Evolution of Oprah

After two decades of searching for her authentic self – exploring New Age theories, giving away cars, trotting out fat, recommending good books and tackling countless issues from serious to frivolous – Oprah Winfrey has risen to a new level of guru.

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.

With her television pulpit and the sheer power of her persona, she has encouraged and steered audiences (mostly women) in all matters, from genocide in Rwanda to suburban spouse swapping to finding the absolute best T-shirt and oatmeal cookie.

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

Adds Claire Zulkey, an Oprah follower who has written about Winfrey in her online blog at zulkey.com: “I think that if this were the equivalent of the Middle Ages and we were to fast-forward 1,200 years, scholars would definitely think that this Oprah person was a deity, if not a canonized being.”

Although the concept of the Rev. Oprah has been building through the years, never was it more evident than during her recent public flogging of author James Frey.

Feeling stung and embarrassed after endorsing his memoir about addiction, “A Million Little Pieces” – which turned out to include exaggerations and falsehoods – Winfrey had Frey on the show to do an about-face.

“I left the impression that the truth is not important,” she said. “I am deeply sorry about that because that is not what I believe.”

Before that, she appeared in New Orleans to take on the government after Hurricane Katrina hit last August, and sent a message about civil rights as she stood by the casket of Coretta Scott King in February.

But while this past year showed Winfrey at new heights, it also was a year that polarized people – particularly after the Frey incident.

“A self-righteous attack dog,” wrote arts and culture critic Steven Winn in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“A sanctimonious bully,” said media critic Robert Thompson on the PBS “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.”

“She puts the cult in pop culture,” wrote media critic Mark Jurkowitz in The Phoenix

Love her or loathe her, Winfrey has become proof that you can’t be too rich, too thin or too committed to rising to your place in the world.

With 49 million viewers each week in the United States and more in the 122 other countries to which the show is distributed, Winfrey reaches more people in a TV day than most preachers can hope to reach in a lifetime of sermons.

“One of the things that’s key is she walks her talk. That’s really, really important in today’s culture,” says Marcia Nelson, author of “The Gospel According to Oprah.”

“People who don’t walk their talk fall from a great pedestal – scandals in the Catholic Church, televangelism scandals. If you’re not doing what you say you do, woe be unto you.”

In Ellen DeGeneres’ stand-up comedy act several years ago, she included a joke about getting to heaven and finding that God is a black woman named Oprah.

Last fall, at the start of this 20th season of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” guest Jamie Foxx said much the same thing, but he wasn’t joking.

“What you have is something nobody can describe,” Foxx told her. Then he explained how he said to Vibe magazine: “You’re going to get to heaven and everyone’s waiting on God and it’s going to be Oprah Winfrey.”

In a November poll conducted at Beliefnet.com, a site that looks at how religions and spirituality intersect with popular culture, 33 percent of 6,600 respondents said Winfrey has had “a more profound impact” on their spiritual lives than their clergypersons.

Marcia Nelson says that it’s not going too far to call her a spiritual leader: “I’ve said to a number of people – she’s today’s Billy Graham.”

Nelson said that concept was most apparent when Winfrey co-hosted the 2001 memorial service held 12 days after the terrorist attacks in New York. She urged the people who filled Shea Stadium that day, and all Americans, to stand strong, rousing the audience by repeating the refrain, “We shall not be moved.”

One of Winfrey’s most appealing subtexts is that she’s anti-institutional, says Chris Altrock, minister of Highland Street Church of Christ in Memphis.

“Our culture is changing,” he says, “as churches are in decline and the bulk of a new generation is growing up outside of religion. … People who have no religion relate to her.”

When Winfrey started in the talk-show business 20 years ago, her goal was to beat Phil Donahue, then the reigning talk-show champ. As the Jerry Springer era of tabloid talk shows came into favor, she vowed to use her show to promote good, not sleaze.

By the late ‘90s, Winfrey’s focus was Change Your Life TV, and a New Age message was more prevalent. She preached making the message of her life – take responsibility, and greatness will follow – the substance of the show.

Debbie Ford’s book “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers” shot up the sales charts after Ford appeared on Winfrey’s show in October 2000 to talk about aspects of ourselves that we deny, but which can be sources of joy and strength.

“I think at the time when she had me and Gary Zukav and a lot of the other spiritual teachers on her show, it was her own journey, and she was taking all of the world on that spiritual evolution,” Ford says.

Lately, Winfrey has seemed to focus more on social issues (along with the inescapable talk-show fare of celebrity guests, home and diet makeovers, and marriage and financial troubles).

“She’s fabulous. She looks great and is not suffering,” Ford says, so it makes sense she isn’t exploring New Age philosophies anymore.

Adds Ford: “We’re all on Oprah’s journey, in a sense.”

Well, maybe not quite “all” of us.

Oprah’s followers “are incredibly gullible, bandwagon-jumping trend-slaves,” says Debbie Schlussel, a lawyer, conservative columnist and blogger.

Winfrey, she says, “acts as if her show has ‘evolved,’ but in fact, she still has the salacious sex and deviance stories, with a psychologist in the audience to make it seem highbrow and give it the kosher seal of approval. If this is the person whose morals we are putting on a pedestal, then America’s moral compass is in much need of retuning.”

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,” he says, and 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.”

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,’ ” he says. “What I find intriguing about it is it’s delivered with no religiosity at all, even though it has a powerful Baptist, democratic, enthusiastic tone.

“It has to do with this deep American faith and yearning to be reborn. To start again.”