Is Oprah Starting Her Own Cult?

Over the week, I have received several email forwards from church friends and it is all about Oprah. I have received some comments from very annoyed folks in my previous post about Oprah Winfrey church. I wonder why they feel so strongly over what I said about Oprah? This is, as you can see, my faith blog and hence, what do people expect from a faith blog written by a blogger who is a Catholic? That I embraced Oprah cult?

Winfrey considers her conversations with Tolle, a man with a shady and un-checkable background, more important than her schools in Africa and Mississippi for underprivileged children, more important than her Angel Charity network or her zillion-dollar syndicated TV show. Tolle must be something else!

Anyway, I am not the one who said anything about Oprah Cult. I got this excerpts from an article I picked up from FOXNews written by Roger Friedman. Those are his opinions and I picked up from the long article what I think is interesting.

But is Eckhart Tolle an appropriate spiritual leader? He told an interviewer that he stopped going to school at age 13 and didn’t resume any education for at least a decade. In the same interview he says he graduated “with the highest mark at the London University.”

What is a cult? To me a cult is something when people twist the basic religious teachings to suit their lifestyle. And what are the basic religious teachings? What people generally understand about the few major religions and faith teachings. Any other, are just plain weird to me.

What makes Oprah’s seminars even more creepy are the “study groups” she has lined up for Tolle at bookstores and other locations around the world. They’re all hooked up to the seminars through Skype, and the members can ask questions. They all have that same glazed-over look as people giving testimonials on late-night infomercials.

You can read the full article on FOXNews.

What more can I say but “Welcome to America!” Oh boy, am I glad that I have never liked a single episode of Oprah Winfrey talk show. I hate it when she brings vulnerable people to make a circus of themselves and get the live audience to make up the bigger circus.