No other music artist associated with the prosperity gospel—the proclamation that God gives health and wealth to those who have faith—has had the success and platform of Israel Houghton, worship leader1 at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. His songs are sung in churches around the world, regardless of denomination or theological tradition. Since the release of his debut album in 1997, Houghton has won four Grammy Awards, six Dove Awards, and two Stellar Awards, rising to the top of the gospel and contemporary Christian music charts while collaborating with Christian musicians outside of the prosperity movement, including Chris Tomlin, TobyMac, Mary Mary, and Gungor.
Yet Joel Osteen’s worship leader was not an outspoken ambassador for his pastor’s school of theology. Houghton’s most popular song, “Friend of God,” made no explicit theological claim for prosperity, and in writing or interviews he was more likely to focus on his passion for worshipping Jesus than on the blessings of health and wealth that God provided. More than any other worship artist associated with the prosperity movement, Houghton garnered wide appeal in spite of his prosperity leanings. His popularity came not through trumpeting the prosperity gospel, but through his ability to transcend or translate its cultural, denominational, and theological borders. Thus, Rick Warren could denounce the prosperity gospel in Time magazine and yet regularly use Houghton’s songs at his Saddleback Church (Van Biema and Chu 2006, 48).
My argument in this study, however, is that there is more prosperity gospel at work in Houghton’s music and appeal than meets the eye (or the ear, as it were). Sometimes explicitly, but often indirectly, Houghton’s prosperity theology informed his work and public image, whether it was in his testimony of God’s empowering friendship, his fusion of musical styles, or the broadening of his lyrical focus toward social justice.
This study takes what the religious studies scholar Gordon Lynch calls an author-focused (or supply-side) approach (2005, 111–20). Instead of focusing on Israel Houghton’s reception among American Christians, I focus on Houghton’s biography, musical style, and lyrics. Though the author is but one figure involved in the production of cultural texts, Lynch notes that there is much to be gained by considering the author’s vantage and role within his or her wider cultural context (120). While Lynch presents this approach as a prelude to a theological critique, I use it here as a parallel to a historiographical method of “snapshot biography,” in which a biographical focus sheds light on larger social and historical forces. I consider how the unique context of an author of cultural texts illuminates a larger cultural world. By tracing how Houghton conceived of his own music, how he appropriated the theological and musical language available in his cultural repertoire, and how he then leveraged his own story, we gain insight into the intersection between the prosperity gospel and contemporary worship music. But this approach holds disadvantages: it offers no sustained analysis of how Christians have received or appropriated Houghton’s music, of the collaborative nature of cultural text production, or of the fact that artists are not always aware of the potential meanings available in their work. As such, I supplement this author-focused approach by drawing on Gerardo Marti’s sociological study of multicultural megachurches in order to consider, however briefly, the “demand side” of Houghton’s music.
I start with Houghton’s testimony—the narrative of his conversion and Christian journey—because it is an integral part of his appeal and because it traces the core of his prosperity theology. Houghton used his story not only to market the authenticity of his music and ministry but also to translate the prosperity gospel into a narrative of friendship and adoption. I then examine Houghton’s music, which crossed genres, drew power from popular theories that undergirded the selection of worship music in churches, and went hand in hand with his own multiracial identity. In this, it both evoked and reinforced the multiracial character of prosperity culture. Finally, I consider Houghton’s lyrical themes, which first coalesced around prosperity concepts of favor and increase but subsequently, as an outworking of his prosperity theology, focused on issues of social justice.
Before we turn to Houghton’s story, however, we need to define the prosperity gospel. The prosperity gospel movement is a subculture within the nebulous world of contemporary Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement. It does not stand as a monolithic doctrine or subculture but instead is a constellation of interrelated theologies revolving around the interchange between faith and prosperity, normally defined as health, wealth, and success. The prosperity gospel emerged as a fusion of what William James had called the “mind-cure movement” with the theology of the “deliverance evangelism” of postwar Pentecostalism. Certain late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century “positive thinking” philosophies—such as those of P. P. Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy, and Norman Vincent Peale—were fused with theologies that emphasized the immediate, contractual power of faith for healing, peddled by evangelists such as E. W. Kenyon, T. L. Osborn, and Thomas Wyatt.
