Guest Post By GARY'S BONER: "Reverend Ike, Visionary"

[Prop. note: As always my guest bloggers' stuff goes up without my having read anything but the title. My first read will be yours. I take no credit for Gary'sBoner's briliance nor blame for his errors. And as always I've put thought into who gets to post under the Kelso flag, so everyone who has posted here before has a lifetime soapbox as will anybody else whose stuff shows up here. Kelso's Nuts love you.]

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Reverend Ike, Visionary

One of the comments on my last guest post, which stuck in my mind, referred derisively to Reverend Ike, dismissing him as a greedy charlatan. Anyone who grew up in New York will know of Frederick Eikerenkoetter II, aka Rev. Ike, but for the rest, he was a preacher in Washington Heights in the 1970’s famous for his diamond rings, fur coats, and fleet of Rolls Royces. Ike’s gospel was called the “Science of Living” or “Thinkonomics”, which (acc. to Wikipedia) posited that poverty, poor health, and bad luck are the result of incorrect attitudes; and that if his followers became aware of God’s presence within and “unlearned” weaknesses like lack of confidence, they could become rich – using himself as a prime example. One of Rev. Ike’s rituals was a “Blessing of the Cadillacs” whereby any parishioner who had gotten one would drive it past the church for a laying on of hands.

It is doubtful that any of the Black preachers on TV today would have the nerve to focus their spiritual advice so directly on acquiring money and possessions, and with such humor, but Ike did and still does, on the Internet – where he sells among other things “Rev. Ike Ringtones”. I never saw one of his services, unfortunately, but I’d imagine it was like the one in “Which Way is Up?” where Richard Pryor starred as the preacher with two mistresses and a electric guitar. (By the way, Pryor gives one of the great comedy performances in that near-forgotten film, better even than Eddie Murphy in last year’s hilarious “Norbit.”)

While Rev. Ike did fleece his flock a bit – selling them “prayer cloths,” e.g., that they were supposed to rub on their betting slips for luck – there was no suggestion that he stole from his church, or that his congregants were made to tithe more than they could afford. In fact I’d bet his take was less than the saintly Billy Graham’s. So why exactly has Ike always been an automatic target of derision? Is it because his antics “made a mockery” of religious services? But are they not inherently silly, centering as they do around praise and requests to a large man in the sky (Kelso’s phrase)? And I say this as a High Holidays synagogue-goer and faster who manages to go through the motions every year with little complaint.

Let’s stipulate for argument’s sake that the “God” part of services is superstition; our devout friends will argue nevertheless that there are the other good messages too, like the sermons. If church is then a place where people can “learn,” what was so wrong about what Rev. Ike was teaching? His gospel advised his oppressed flock that they should not accept their “fates” while dreaming of the eternal reward, and thus fit squarely within the Protestant tradition (cf. Max Weber). (Not to mention the Jews, who have based a religion on the concept that diligence and holiness will get us extra benefits, as if the universe is an airline and we hold business class tickets.) One of Ike’s mottos – though I may be recalling this from another preacher’s flyer I once saw on a subway floor – was, “Some say wait for pie in the sky by and by. I say get yours now, with a cherry on top!” In fact, Ike’s Science of Living was ahead of its time, as the power of positive thinking is the hottest area of self-help today, via books like “The Secret.” I suppose it was Ike’s flamboyance that prevented his message from being taken seriously – or maybe simply that he was delivering it to a Black audience who were not “supposed” to focus too hard on getting rich in 1975, as it was somehow unseemly (“uppity”). In any case, if all organized religion is a form of entertainment, at least Rev. Ike put on a great show, with much of the donations “right up there on the screen,” as they say in Hollywood.

Putting this in a broader context, the fastest-growing religious movement in the developing world, as reported by Alan Wolfe in the March Atlantic Monthly, are branches of the “prosperity movement,” which downplays the afterlife while encouraging the acquisition of basic standards of living, as a right bestowed by God. Pentecostalism, booming in South America, promotes the personal relationship with God and is also compatible with the prosperity movement. According to Eliza Griswold in the same magazine, the success of the Pentecostal Gospel of Prosperity “has prompted the creation of a new Islamic organization focused on economic empowerment, which already has 1.2 members in Nigeria alone.” The prosperity movement in its different forms is also the dominant religious attitude in the U.S.

America is, with the exception of the Gulf States and Korea, the only rich country in the world that is also very religious. Wolfe attributes this, paradoxically, to the First Amendment, which by guaranteeing religious freedom forced every sect to “market” itself. No surprise then to find, inside our churches and synagogues, the attractions of Starbucks outlets, basketball leagues, singles mixers, day care, trips to see “Mamma Mia” in New York and obesely block the sidewalk, etc. etc. Religions here also had to fine-tune their messages to harmonize them with the basic American dream: i.e., our own “prosperity movement.” Indeed, there is a strong subtext to Americans’ spiritual path, i.e., that it can also help us find the way to that nice house with the picket fence and two-car garage, one of which can even be a Cadillac. “The Purpose-Driven Life” is the latest handbook-phenomenon to emerge from this school of thought, and its author has been invited to Africa, where it is seen as “encouraging wider, bourgeois virtues of thrift and responsibility,” according to Wolfe. Finally, let us not forget that our pious current president found religion, along with all his buddies in West Texas in the 80’s, when oil crashed, they went bust, and they all began to wonder what life was about.

Had it been Rev. Ike riding his Rolls Royce into Midland back then instead of Mark Leaverton in his Buick, we might have a cooler, funnier, and certainly flashier-dressing man in the White House today.