There was some good theater in the world of religion this weekend, starting with the David Daleiden/Planned Parenthood verdict in San Francisco on Friday and ending with the Kanye West evening extravaganza at Houston’s Lakewood Church.
The Houston Chronicle set the stage, leading with West’s most inflammable quote during an appearance earlier that day at Lakewood’s main Sunday morning service.
Since his conversion, it was West’s first appearance before a crowd that wasn’t necessarily fans of his music. But there was that spiritual connection.
Kanye West may have found God. But he’s still brandishing his trademark cockiness.
“Jesus has won the victory because now the greatest artist that God has ever created is now working for Him,” West said onstage Sunday at Lakewood Church.
The rapper spoke onstage with Joel Osteen for about 20 minutes, his first of two appearances at the megachurch. …
During the brief, sometimes rambling conversation, West, 42, talked about his battle with the Devil, mental breakdown and subliminal messages in the media. He prayed with Osteen and praised the televangelist’s “anointed words.”
The Chronicle also said the two men were actually friends, which seems like an odd mix, as they run in completely separate circles. I’d like to know what moved Osteen to invite West.
Whatever happened, it turned out to be a brilliant idea, in terms of publicity.
Other than the Chronicle, the major media covering this event were the local networks and TMZ, the Hollywood news-gossip site. The spectacle of the famous rapper joining forces with the leader of America’s largest church was sheer catnip for TMZ, which broke the story of West coming to Lakewood.
(In the years I worked for the Houston Chronicle, Lakewood’s building was known as The Summit, a 16,800-seat concert venue and home of the NBA’s Houston Rockets. Then evangelistic wunderkind Rev. Joel Osteen bought the place in 2010.)
It proved to be a perfect setting for a Kanye concert. Here you had this newly converted famous rapper, who in one year has been reinventing ways to preach the Gospel to the entertainment world joining forces with Osteen, the positive-preaching Norman Vincent Peale of our generation. It was a made-for-TV bonanza, this duet.
So, from People magazine:
The Jesus Is King rapper, 42, stopped by pastor Joel Osteen‘s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, on Sunday, where he spoke a little about his spiritual journey.
“I know that God’s been calling me for a long time and the devil’s been distracting me for a long time,” he said while standing with the pastor in Osteen’s megachurch.
“When I was in my lowest points, God was there with me and sending me visions and inspiring me, and I remember sitting in the hospital at UCLA after having a mental breakdown and there’s documentation of me drawing a church and [wanting to] start a church in the middle of Calabasas,” he added, referring to his 2016 hospitalization during his Saint Pablo tour.
The evening service was before a full house at Lakewood with some 120 singers and a sizeable band, all dressed in smoky blue-hued sweat suits on Lakewood’s ample stage (which still had to be enlarged to include West’s full entourage). It was a version of a concert series that West and a few friends started earlier this year that became known as West’s “Sunday Service.”
It’s evolved into a hit performance of Gospel music and rap that’s touring the country. And Lakewood was a perfect place for it. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was one of the celebs in the audience and was seated next to West’s wife, Kim Kardashian.
Listening to the concert Sunday night, it felt like I was back in the 1980s listening to this huge Gospel show with rap, big band, rock and God-knows-what-else in terms of music style on display. My favorite part, at the 2 hour, 40-minute mark, was the stunning “Amen” chorus.
The free tickets to this performance disappeared in seven minutes on Saturday morning, by the way.
The performance was delayed 40 minutes, according to KTRK-Ch. 13 (the ABC affiliate) to let in all the crowds. I watched the whole thing and was intrigued to see that Kanye himself didn’t show up on stage until an hour into the service. KPRC-Ch. 2, the NBC affiliate, did a blow-by-blow account of the first part of the service.
TMZ also gave a good wrap-up of the service with lots of details about who sang what. The publications covering this event had their music critics doing the heavy lifting, as I think any religion beat pro would have been lost on the subtleties of the various numbers the band was performing. Plus, the Chronicle doesn’t seem to have a religion reporter these days, a far cry from the days when the paper had two of us on the beat.
Still, with the lack of a religion specialist doing any of the stories on the Kanye West visit, a lot of information never got circulated; information on whether the theologies and beliefs of West and Osteen totally meshed and how this odd couple linked up.
Yes, they’re both into prosperity gospel thought, but even Osteen must wonder about some of West’s reimagining of Christianity, as this NBC editorial puts it.
I’d also like to know who paid for this visit.
I want to give a shout-out to this Chronicle piece, which covered the rapper’s visit to two Harris County prisons in downtown Houston –- and the state’s refusal to allow him to perform in one of Texas’ 104 prisons. You had the governor of Texas commenting about it on Twitter and West scored major points with simply everyone for taking time to do the jails.
So if you want to watch the entire evening concert, check out this video and remember to start around the 45-minute mark. And don’t forget that chorus at 2:40. It’s worth the price of admission.