Kanye West made a highly anticipated appearance at televangelist Joel Osteen’s megachurch in Texas today where he opened up about his faith and his latest album.
The 42-year-old rapper appeared at the Lakewood Church in Houston where he talked about his ‘journey to his faith’ for about 20 minutes before the crowd of 17,000.
‘I know God’s been calling me for a long time and the devil has been distracting me for a long time,’ West said when he took to the stage.
The rapper opened up about his spiritual awakening, saying God gave him visions which inspired his gospel album and the creation of Sunday Service.
‘When I was in my lowest points, God was there with me and sending me visions and inspiring me. I remember sitting in the hospital at UCLA after having a breakdown and there’s documentations of me drawing a church and writing about starting a church in the middle of Calabasas,’ he said.
‘Even after that I made the Life of Pablo album and said this is a gospel album. I didn’t know how to totally make a gospel album and the Christians that were around were too beaten into submission by society to not speak up and profess the gospel to me because I was a superstar. But the only superstar is Jesus,’ he said.
‘All of that arrogance, and confidence and cockiness that y’all seen me use before God is now using for Him,’ West said to the cheers of the crowd.
‘Because every time I stand up I feel that I’m standing up and drawing a line in the sand and saying I’m here in service to God and no weapons armed against me shall prosper.’
Osteen then asked him to speak about worshiping fame and money.
‘It’s like the devil stole all the good producers, all the good musicians, all the good artists, all the good designers, all the good business people and said, “you gotta come over and work for me.” And now the trend, the shift, is going to change. Jesus has won the victory,’ West said.
‘Now the greatest artist God ever created is now working for him,’ he added.
Osteen — whose net worth is estimated at over $50 million — preaches the “prosperity gospel.”
The prosperity gospel is an umbrella term for a group of ideas — popular among charismatic preachers in the evangelical tradition — that equate Christian faith with material, and particularly financial, success.
It has a long history in American culture, with figures like Osteen, Benny Hinn, Jimmy Swaggart, Paul and Jan Crouch, and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, glamorous, flashily-dressed televangelists whose Disneyland-meets-Bethlehem Christian theme park, Heritage USA, was once the third-most-visited site in America.
Hinn recently condemned the prosperity teachings and has vowed to stop practicing it.
