Preaching abundant living

Della Reese, who played a down-to-earth heavenly being on “Touched by an Angel” isn’t acting as she stands in front of a congregation on Sundays in West Hollywood. She’s preaching -- in her own church.

And her message has no mention of sin, no mention of good and evil and no endorsement of sacrifice if it means doing without. She talks about abundant living, not in the hereafter but in the here and now.

“There ain’t nothin’ up there. If you would read that Bible you would know. There is no Beulah land,” she tells an amen-saying, hand-clapping congregation. “Jesus Christ said the only time is now. So whatever it is you want, need or desire or just like to have, you better try to get it now, ‘cause this is the only time there is. Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow may be for us and it may not.”

This is the Understanding Principles of Better Living Church, where the Rev. Della Reese Lett (the actress uses her married name in the church) preaches prosperity, and the “divinity of man” is celebrated. She calls the church Christian, but Jesus is described not as the Savior, but as the Way-Shower, pointing to unabashedly abundant living and material success.

Hers is a faith of entitlement and personal empowerment. Change your way of thinking, her churchgoers are told, and you’ll change your life. She calls it “practical Christianity” and it stems, she says, from positive thinking.

“If you’re not getting the things you want, need or desire it’s because you have not accepted that you can have them,” she tells her congregants. “Once you accept that ... this is your inheritance, and you act like that, you become acceptable to the Lord and he starts sending your stuff through.” Her watchwords are “as within, so without.”

Reese Lett’s church belongs to a denomination started by the Rev. Johnnie Colemon of Chicago in 1974, the Universal Foundation for Better Living. Colemon’s mega church on Chicago’s Southside fits loosely into a broadly defined New Thought movement, which includes the Rev. Frederick Eikerenkoetter, the flamboyant New York “success and prosperity” preacher.

“His whole thing is racism dies out in the face of money. Money kills a lot of adversity,” says James Stovall, director of the church’s Ministry of Arts and Culture, about the 69-year-old Rev. Ike, who also believes there is no sin in enjoying life.

That’s not to say church members don’t believe in sacrifice and helping others. But, says Stovall, “If you don’t pursue some level of success there’s nothing to give. There’s nothing to share if your pocket’s empty.”

Both Rev. Ike and Colemon teach that abundance comes with being in unity with all-abundant God, says J. Gordon Melton, head of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara. “There’s a great emphasis on prosperity,” he says.

For Reese Lett, who says she talks to God all day, being one with the Almighty is why she believes she is where she is. It’s a far cry from her childhood in a Detroit slum and the Baptist faith of her mother.

As a 13-year-old, she sang with the late gospel singer Mahalia Jackson and then went on to become a gospel, blues and jazz artist in her own right. She went on to break the color barrier as a guest on “The Merv Griffin Show” and became the first woman to host a talk show with “Della.” She’s performed in Las Vegas and in films, and, as millions of viewers know, completed nine seasons as co-star of CBS’ “Touched by an Angel.”

During an interview in the luxury Bel-Air home she shares with her third husband, producer Franklin Lett, she recalls her childhood as Deloresse Patricia Early.

“Everything was a bill in our house,” she says. “There was a grocery bill. Rent was a bill and the cleaning was a bill.” Her father would take what money was left and gamble. “Sometimes he’d win and it’d be good times, and if he didn’t win it wouldn’t be such a good time.”

She remembers her mother, Nellie, a Cherokee, sitting in “the ugliest green chair you’ve ever seen” talking to God. One time, Reese says, her mother was telling God she had everything she needed to make sandwiches but bread. Pretty soon, a neighbor knocked on the door and said she and her husband had each bought a loaf of bread and had more than they could use. She asked Nellie if she would please accept one.

“I thought really for a long time that she was a witch,” Reese says, laughing. She came to learn differently. “My mother was a personal friend of God’s. They had ongoing conversations,” Reese, 72, says.

Three days later, at the Wyndham Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood, Reese Lett’s church meets in the same rented banquet room it has used for the last three years. The congregation, which totals about 600, is in the midst of a fund-raising campaign to either build or buy their own building. So far, they’ve raised about $200,000. The church leases an office in Culver City and has two assistant ministers.

Beneath crystal chandeliers the air is sizzling with the sounds of keyboard, bass guitar, drums, saxophone and gospel choir. “Ain’t No Stopping Us!” the congregation sings as gospel singers, assisting clergy and the Rev. Della, in a turquoise dress, matching box purse and a fur stole, process down a center aisle through an estimated 200 enthusiastic churchgoers.

Reese Lett’s congregation is mixed, with African Americans, Caucasians, Latinos and Asians. Some are dressed for Sunday and others more informally. They include about 20 children at Sunday school, young adults in their 30s, many middle-age people and some elderly.

Within minutes, Rev. Della is preaching. She’s talking about bread again.

The Lord’s Prayer, she says, is an example of how to pray. “Give us this day our daily bread. It doesn’t say, ‘Give us some of your bread, Lord.’ Does it?” Members of the congregation answer in unison: “No!”

“No, it doesn’t say that,” Reese Lett continues. “It says give us this day our daily bread. I own this bread! Give me the part I’m supposed to have today. I’m not looking to anything or anybody else.”

Reese Lett’s teaching that people have a God-given right to riches stems in large part from the view that humans are divine because they are part of God.

Abundance “is not necessarily just money,” she adds. It’s “being able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, as much of it as you want to.” That includes loving relationships and, she says, love of God. The church’s stewardship brochure notes that sharing one’s abundance can also mean ministering to the sick and working for social justice.

Reese Lett says she bristled and rebelled at the inconsistencies of her childhood church. She found her way 30 years ago when she was in Chicago in the play “Same Time Next Year.” Her hair and makeup man was a member of Colemon’s church and invited her to a service. She felt instantly at home, Reese Lett says. She soon began studying with Colemon and got her minister’s license five years later.

Her followers say practicing what Reese Lett preaches has changed their lives.

“It’s made a big difference. It helps me to be more in control of my life,” says Cynthia Hast of Los Angeles, an “over 40” secretary. “I understand that God is always with me. Everything I want is here for me.”

Egypt Thompson, 27, an actor and model from Woodland Hills, says the church has changed his outlook. “It stopped being a religion and started being a lifestyle. It’s a principle I’m living,” he says.

The church instills middle-class, goal-oriented values, says Melton, the religion expert who also is editor of the Encyclopedia of American Religions. “The difference between lower class and middle class is not how much money they earn, but how they think of work,” he says. “Middle-class people have a career. Lower-class people have a job.”

Not everyone who calls themselves Christian agrees with the emphasis on material success. Rev. Ike, for example, was called a heretic when he began, and would-be converts were urged to stay away by established churches, Stovall says. But he adds, “It’s also wrong for [those] churches to preach nothing but pie in the sky when you die.”

Reese Lett’s church offers a master’s certificate program of 18 courses in which members may enroll to guide them into new thinking. On average, the church says, it costs about $3,500 to complete the program. Reese Lett receives no income from the church, according to an aide. Seeing her preach, it’s clear she’s there out of passion.

“For me, it seems ignorant to suffer when there’s so much available to make you comfortable,” she tells her congregation. “I like to sit on soft things and sleep late ... I like 45 $100 bills in my pocketbook. It kinda makes me feel like a real woman!”