This fusion appeared, perhaps most forcefully, in the ministry of mid-twentieth-century evangelist Kenneth E. Hagin, who sourced the potency of this healing faith in legal and scientific terms, calling it the “law of faith.” Hagin’s law of faith essentially declared that what believers asked for, God was obliged to give. As historian Kate Bowler explains, Hagin understood that Jesus’s death transferred the legal rights to salvation, protection, and victory from Satan to believers, who then “became entitled to use God’s power as their own.” In a scientific sense, Hagin understood the law of faith as a “universal causal agent, a power that actualized events and objects in the real world” (Bowler 2013, 45). The power and efficacy of this spoken word—the rhema—was as reliable as the laws of physics. “Believe it in your heart; say it with your mouth,” Hagin asserted. “That is the principle of faith. You can have what you say” (Hagin 1979, 17). Like gravity or electricity, faith was an invisible operator of cause and effect, blind to human opinions, but also able to bind God himself. While other ministers, such as Philadelphia’s Reverend Thea Jones, preached the same thing, Hagin’s “simpler, almost automated, law of faith” became the basis for the Word of Faith movement, undergirding most popular understandings of the prosperity gospel today (Bowler 2013, 46).
In the 1980s and 1990s, Hagin’s theological legacy blossomed in global prosperity celebrities, including German evangelist Reinhard Bonnke, South African pastor Ray McCauley, and Singaporean pastor Joseph Prince. In America, Hagin’s legacy lives on in Creflo Dollar, Joyce Meyer, Kenneth Copeland, his own son, Kenneth Hagin Jr., who now runs his father’s ministry, and perhaps most visibly in Joel Osteen, pastor of Lakewood Church, America’s largest megachurch.2 As we will see, it was through Osteen that the prosperity gospel influenced Houghton’s theology and lyrics. But first we turn to Houghton’s story.
When it came to Houghton’s testimony, the beginning was essential.3 In a June 2011 interview on TBN’s Praise the Lord, after noting that there is “nothing accidental about our lives,” Houghton confessed, “I spent a good portion of my life feeling... accidental” (“Israel Houghton on TBN” 2011). Born to a white mother and an absent black Jamaican father in Waterloo, Iowa, Israel Houghton came into the world as a shame to his mother’s family. Pregnant at seventeen, Houghton’s mother, Margaret, faced either losing a career as a concert pianist or giving in to family pressure to abort the baby and get on with life. She decided to keep the child and left for Oceanside, California (Houghton 2007, 115). Eight months pregnant, and with the threat of losing her child to the state because of drug use, Margaret was approached by a stranger on the street who proclaimed that Jesus loved her and that she was not forgotten. Houghton explained the religious epiphany that followed: “There was no organ playing, there was no ‘heads bowed, eyes closed,’ but literally she had her own altar call right on the street. And from that day did not touch another drug, from that day God just did miracle after miracle” (“Israel Houghton on TBN” 2011).
Though this was his mother’s conversion story, it was also Houghton’s creation narrative. Conceived, in his telling, as an interracial accident and almost aborted, Houghton understood his life as a miraculous intervention and one that necessitated giving glory back to the Creator. “Ever since I’ve known my story,” he explained, “it changed the way I approached worshipping God.... The journey has been one really borne out of gratitude and out of a true heart for God and thanksgiving for what he’s done” (“Israel Houghton // Interview” 2011).
After her conversion, Margaret met and married Pentecostal preacher Henry Houghton, and together they founded the Potter’s House Christian Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where young Israel grew up. Reared as a preacher’s kid in the Potter’s House, Houghton came into constant contact with different cultures. As he put it, he “was the only black kid in a white family in a Hispanic church” (Cummings 2006). At age seven, the issue of race came to a boiling point when Houghton met his maternal grandfather for the first time, who rejected him in disgust (Watts and Blim n.d.).
Yet, as in his mother’s story, suffering led to purpose for Houghton. After Psalm 139 convinced him that he was “fearfully and wonderfully made,” he accepted his childhood agony as a source of empathy for “the pain that a lot of people feel.” “I didn’t just sneak into the earth,” Houghton explained. “I was created for something great... [and] the more I share that with people who want to hear it, the better I feel about why I’m here” (Watts and Blim n.d.).
