lakewood members (but not any Osteen family member, despite requests). Sinitiere confesses a “personal ambivalence” about Joel Osteen and Lakewood Church, which is a stark contrast to the polarized opinions that most hold. Sinitiere’s sympathetic reading situates the actors’ religious messages in historical and cultural contexts, and it ultimately allows insight into the dynamics behind the church’s prosperity gospel and its intersections with American Christianity. Sinitiere divides the book roughly into three sections. The first section traces the rise of Lakewood Church through its founding pastor, John Osteen, a pastor shaped by Texas plain folk who prioritized their evangelical faith, conservative politics, and individualism. John became Pentecostal after his infant daughter was healed from severe mental and physical health deficiencies, and he “received the baptism of the Holy Spirit” while praying (25). The preacher was convinced that this Pentecost experience could be for everyone. The idea of Pentecost, in fact, became a way for Lakewood’s members to understand Jesus as the path to a second chance. The elder Osteen spent the rest of his life seeking to break down denominational barriers through work in the neopentecostal movement, but he maintained a keen awareness of promoting his message’s respectability. John focused his prosperity gospel on the body, not money, and he encouraged followers to practice “positive confession,” speaking promises they found in the Bible, which would lead to gradual healing (40).

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