Reverend Ike moves on

I forgot to mention yesterday this bit of religious news, which popped up today on the LA Times obit page:

The Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, the flamboyant, lavish-living preacher known as Reverend Ike, whose message of success and prosperity reached millions, has died. He was 74.

Rev. Ike, who had a stroke in 2006, died Tuesday in a hospital in the Los Angeles area, where he had been living for the last few years, said family spokesman Bishop E. Bernard Jordan.

Jordan told The Times on Thursday that Rev. Ike “lifted the consciousness of people globally, and he was such an inspiration as a black man, an African American doing the kinds of things he was doing in his generation.”

The message of Rev. Ike, who could pack Madison Square Garden and who tooled around in a Rolls-Royce, Jordan said, was one “of empowerment and hope—and definitely prosperity.”

You can read the rest of that obit here. The New York Times also had a good one.

And you already know what I think about the prosperity gospel.