So while his racial identity brought confusion and suffering, Houghton renarrated his background as a blessing and a testimony that underlined God’s love. He distilled his new identity as a child of God in his song “Identity” on his album Live: A Deeper Level: “You are my father / In you I find my identity / I can do all things / If you say I can / Show me I am free / Free to accomplish your plan for me.”4 Or consider the song “New Season” on his album by the same name: “The devil’s time is up, no longer can he bother me / ’Cause the Creator of the universe He fathers me / If you don’t know by now, you need to know it’s jubilee / Where debts are canceled and your children walk in victory.”5 But to be a child of God was also to be a friend of God, as Houghton proclaimed in his song “Friend of God” on Alive in South Africa: “Is it true that you are thinking of me / How you love me, it’s amazing / I am a friend of God... / He calls me friend.”6 He continued this theme in the song “Friend” on his album Live from Another Level: “There will never be a friend / As dear to me as You / Ev’ry time You call me friend / I receive Your healing.”7
For Houghton, to be a friend of God, to be a son or daughter of God, was to be set free to worship God and to be open to God’s blessings. Rejecting his existence as accidental meant accepting a great purpose for his life: “I have faith—a belief—that I was put on this earth, in this generation, to help change the world. Whatever the world looks like, whatever my part of the world is, I am here to help make a deep impact on it” (Houghton 2007, 60). Houghton’s testimony contextualized not only his love for Jesus but also his rise to stardom. His story provided a theological rationale for his success. This was not simply the classic evangelical declaration that one was a sinner and only cleansed by Christ’s blood. It was also a declaration that God had great plans for his children. As Houghton explained, his goal was “not just to get to heaven, but to truly build something lasting” (Watts and Blim n.d.).
This conviction—that as children and friends of God we are free to receive God’s blessings and accomplish God’s plans for us—was one of divine prosperity and sat at the heart of Houghton’s testimony and music. Inspired by the logic of the prosperity gospel, identity for Houghton was inherently tied to the reception of God’s blessing. And understanding God as a father and friend who had great plans for him both powered Houghton’s testimony and explained his musical success.
Houghton’s unique fusion of musical styles echoed the biracial identity foregrounded in his testimony. His music resounded his journey of overcoming the negative alienation of his racial identity and transforming it to reflect the unity of all believers in the friendship of God. And though his musical style did not explicitly reflect a prosperity disposition, its combination of different musical genres, often associated with different ethnicities, reflected the emphasis on multiracial congregations and worship that emerged in prosperity culture in the 1980s and 1990s (Bowler 2013, 206). Even before Houghton made his way to Lakewood Church, his musical development reflected this multiracial emphasis.
Growing up as “the only black kid in a white family in a Hispanic church” meant that Houghton was attracted to artists who had a unique ability to cross genres and racial lines. Early on, he gravitated toward legendary black gospel artist Andraé Crouch, who was first popular among white college students in the early 1970s and only later developed an African American audience (Jenkins 1990, 92).8 Houghton was also influenced by Kent Henry and Ron Kenoly, two worship leaders who pioneered a fusion of “white” adult contemporary styles with black gospel forms.
In 1995, Houghton founded New Breed, a troupe of worship leaders who joined forces to tour and record live albums. New Breed members included Houston-based vocalist Jamil Freeman, Los Angeles songwriter Daniel Johnson, and keyboardist Arthur Strong, among many others. There were also international members, such as Nigerian vocalist Olanrewaju Agbabiaka and South African vocalists Lois Du Plessis and Neville Diedericks. From the start, Houghton argued, New Breed was intended to break down the racial boundaries in worship music. He desired a team of “people of like spirit who [wanted] to see the cultures crossed, who [wanted] to see the barriers come down between” the races, a group that would bring “the sound of heaven to the earth” (“Israel Houghton Interview Hillsong Conference 2006” 2011). “New Breed is colorless,” Houghton asserted. “It’s this broad generation of people who just want God,” instead of floundering on the racial and cultural differences that plagued the church (“Israel Houghton Interview w/The Urban Post Worldwide” 2010). Though New Breed’s members were dedicated to bridging the racial gulf in worship music, Houghton’s assertion of colorlessness butted up against the fact that all publicity photos of the group featured an all-black cast, and only one touring member of New Breed, Ryan Edgar, was white. Thus, while Houghton and his New Breed compatriots were genuinely interested in healing the racial divide in churches, their self-description was also part of what Jeremy Morris has called a “brand narrative”—the “collection of sounds, sights, reviews, concerts and merchandise that feed an artist’s overall perception,” as well as the marketing materials that shape the consumer experience (2005, 105–6). Houghton’s brand was invested in the assertion of New Breed’s colorless identity, and the narratives that he told had to reflect that, even when some of the visual marketing materials told a different story.
