The Legacy of Reverend "Ike"

Remembering the Legacy of America’s “Green Preacher,” Rev. Ike
By Jonathan L. Walton

Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II was a controversial and complicated personality who cast his ecclesial wings upon the religious airwaves to become a pop-culture icon. More commonly known as “Rev. Ike,” he was a religious innovator and architect of one of the more prominent religious movements of the contemporary moment. At a time when few African Americans were on television, religious or otherwise, Rev. Ike used advanced technologies to take his message of God-ordained financial prosperity from a Harlem storefront to mainstream society. As a result, he helped to reconfigure the religious and racial boundaries that once defined the perceived center and margins of American spiritual life.

When I interviewed him a few years ago, however, he seemed less than sanguine about his legacy. In most circles, the very mention of his name evokes either a dismissive chuckle or a demonstrative condemnation. Adjectives like charlatan, huckster, or crook are quite common in describing the former prayer-cloth peddler. And in comedic culture he will forever be linked to Richard Pryor’s character “Daddy Rich” in Car Wash or Reverend Sam, the Elmer Gantry-like televangelist from Norman Lear’s classic sitcom Good Times.

This is even true among contemporary evangelists who now drink from the theological and ministerial wells that Rev. Ike helped to drill. Frederick Price, Creflo Dollar and Bishop T.D. Jakes are quick to distance themselves from Rev. Ike’s name, even as they unapologetically embrace his self-indulgent theology and lifestyle. In fact, most of today’s African American televangelists are much more willing to credit their success to prominent white evangelists such as Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin or Kenneth Copeland.

Read the Full Essay @ Religion Dispatches

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Jonathan L. Walton is assistant professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. He teaches courses in African American Religion; Religion, Media & Culture and Religion & Political Discourse. His new book is: Watch This! The Ethics and Aesthetics of Black Religious Broadcasting (New York University Press).