This past weekend, as the rising flood waters of Tropical Storm Harvey forced thousands of Texans from their homes, Houston megachurch pastor Joel Osteen sprang into action. He looked at the images of the needy flashing across his TV screen, prayed to God for an answer, and … opened up Twitter.



“Victoria & I are praying for everyone affected by Hurricane Harvey,” wrote the millionaire self-help book author and televangelist on Saturday. “Please join us as we pray for the safety of our Texas friends & family.” He then returned to his regularly scheduled positivity. Meanwhile, people of far lesser means than the Osteens were conducting their own rescue missions in improvised aquatic vehicles.

As it turned out, some people thought Osteen should do more to help, the most common suggestion being that he open up his sprawling Lakewood church building – which holds 16,000 people – to displaced Houston residents in need of shelter.

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a flood victim to enter into Joel Osteen’s church,” tweeted one critic. Another asked what else everyone expected from a pastor who charges people to attend his sermons.

In response, Lakewood church posted on Facebook Sunday that it was “inaccessible due to extreme flooding” – followed by some information re-directing people to local shelters. One woman suggested that if the church was flooded, perhaps Osteen could open up his $10m mansion, “or at least his guest house or pool house.”

The following morning, Lakewood’s Facebook page updated with a feelgood “prayer for today.” But still, many were not satisfied. “There is no flooding here,” tweeted a man named Charles Clymer later on Monday alongside some photos of the church that seemed to prove it. “There is no flooding on the roads anywhere around the Lakewood building.” Other eyewitnesses corroborated this.

That same day, Lakewood released a defensive statement. “We have never closed our doors,” a spokesman said. “We are prepared to shelter people once the cities and county shelters reach capacity.” This led many to point out it was not exactly Christ-like for the church to wait until all the other shelters were full to begin caring for its community.

It wasn’t until four days and hundreds of angry comments after Harvey made landfall as a category 4 hurricane that the church announced it would open its doors to anyone in need of shelter. Since then, Lakewood’s social media accounts have bloomed, with slickly produced videos of their late-breaking charitable operation, complete with smiling, thankful evacuees. (Only slightly undermined by a link to an article on Faithwire that blames the blowback on “outrage culture”.) But are they just doing damage control?

Whether or not Osteen’s church was actually “inaccessible” during the time period in question, it’s fair to question the moral fiber of a pastor whose first impulse during a humanitarian crisis is to offer up Panglossian platitudes. As if the people stranded on rooftops could somehow teleport to safety, if only they harnessed the Power of Positive Thinking™. I’m hardly a theological scholar, but that doesn’t seem what Jesus would do.

This points to larger deficiencies in Osteen’s doctrine, which is classed by many as a kind of prosperity gospel. First popularized in America in the 1950s, this neoliberal version of Christianity insists that if you believe in God and donate to the (tax-exempt) church, you’ll be rewarded with health, happiness, and financial success.

The sick and the poor, by implication, must just not be praying hard enough. (Of course, this conveniently justifies the massive personal wealth of the very people preaching this gospel, who seem to have skipped over Jesus Christ’s more socialist teachings, not to mention the existence of a ruling class in general.)

Throughout Osteen’s teachings, the emphasis is neither on serving God nor man, but oneself. In his book Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential, he spends 200 pages explaining how people can enlist God to get what they want before any mention of “giving back.”

Hence it comes as no surprise that helping flood victims was not the first thing on this great theologian’s mind – unless you think “writing inspirational tweets” counts as helping. (Which, to be fair, he probably does.)

The good news is that utilitarian benefits exist whether someone is motivated by altruism or craven self-regard, and the people now being housed and fed at Lakewood church probably don’t care if Osteen is only doing it to save face. His version of Christianity might be simplistic, selfish, and largely profit-driven, but as long as he’s doing the right thing, that question can stay between him and his maker.