Still, Houghton’s music was a mélange of pop, rock, gospel, and R&B styles that was difficult to place in one genre. “If you can categorize something,” Houghton contended, “then you can cancel it at anytime” (“Israel Houghton Interview Hillsong Conference 2006” 2011). So New Breed deliberately fought categorization by infusing its music with different styles, rhythms, and melodic structures. This conviction to create “musical gumbo,” as Houghton called it (Symmonds n.d.), was grounded in an eschatological vision of the eventual unity of God’s people: “When we get to heaven, there’s not going to be sections—‘This is the black section of heaven. This is the white section of heaven. What kind of music do you like? Well, you’re going to be over in that room.’ I believe the Kingdom has a sound. I believe glory has a sound. So I want to be a part of doing it. I believe it’s a very multi-cultural mix of sound and style and lyric and melody and everything else” (Watts and Blim n.d.).
Houghton’s allegiance to multicultural forms made his music attractive to a wide audience of aspiring multiracial churches. As sociologist Gerardo Marti has shown, multiracial churches often attempted to structure worship music around what he labeled the “musical buffet” theory (2012, 34). This theory asserted that churches successfully built diverse congregations when they offered a “multi-cultural mix of sound,” one that utilized different musical genres that appealed to different racial or ethnic demographics. Further, churches that adhered to the “musical buffet” theory often hired worship leaders who ascribed to a “pluralist philosophy” in developing their musical strategy. Pluralist worship leaders focused on creating ethnic diversity by cultivating musical variety. For pluralists, music was racialized and required “a buffet of racially specific styles to provide every group a source of musical resonance” (132–33).
The intentional blending of musical genres and styles put Houghton squarely in the pluralist and musical buffet camps. As Houghton asserted, his musical salad bowl was “not a white sound or black sound, [it was] a kingdom sound” (Houghton 2007, 158). And as his four Grammy Awards attest, this kingdom sound was immensely popular. According to Marti, this made sense, as the musical buffet theory has been “the most prominent and the most mentioned by church leaders who express any ‘theory’ at all,” as well as popular among worship songwriters at large (2012, 34–35). For churches, worship leaders, and pastors around the country trying to develop ethnically and socioeconomically diverse congregations, Houghton’s music stood out as a successful model and ambitious blueprint of what musical buffet and pluralist worship music could really be.
Yet the popularity of Houghton’s music was not simply the result of its conformity to the musical buffet theory and a pluralist philosophy. Its instrumental scalability between guitar and piano and its stylistic mutability between black and white church music forms gave it broad appeal among black and white music leaders in large churches—churches that had the musical resources to pull off Houghton’s sonic potpourri. At the same time, its blending of styles, backed by a theology of diversity that was inscribed in Houghton’s biography, made his music appealing to churches seeking to create racially diverse congregations.
As a result, Houghton’s music enticed multiethnic American megachurches. This was a sizeable crowd, as a 2005 Hartford Institute survey showed that 56 percent of megachurches were interested in becoming multiethnic in their congregational makeup, while one-fifth of megachurch attendees already belonged to a nonmajority ethnic group (Thumma, Travis, and Bird 2005). It made sense, then, that in 2001 Houghton ended up at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, one of the largest multiethnic megachurches in the country.
Houghton’s role as a worship leader at Lakewood provided a suitable platform for his musical fusion of genres and styles. And this was not simply because it was a megachurch but also because it was a flagship church in the wider prosperity movement, which had continually transcended racial boundaries, attracting both blacks and whites to worship together at the feet of prosperity gurus such as Joel Osteen, Benny Hinn, Joyce Meyer, and Creflo Dollar. Lakewood’s congregational diversity, backed by its message of prosperity that transcended race, found its soundtrack in Houghton’s fusion of black and white church music forms.
The same year that Houghton joined the staff at Lakewood Church, he released his second album, New Season, which featured songs proclaiming a gospel of prosperity, the declaration that God wants to bless his children with a new season of wealth, health, and abundance in this life, not just the next:
It’s a new season, it’s a new day.
A fresh anointing is flowing my way.
It’s a season of power (let the weak say I am strong)
and prosperity (let the poor say I am rich).
