The seemingly always smiling, positive-thinking pastor to America’s largest congregation welcomes everyone to his church, including office holders and politicians – as long as they agree to leave politics outside the church doors.
Joel Osteen, best-selling author and pastor of the 47,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston, has a strict policy of not allowing any politician or government office holder to speak in his church about politics. Osteen also does not endorse any political candidate, although he doesn’t mind putting in a good word for the person if he or she happens to visit the church.
“Part of it is how I was raised,” Osteen explained in a Newsweek interview this week. “My father…kept it out of the pulpit.”...