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The purpose of this essay is to explore Rev. Ike's particular form of positive confession theology and self-representation in relationship to his own professed post-black identity. By fusing the conversionist elements of his Pentecostal roots with the Spiritualist teachings of metaphysics and New Thought philosophy, Rev. Ike offered African Americans a theological vision of attaining material wealth while effacing what he and many of his followers regarded as the multiple negative cultural markers that blackness signified. This was not simply a theology that was preached from the pulpit; it was packaged and presented within media frames. Therefore, this essay will equally unveil and demystify the multiple aesthetic representations and conspicuous displays deployed by Eikerenkoetter, which reflect well-worn strategies on the part of the oppressed that connect understandings of citizenship and freedom with hyperconsumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A picture is worth a thousand words. If this is true of a still photograph, how much more of a moving image? A television broadcast? A streaming webcast? Interpreting the theological meaning of mass-produced visual imagery, then, can pose an analytical problem for theologians. This essay offers the theoretical insight of the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies as a helpful hermeneu-tic tool and methodological corrective for Black liberation theologians con-cerned with interpreting the intersections of theology and culture in general, and pop culture forms of religious expression such as televangelism in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]