It’s a new season coming to me.
As was common among prosperity teachers, Houghton focused on God’s promises of prosperity and victory, even in the midst of difficult circumstances: “All that was stolen is returned to you a hundred fold / Tried in the fire but you’re coming out gold” (“New Season”).
This distinct recognition that one could move from darker days into the light of new blessing echoed Joel Osteen’s own message of prosperity. Osteen’s immense popularity was due to the broad appeal of his nonsectarian, positive message of hope and well-being. Historian Kate Bowler calls this “soft prosperity,” and Osteen remains its lead ambassador. Osteen exchanged the hard causality between spoken word and reality (so often found in traditional prosperity teachings) for a soft causality that employed the language of popular psychology. Bowler argues that soft prosperity teachers such as Osteen tied psychological states to fiscal and personal success, asserting that a rightly ordered mind led to rightly ordered finances, health, and family. While the traditional prosperity mantra remained the same—change your words, change your life—for Osteen, the transformative power of positive declaration could be demonstrated psychologically, rather than simply via the supernatural forces of faith (2013, 125).
In his song “Your Latter Will Be Greater,” Houghton fashioned Osteen’s emphasis on positive declaration into lyrical form: “Your latter will be greater than your past / You will be blessed, more than you could ask / Despite all that has been done, the best is yet to come.”9 A maxim of the Lakewood pastor, “the best is yet to come” revealed Osteen’s theological influence on Houghton, as Osteen frequently reminded believers that God would shower them with blessings in the future. But only if they would receive it. For Osteen, God’s blessings could be limited by one’s inability to imagine them, believe in them, and expect them. God “can do anything,” Osteen asserted, “if you will simply stop limiting Him in your thinking.” For Osteen, what one received was directly connected to how one believed and what one expected (Osteen 2004, 23, 22). In this mechanistic concept of blessing, God became a magical force to be called down from heaven and caged until the believer was willing to release him for blessing. Houghton narrated this mechanistic concept in his medley “Take the Limits Off / No Limits,” sung from God’s perspective:
I’m not a man, I cannot lie
I know the plans for your life
I’m asking You to dream again, believe again
And take the limits off of Me
Take the limits off, take the limits off
Release Me, to accomplish what I promised you10
Taking the limits off of God required belief—belief in a God who was ready to bless with abundance. But proper belief required a proper conception of God as a father who saw his children as “highly favored.” This was the same conviction that powered Houghton’s testimony, as the revolution in his thinking came when he embraced God as father and friend. Only then was Houghton able to conceive of his story as a journey of the “highly favored” of the Lord and thereby receive blessing.
Taking the limits off of God also required a proper self-image. For Osteen, the most powerful way to achieve this was through positive declaration: “As you speak affirmatively, you will develop a new image on the inside, and things will begin to change in your favor.” Words built self-image for Osteen, for as they “permeate your heart and mind, and especially your subconscious mind, eventually they will begin to change the way you see yourself” (Osteen 2008, 97, 91). Houghton’s popular song “Friend of God,” though devoid of any explicit theological statements supporting the prosperity gospel, demonstrated this power of proclamation, as the assertion “I am a friend of God” was repeated thirty times. Yet this theme of friendship with God was not simply a declaration. It also became an effective intonation built on Osteen’s conviction that to speak positively resulted in living positively. To declare that one was a friend of God was to become a friend of God.11 Once one effected inward psychological and spiritual change by repeatedly singing “I am a friend of God,” then one could truly understand oneself as a friend of God—and only then partake in the blessings that God granted to his favored children.
With the release of Power of One in 2009 and Love God, Love People in 2010, however, Houghton’s lyrical focus moved from being blessed to becoming a blessing. In a 2009 interview with Beliefnet, Houghton explained that a new conviction inspired by God’s words in the fifth chapter of Amos brought about this change: “It essentially says—I am totally paraphrasing right now in the sort of King James Brown version—I am tired of church as usual, I am tired of you guys getting together and singing a bunch of great songs and the fact that you haven’t emphasized the poor, the widow, the orphan, the voiceless.... I am not even hearing your songs” (“Standing on ‘The Power of One’ ” 2009). Houghton explained that the fifth chapter of Amos threatened his relationship with God. “[Are you] not even listening,” he asked God, “to these songs that we wrote for you?” The answer back was no, as God told Houghton, “I want justice.... Take care of those that cannot take care of themselves, do that first, that’s what being a Christian is about” (Symmonds n.d.). So, to restore friendship with God, Houghton turned his focus to justice.
