Before the Joel and Victoria Osteen “Night of Hope” at Yankee Stadium, I roamed the park’s lower-deck concourse with my friend Hal and asked people why they were there. What had drawn them to leave their homes and get on a train and sit in a stadium to see Pastor Joel Osteen? I met Diane,who stood with a small, buzzing crowd gazing into a glass-walled dining room where, we were surprised to find, Joel himself was filming conversations with local New York pastors. “Everything that’s due to me will come back to me,” Diane told me. “I need his message.”

Another woman in the crowd outside the dining room, Michelle from East Flatbush, Brooklyn, said: “Joel Osteen breaks it down. He makes it simple. There are no go-betweens with him. There is no yelling and screaming. Here I am is what I am.”

“He tells you to believe even when you don’t see anything happen,” Michelle continued. “Be good even if everything is bad. This is the day the Lord has made!”

Michelle’s friend Sophia said Joel Osteen helped her realize: “Everything’s going to be okay. I don’t worry.” She started tearing up. “I’m gonna cry,” she said, just thinking about what Joel’s message means to her. “I’m getting emotional.”

My friend Hal, who regularly quotes Jung and Kierkegaard (but somehow can get away with it), put their description of Osteen’s message in his own words: “The future isn’t something that happens to you,” he said. “It is something that we either bring into existence in a positive way, or through fear that manifests as destruction.”