The good news according to Oprah Winfrey

What if the life that we pursue
Came from a hunger for the truth?
What if the family turned to Jesus,
Stopped asking Oprah what to do?

—lyrics from “What if his people prayed” by Casting Crowns

A song by gospel singers BeBe and CeCe Winans. A testimony from pastor and author T.D. Jakes. A call to pray for a 13-year-old dying of muscular dystrophy.

No, it’s not a church service. It’s the most popular TV talk show of all time.

When I was in seminary, I was as conditioned as Pavlov’s dog. Oprah’s television theme song came on and it was my cue to drop the Greek lexicon, grab some chocolate, and join a worldwide community of teary-eyed self-improvement junkies.

But is Casting Crown’s “Oprah song” right, that turning to the King of Kings means turning off the Queen of Television?

I doubt that she listens to Casting Crowns, but I think the girl who travelled to churches at the age of three reciting sermons and earning the nickname “Miss Jesus” would have a big problem with that dichotomy. In fact, Oprah gives God the glory for her gifts and calling: “The voices of the world told me I was poor, coloured, and female but God had another vision for me.”

That vision, she says, is to “tell stories from around the world about the plight of women and children who have no one to speak for them.” Sounds like what Jesus meant when he talked about “the least of these” and “widows and orphans in distress.”

Herself a victim of childhood sexual abuse, Oprah has been a major catalyst in bringing the once secretive issue into the light, empowering many victims to seek justice and healing. She stresses the need for forgiveness, “because,” she says, “we know that none of us is without sin ourselves.”

So much power

Since 1997, Oprah has inspired viewers to donate more than $27 million to her Angel Network charity. Every book she reads jumps onto bestseller lists. Why does she have so much power?

And why would a Biblical Studies major who can read about forgiveness and healing in the original biblical languages want to tune in?

Because I – we – want to be transformed. Even though we spend our lives trying to hide it, deep down we all know we don’t make the cut. We are too anxious about our work, too angry with our kids, too buried under debt and bad hair, too stuck in our own ways of thinking. Oprah offers us wisdom from the experts, stories of people who have made it, a quasi-community of support, and her own “you can do it!”

Oprah taught me to “live consciously,” “take time to reflect,” “leave a legacy,” and “above all, be grateful.” I learned how to challenge racism, keep my kids safe, hide my hips, and truly listen to people. I turned off the TV at show’s end and returned to my research feeling positively recharged with confidence, motivation, and hope.

According to a recent Ipsos Reid poll, only 17 percent of Canadians attend weekly church services. But every day in 108 countries around the globe millions of people, 10 million in the U.S. alone, are watching Oprah Winfrey. With Canadians tuning in an average of seven hours a day, TV doesn’t propagate our culture; it defines it.

So what can we as a church learn from a woman who exerts such influence on our world (or at least on the half that exfoliates)?

Redemptive value

People respond to Oprah because she makes them feel heard. “The greatest pain in life,” she says, “is to be invisible.” We may not agree with every viewpoint her guests present. That’s because (like the MB-sponsored Family Life Network’s GodTalk radio), it’s a forum for discussion. The point is to get people talking about what really matters. Is the church listening?

Marcia Nelson writes in The Gospel According to Oprah, “Oprah is entertaining in the atrium outside the houses of worship where real religion, with doctrine, practices and community, lives, breathes and prays. The viewer may – or may not – go in.”

We cannot expect Oprah to tell people about salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection. That’s the church’s job. But there is so much redemptive value in the kinds of stories she shares and the engaging way she shares them – redemptive value upon which the church can build. In fact, it would be a waste of God’s gift if we didn’t.

Now that I have kids who come running every time they hear the TV, Oprah will have to fix society’s ills without me. Some issues are simply too sensitive to share with a four-year-old.

But some day, when I’ve published my first book (all great writers start out in the Herald, don’t they?) and I’m asked to appear on the Oprah show, I’ll tell her “Thank you” – for sharing good news.

Angeline Schellenberg is a freelance writer and a member of Crossroads MB Church, Winnipeg.

Insights from Marcia Z. Nelson’s The Gospel According to Oprah (Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), oprah.com, and O, the Oprah Magazine.