Televangelism

Dear students,

   as we could see in the last weeks the USA offers a great variety of beliefs and a huge choice of religions. While only a minority of people go for TV preachers in Europe, televangelism is an important and influential religious group in the USA and many other countries around the globe (Brazil, Nigeria, India ...). Many successful "ministers" in the US support politicians and therefore also have influence when it comes to making laws. Please click the following links to get a better idea of this: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGqCT5G7OoA (McCain -> presidential candidate)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVVX9aTNKB4 (Romney -> presidential candidate)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNTGRL0OJWQ (Obama -> presidential candidate)

   One could assume that nowadays people don't let themselves get manipulated, but this is far from reality. One of the biggest current TV evangelist "stars" is Joel Osteen.
Read the following article and do some research on the net about him and his congregation starting with his homepage ... (see link below) 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/04/televangelist-joel-osteen_n_918468.html
http://www.joelosteen.com/Pages/Home.aspx

Please be prepared to present your findings to the rest of the course in our next lesson!