This centrifugal change mirrored a larger trend toward social justice in American evangelicalism at the turn of the twenty-first century. Evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren led crusades against AIDS, Christian magazines such as Relevant attempted to educate their readership about “unjust war” and “creation care,” and student worship conferences raised thousands for water wells in Africa. Evangelicals even began championing rock star Bono—who before had never been a “good” evangelical—as he proselytized for God and the global poor at concerts and National Prayer breakfasts (Sullivan 2010). Houghton’s own message began to sound like Bono’s as he sang the world to attention to the plight of the poor. Citing a line that Bono used at an NAACP awards show, Houghton sang that “God is with us when we are with them.”12 Like Bono, Houghton’s message of love and solidarity brought him acclaim and record sales. But this emphasis on social justice also made his music more appealing to young American evangelicals who were drawn to the new crusade for social justice.
Though Houghton’s move from blessedness to blessing—from an emphasis on being to agency—was influenced by forces outside of prosperity culture, it still reflected Osteen’s logic. As Houghton explored the fruits of positive thinking according to Osteen’s prosperity teachings, his focus had moved inward, and his introspection was grounded in a familial relationship with God. But once blessedness and subsequent calling were secured, he began to look outward. “It all begins with one, the power of one,” Houghton crooned, explaining that if everyone took their beliefs and acted on them, together they could change the world.13 He then summarized his conviction in “Love God, Love People”: “I can’t give it / Until I live it / Now that my eyes are open / Teach me how to love.”14 Now that his eyes were open to his true identity, Houghton was moved to action. Now that he was blessed, he could be a blessing.
Houghton’s message remained tethered to the soft prosperity theology of Osteen in its combination of identity and action, in the connection between blessedness and blessing. Only from an identity grounded in God’s love and favor came the desire to help and bless others. Yet, as evidenced in his post-2009 discography, Houghton’s quest to change the world did not begin with economic redistribution or a Bono-like aid organization attempting to make structural change. Instead, it began with “the power of one” to change the way we view—and speak about—the world around us. And grounded in a prosperity logic, Houghton’s lyrical declarations were not simply attempts to persuade his listeners to love and care for people. They were also effective declarations that worked an inward psychological change and asked God to give to the listener what God had promised: blessing, so that one could be a blessing.
Houghton expanded on this concept of blessing in his book A Deeper Level: “Why are we blessed? The reason we are blessed is to be a blessing. Maybe that is the only thing that needs to be adjusted. Maybe what needs clarification is not the blessing, but for whom the blessing is intended” (2007, 135). This combination of prosperity teaching with an outward focus had corollaries in the theological concept of stewardship, an older tradition with a rich heritage in North American Protestantism, in which disestablished religion required the laity to maintain buildings and pay clergy salaries (Johnson 2007, 71). And by combining prosperity teaching with an outward focus, Houghton’s music became more palatable to anti–prosperity gospel American evangelicals, who nonetheless had often baptized the stewarding of prosperity for the sake of helping others.
While Houghton remained in conversation with the Word of Faith movement, his lyrics moved away from the narrower vocabulary of “favor” and “anointing” and embraced the wider, more generic language of American evangelicalism, the solidarity rhetoric of Bono, and the social justice emphasis of evangelical leaders such as Rick Warren. But this was not a new strategy. Time and again, American Christians exchanged limiting, confessionally specific doctrine for greater influence and acceptance in popular culture. As evangelicals sought a seat at the larger table of national culture, they in turn had to retool their rhetoric with nonsectarian language. This was true for Billy Graham and the neo-evangelicals in the 1940s and 1950s (Carpenter 1997, 241), just as it was for Joel Osteen as he built Lakewood. Likewise, Houghton’s music transcended the borders of the prosperity movement because it came to transcend prosperity language. Like Billy Graham, Houghton discerned, appropriated, and adapted trends already in motion (Wacker 2014, 316). And by embracing these wider, nonsectarian impulses, Houghton, like Graham, transformed his prosperity theology in order to gain greater influence and acceptance in evangelical culture.
