It is so commonplace to paint Oprah Winfrey in religious terms that the “Church of Oprah” was a recurring phrase in coverage of the end of her talk show after a quarter-century on air. In 1996, Time magazine ordained Winfrey “almost a religion”; in 2002, Christianity Today dubbed her an “icon of church-free spirituality”; and in 2011, Winfrey's reign as talk show queen was characterized by the Wall Street Journal as “25 years of syndicated pastoral work.” Kathryn Lofton's Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon investigates this association and enriches our understanding of the intersection of religion, media and culture.

An assistant professor of religious studies and American studies at Yale University, Lofton proposes that delving into the phenomenon that is “Oprah” – at once pop-culture icon and billionaire media mogul – can shed light on the place of religion in modern society. Her book joins a growing body of scholarship on Winfrey's enterprise across a range of disciplines (e.g. sociology, media studies, English, women's studies), which indicates the complexity of an object of inquiry that encompasses a sprawling media empire, a powerful public persona, and the social context that makes both effective and meaningful. That complexity is reflected in Lofton's quest to make sense of “a person who is also a product” – a figure who can erase “the line between private practice and public performance” and, in the process, “ignore what we have historically conceived as a great divide between what is properly religious and what is not” (1–2).

Drawing on the ample primary sources of Winfrey's multimedia productions (the talk show, magazine, book club, website, radio channel, etc.) and the vast secondary material surrounding her (popular press, blogs, fan websites, and so on), Lofton sets out to demonstrate Winfrey's significance for the study, and practice, of modern religion. Premised on the idea that the figure of “Oprah” is exemplary of the fusion of popular culture and religion, the book is organized thematically, with each chapter treating an aspect of Winfrey's “corporate production alongside comparisons with a category of religious studies analysis” (18). Starting with an exploration of Winfrey's “spiritualized capitalism” that considers the relation of consumer culture and the “prosperity gospel,” Lofton takes us on a journey that links celebrity culture to discourses of spirituality, pairs the media “makeover” with religious rituals, places Winfrey's TV “ministry” in the history of American women preachers, connects the reading practices of Oprah's Book Club to Protestant Bible studies, and frames the South African Leadership Academy for Girls as part of the black missionary tradition.

Along the way, Lofton offers sharp insights into Winfrey's media “ministry.” The cultural authority of “Oprah” is inseparable from her ability to personify her message of self-transformation. Winfrey is the “paradigmatic result of her prescriptions” and her multiple media modes are “paradigmatic articulations of the spiritual practice of a capitalism simultaneously millennial, charismatic, and relentlessly quotidian” (25). As Lofton observes, “After watching an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, leafing through the magazine, or scanning the official Web site, one finds it imperative to do something. Inevitably, the stories of triumph make you wonder why you haven't” (24). As a fellow traveler in the territory of “Oprah studies,” I can attest to the pervasive mandate to action within Winfrey's enterprise and appreciate the precision with which Lofton parses its precise power.

In the book's conclusion, Lofton characterizes it as a study of “what we're watching and what it consistently conveys,” and proposes that what she discovered by examining Oprah Winfrey is that the boundaries between consumption and religion are infinitely porous in modern capitalist society. She posits a querulous reader who might ask, “Why is Oprah the product being purchased, rather than anything else? Why do we need her so much?” Lofton's reply is that her book “only intimates, through its religious invocations, the why” (212). Like that imaginary interlocutor, I longed for a bolder, more definitive answer to this important “why” question. But I recognize that in religious studies, it may be impolitic to explicitly challenge the beliefs of others – even when that belief is attached to a figure who, as Lofton says, only “plays religious” (9).

Thoroughly researched, engagingly written, deftly weaving together major currents of US religious and cultural history, Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon will hold great interest for students and scholars in religious studies, American studies, and media and cultural studies, but Winfrey's fans may also enjoy this lively exegesis of their heroine.