The Oprah Phenomenon

Oprah Winfrey and Spirituality

147 Oprah Winfrey and Spirituality Denise Martin The public persona of OprahWinfrey is a richly textured and complex mosaic composed of artist,philanthropist,television host,actress,author, publisher, producer, advocate, filmmaker, teacher, businesswoman, and media-pop icon. Many critical works that addressWinfrey consider her performance of these roles within the context of gender studies, media studies, or both. Although such readings are certainly accurate, they tend to neglect the equally rich and compelling spiritual and religious themes found in Winfrey’s collective body of work.These themes can be interpreted according to the rubric of the New Age movement; however, an alternative examination of Winfrey’s cultural production reveals a blend of African,African American, Eastern, and metaphysical philosophical and religious traditions.The fusing of such seemingly disparate elements functions to create a unique public and cultural spirituality that is rooted in the wisdom and experiences of the past, engaged with contemporary reality, and committed to providing information that helps people lead more empowered lives. There are five core concepts that form the basis of this exploration into the spiritual themes in Winfrey’s cultural production: faith, African spirituality,African humanism, Eastern spirituality, and metaphysical studies. Like the five elements and energies of Chinese cosmology, the five pillars of Islam, the five components of Kenyan scholar John S. Mbiti’s African ontology, the Dogon concept of five as the synthesis of creator and creation, and the five powers of Buddhism, these five core concepts provide a succinct yet comprehensive basis for this discussion. 1 Denise Martin This essay considers Winfrey’s five religious and spiritual themes across a diverse sampling of her professional and personal work, including the film Beloved, O magazine,The OprahWinfrey Show,Oprah.com,and her philanthropic endeavors. Religion and Spirituality Winfrey says,“I have church with myself: I have church walking down the street. I believe in the God force that lives inside all of us, and once you tap into that, you can do anything.”1 Central to this discussion of Winfrey’s public and cultural spirituality are contemporary definitions of religion and spirituality. Though both have their origin in Latin—religion from religare, “to bind,” and spirituality from spiritus, invoking breath, courage, vigor, the soul, and life—each has distinct characteristics, depending on the beliefs held by followers of a specific tradition. Religion and spirituality are ultimately experienced as personal phenomena, though each is perceived on cultural, historical, social, and national levels.Therefore, there is a disconnect between what scholars, theologians, ministers, priests, and other practitioners may espouse as religion or spirituality and the actual view held by an individual.The two main academic definitions of religion are substantive and functionalist , with the first stressing the belief content and the second dealing more with the role religion plays in society.2 The substantive approach also presupposes that the belief content must deal exclusively with God, the supernatural, the transcendental, and the unexplainable.The functionalist approach echoes this sentiment, in that the role religion plays in society is distinguished by the fact that it is concerned with the “ultimate”—that is, the transcendent issues that governmental or social programs cannot address, let alone resolve. The problem with these definitions is that they are not always applicable when viewed outside of the religious context of aWestern model of Christianity.What about cultures that see everything as being in some way related to the ultimate and do not even have a word or concept that equates with Western religion? According to Ghanaian philosopher Kwame Gyekye, traditional African culture presents such a situation: In African life and thought, the religious is not distinguished from the nonreligious,the sacred from the secular,the spiritual Oprah Winfrey and Spirituality 1 from the material.In all undertakings—whether it be cultivating , sowing, harvesting, eating, traveling—religion is at work. To be born into the African society is to be born into a culture that is intensely and pervasively religious and that means, and requires,participating in the religious beliefs and rituals of the community. One cannot detach oneself from the religion of the community.3 It is through this rubric—the legacy of African retentions—that we might best situate the philosophy espoused by Oprah Winfrey. Her public discourse clearly echoes an African concept of blending the material and spiritual,as epitomized by the mission statement for the April 2005 issue of O, the Oprah Magazine: The ultimate in...