Where Has Oprah Taken Us?--Book Review

Where Has Oprah Taken Us? by Stephen Mansfield (The Religious Influence of the World's Most Famous Woman) was reviewed. This book claims to discuss Oprah's influence on America's spirituality.  The book starts off with a claim from Mr. Mansfield that while he will intend to write a unbiased view, he will probably interject his own Christian views into the book. He states boldly that he is a Christian and believes the only way to heaven is through belief in Jesus Christ as his savior.

The book begins with Oprah's youth. Her fluid lifestyle of being raised by many relatives. The book reads much like any other biography of her life. It then starts to delve into when Oprah's religious life changes from Southern Baptist to something more of her own creation.

The next two thirds of the book basically covers all the influences on Oprah's spiritual  life. The books discussed many Eastern religions and their origins. There is great detail of how Oprah and her 'gurus' blend Eastern religions with parts of Christianity to come up with a "thought life" led spirituality. While the book goes into great detail of each of Oprah's influences, it gets rather tedious. At times I felt like I was taking a class in Eastern Religion rather than reading a book on Oprah. However, I learned a lot about aspects of the East I did not previously know.

The book follows Oprah's rise to fame and discusses how her nearly cult-like followers, who believe what Oprah says, are being led into a religion with no solid background that very well may leave them empty and void of a spiritual life when things get bad.

This is a good book to read if you want to learn more about what Oprah believes and how she arrived at her beliefs. However, this is not a biography of Oprah, nor does it try to praise her every move as other biographies may intend to do.

This book was given to me to review from Booksneeze.com, I was not compensated in any other way.