From USA Today, via Yahoo! News: "The Divine Miss Winfrey?"

She's no longer just a successful talk-show host worth $1.4 billion, according to Forbes' most recent estimate. Over the past year, Winfrey, 52, has emerged as a spiritual leader for the new millennium, a moral voice of authority for the nation.

Pop-culture spirituality rides again.

"She's a really hip and materialistic Mother Teresa," says Kathryn Lofton, a professor at Reed College in Portland, Ore., who has written two papers analyzing the religious aspects of Winfrey. "Oprah has emerged as a symbolic figurehead of spirituality."

At least Reed College is a private school: No taxpayer dollars were harmed in funding this "research."

I'd say a "hip and materialistic Mother Teresa" deserves a nomination for the oxymoron of the year. And the undeserved compliment of the year.  When Oprah founds an order of nuns who labor in obscurity (not to mention voluntary poverty and celibacy) on behalf of the poorest of the poor, I'll reconsider.

Lofton points out that any discussion of Winfrey should not be one that criticizes her or how she came to be a spiritual icon for the history books but one that examines how it came to be that way. "Why do we all need her so much? What is wrong with us that we so need this little woman in Chicago?"

Do tell.

Jim Twitchell, a professor at the University of Florida who has written several books about branding and describes himself as a cultural anthropologist, says Oprah reverence makes sense.

"Religion essentially is based on high anxiety of what's going to happen to you." Winfrey pushes the idea "that you have a life out there, and it's better than the one you have now and go get it."

If anxiety about the future were the only motivator for religion, we'd be worshipping the Coors plant in Boulder, Colorado for the power of what emanates from it to take our minds off of tomorrow, to make us believe we can dance, and to make that one guy across the room look good all of a sudden. Really good, in fact. But I digress. 

I feel sorry for Prof. Twitchell if that's all he ever got out of religion. But what about a sense of awe in the order and beauty of the world around us? What about a sense of feeling blessed for what one does have in life (health, family, friends, education, bills paid for another month) , and at once humbled by one's utter unworthiness of it, and instilled with a sense of obligation to use one's gifts as they were intended? What does that have to do with Oprah? Nada. 

It's most apparent in the setting of her show, Twitchell says.

"The guest is sitting beside her, but what she's really doing is exuding this powerful message of 'You are a sinner, yes, you are, but you can also find salvation.'

For Oprah so loved the world...

Religion as a commodity, as a pop-culture accessory, becomes an "opiate of the masses" like nothing before it: As long as it makes you feel good, and you don't have to do anything or take an unpopular position on anything, it's a worthwhile undertaking, because, after all, it's all about you.