We began with a question: How did Houghton’s music achieve such broad popularity among evangelical churches when the prosperity gospel was so maligned? At first glance, the answer is the simple one we just saw: Houghton diluted his prosperity theology with more generic evangelical language and a focus on social justice in order to increase his popularity. If we were to approach Houghton’s lyrics alone as cultural texts, this is a logical conclusion. But when we consider the wider context afforded by an author-based approach—the ways in which Houghton integrated the prosperity gospel into his testimony, music, and lyrics, and, in essence, into his entire public persona and marketed musical package—we find a different story. Houghton’s emphasis on the empowering friendship of God, his dedication to a multiracial musical style, his use of positive declaration and repetition, and his conviction that we are blessed in order to be a blessing not only made him attractive to evangelicals but also identified him as an innovative worship leader and theologian steeped in the prosperity tradition. Though at times indirect and even “soft” like his pastor’s, Houghton’s prosperity theology decidedly shaped his music. And though an overt prosperity gospel would have proved a liability among evangelicals, Houghton’s soft prosperity bolstered his popularity. For churches looking for an answer to the problem of musical diversity in their congregations, for individuals moved by an inspiring role model who overcame adversity through the friendship of God, and for young believers who were more interested in the cause of social justice than in conservative evangelical social values, Houghton’s music proved inspiring. For Houghton, of course, the reason was clear: it was blessed to be a blessing.
1. For Houghton, as for many other professional Christian pop musicians, there is slippage between his role as “worship leader” and “Christian artist.” While Houghton is a worship leader at Lakewood, he is also a recording artist for Integrity Media, and he splits his time between Lakewood and international touring and recording. Thus, his role at Lakewood is as much about securing a mutual contract of celebrity visibility between himself and Osteen as it is about leading worship.
2. Joel Osteen’s preaching does not embrace an explicit Pentecostal identity that highlights charismatic gifts, even though his father, John Osteen, founded Lakewood church after receiving the “baptism of the Holy Ghost.” But Joel Osteen’s debt to his father’s Word of Faith theology, his emphasis on the accessible, miraculous power of verbal declarations, and his mother’s healing ministry at Lakewood all point to the implicit Pentecostal heritage that is integral to Lakewood’s identity. Similarly, Houghton’s Pentecostal upbringing is not explicit in his music or public persona, but his Pentecostal sensibilities are implicit in his language, lyrics, and musical networks. In adapting and downplaying their inherited Pentecostalism, both Osteen and Houghton have extended their reach to wider audiences. For more on Osteen’s and Lakewood’s Pentecostal heritage, see Sinitiere (2012).
3. Houghton narrates his testimony in his book A Deeper Level and in several interviews: Watts and Blim (n.d.), “Israel Houghton // Interview” (2011), “Israel Houghton Interview Hillsong Conference 2006” (2011), “Israel Houghton on TBN” (2011), and Symmonds (n.d.).
4. “Identity.” Words and music by Israel Houghton, Neville Diedericks. CCLI #5040153. ©2007 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
5. “New Season.” Words and music by Derick Thomas, Israel Houghton. CCLI #2927262. ©1997 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
6. “Friend of God.” Words and music by Israel Houghton, Michael Gungor. CCLI #3991651. ©2003 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
7. “Friend.” Words and music by Aaron Lindsey, Israel Houghton, Kevin Singleton, Meleasa Houghton. CCLI #4302816. ©2004 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
8. Only when Crouch signed with Warner Brothers in 1979 did he begin marketing his music to black audiences.
9. “Your Latter Will Be Greater.” Words and music by Derick Thomas, Israel Houghton. CCLI #3383908. ©2001 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
10. “Take the Limits Off.” Words and music by Aaron Lindsey, Israel Houghton. CCLI #4654210. ©2005 Sound Of The New Breed (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
11. This has corollaries with J. L. Austin’s performative utterance theory. Performative utterances, which Austin also labeled “illocutionary acts,” were not simply sayings or descriptions but part of a performance of a certain action. See Austin (1975, 5).
12. “Love Rev.” Words and music by Aaron Lindsey, Israel Houghton, Tommy Sims. CCLI #5763052. ©2010 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
13. “The Power of One.” Words and music by Israel Houghton, Ricardo Sanchez. CCLI #5348783. ©2009 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
14. “Love God, Love People.” Words and music by Aaron Lindsey, Israel Houghton, Tommy Sims. CCLI #5763021. ©2010 Integrity’s Praise! Music (administrated by EMI Christian Music Publishing).
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