The perpetually smiling, mega rich televangelist Joel Osteen recently came under fire for not opening his megachurch to thousands of people made homeless in Houston as the city was paralyzed by flooding from Hurricane Harvey.
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Joel Osteen has a HUGE church in Houston that would make a great shelter. pic.twitter.com/byqHxXrHQn
— Defund the GQP (@Brasilmagic) August 28, 2017
Lakewood had previously announced that it was “inaccessible due to severe flooding.” However, on Tuesday, the pastor opened the doors of the church to flood victims — but not before a spate of occasionally hilarious public shaming on social media created a huge PR problem. Osteen gave an interview Wednesday on “Good Morning America” in which he presented seemingly reasonable justifications for the delayed church opening, including lack of staff and concern that flooding in the church would worsen, but it was too late: Twitter was already firing on all cylinders.
Maybe you can also open your gigantic church to shelter some of the victims?
— Lesley Abravanel 🇺🇦 (@lesleyabravanel) August 28, 2017
Although most Twitter uses were (understandably) taking the situation seriously, there were plenty of jokers who used humor to try and make some sense of the whole thing — and some of the memes floating around are absolutely brilliant.
https://twitter.com/MissKrys58/status/902901589563854848
@JoelOsteen it's your property, you are allowed to do what you want with it but damn these memes are great #HurricaneHarvey pic.twitter.com/iJm71ilyfW
— Tim (@TimMc12) August 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/PyrexPicasso/status/902638209934516224
"We were never closed," Joel Osteen says in his own defense.
— Jonathan Jones (@jjones9) August 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/jeffgiesea/status/902865003564412929
Some people used GIFs to roast Osteen
PR: Do it for the city!
Joel Osteen: pic.twitter.com/RqOvmN2ZPs— ASHLEY DEVONNA (@MsAshleyDevonna) August 30, 2017
Others used the debacle to make a larger point about the morality of televangelism.
I hope Joel Osteen doesn't give a bad name to the other megachurch-owning televangelists who are absolutely not using religion to make money
— Matt Oswalt (@MattOswaltVA) August 29, 2017
And then there’s retired professionals wrestler The Iron Sheik, who was far from happy:
THE @joelosteen YOU LUCKY I DIDNT BREAK UR FUCKING NECK YOU TREAT THE HOUSTON PEOPLE WITH RESPECT OR YOU ARE BIG TIME JABRONI #houstonstrong pic.twitter.com/rKu5Y1Mwai
— The Iron Sheik (@the_ironsheik) August 29, 2017