Oprah's 'church' video draws over 5 million to YouTube

A YouTube video which features talk show host Oprah Winfrey denying Jesus as the only way to God and promoting New Age ideas has received over 5 million views and is still climbing.

The under seven-minute video montage, entitled "The Church of Oprah Exposed," was posted about month ago and has since claimed the Top Favorites spot in the Web site's News & Politics category.

According to statistics posted on YouTube, the latest streams of visitors are coming from PerezHilton.com, a Hollywood gossip blog. The author of the blog wrote that "crazy Christians" are behind the effort to demonise Oprah as a "conduit of evil".

But many Christians say New Age teachings espoused by Oprah in the video are a cause for concern. They believe the day-time host is distorting Christianity and leading many into spiritual confusion.

In a commentary posted on The Morning Call, one pastor likened Oprah's multi-way approach to God to telling a blind man standing at the edge of a cliff that whichever way he chooses to walk is equally safe.

"She holds the trendy idea that religions are essentially the same and that there are many paths that lead to God. She irrationally romanticizes the notion that God can be whatever you want him/her/it to be," writes Steven W. Cornell, pastor of a Pennsylvania-based church.

One clip in the video shows Oprah blatantly denying Jesus as the only way to God.

"How can there be only one way to heaven or to God?" Oprah asked her audience in a show taped years ago.

When one woman in the audience asked, "What about Jesus?" Oprah defiantly answered, "What about Jesus?...There couldn't possibly be one way."

Another part of the YouTube video shows Oprah hosting her recent Webinar class, in which she promotes New Age writer Eckhart Tolle and his "New Earth" book.

A guest caller asked her in the segment how she reconciled certain spirituality teachings with those of Christianity.

Oprah went on to explain how her view of God changed after hearing a charismatic preacher describe God as "jealous God" in her late 20s. She concluded that by opening her mind to the "hugeness" of God and accepting that He is love helped her to reconcile the two.

"God is a feeling experience and not a believing experience. If your religion is a believing experience...then that's not truly God," she continued to say during the webinar.

Frank Pastore, a Christian radio talk show host on KKLA, was among the many Christian leaders who criticised Oprah's views, saying the two worldviews she discusses are actually irreconcilable.

"If she's a Christian, she's an ignorant one, because Christianity is incompatible with New Age thought," Pastore wrote in his commentary on Crosswalk.com.

He went on to list key differences between Christianity and New Age worldviews. In one entry, Pastore said that the meaning of life for Christians is to glorify God while New Age thought showcases enlightenment.

Bill Keller, founder of LivePrayer.com, a internet-based programme on faith and values, said he believes Oprah is starting her own cult.

"She has an incredible amount of influence over people and an incredible following," Keller told Celebrity News Service.

"I believe these New Age teachings are like 'spiritual crack' because people are hungry, the teachings satisfy and then they are hungry again," he added.

Keller, who has responded with his YouTube video on the matter, told Celebrity News Service that while many at this point are afraid to challenge Oprah because of her power, he expects more people to begin questioning her teachings over the next six months.