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host: kate boler, where did you get the title "everything happens for a reason" and "other lies i have loved?" >> oh, i think it just came to me because it was one of the many boomerang theologies that people give to you when you're sick is surely everything's gonna workout. god is making a way. when i wrote the book, i was trying to explore that maybe this was a lie i loved all along. so the book is kind of a theological excavation project where i'm trying to dig into my own secret terrible belief. host: how sick are you? >> well, stage 4, cancer is not decorative, so it's it's it's hard. but i am doing better than a lot of people. i moved from the crisis management to the more chronic part of this. but thankfully, so far, drugs

and doctors and all kinds of things are making a way. host: went to first find out you have cancer? guest: two years ago, 35, and there's no cancer in my family. i didn't imagine that it was possible. and then one day out of the blue i got a phone call that explained my stomach pain and i realized i was in deep. host: what kind of cancer? guy:: cancer. i didn't imagine everyone imagining me and my colon for the rest of my life, but as it turns out, it is increasingly, it is increasingly, that young people are getting this traditionally thought to be an older person's illness. host:you say in your book that it is in the liver? guest: it's fred often to the lip -- it spread often to the liver, as it did with mine. host:what is magic cancer?

guest: that was just a little phrase. they give you a series of horrible options when you have stage 4 cancer. like, it could be this and this treatment might work, or it could be this other much worse horrible thing, immediate death sentence or this tiny little i have a they call a mismatch repair disorder. where the cells replicated incorrectly. it could be genetic or not, but if you have this group cancer, the data therapy -- there were no immunotherapy possibilities available for me. so when i found out that i had this tiny little 3% kind of cancer, then i declared it was the magic cancer because it was one of the only kinds that opened me up for new treatment. host: where do you live? guest: durham, north carolina. but in from canada. canadians bring up stuff all the time. host: where do you live and what do you do in durham, north carolina. guest: i am a professor of american christian unity at duke divinity school. i teach all kinds of pastors and

nonprofit workers. do-gooders of all kinds. i specialist in modern american am a christianity. and then for the last ten years i've been studying televangelists and mega churches and just people with beautiful hair. [laughter] host: i want to show you a picture you had on your blog of your husband tobin and your son zach. how old is zach in that picture? guest: that is his baby dedication. we all grew up mennonite, and so he has an i heart anabaptism onesie to just make clear that he is being dedicated and not that bad, because otherwise, i'll be honest, baptists would immediately reject us. i think he was nine months or something, and that's in tobin's parents backyard among all mennonites. host: what is a mennonite? guest: people who loved about their suffering. menno simons was their leader in the 1700s, and they moved

largely communally through germany and then russia, and then a whole bunch of them moved to canada in the late 1800s. they populate a lot of rural manitoba and ontario and in the states, indiana and nebraska, kansas and then pennsylvania. different kinds of groups, but all have a really thick account of their suffering which is largely why they commit to doing things together. simplicity, pacifism, the desire to rule and salads with jell-o. sometimes deli meat. [laughter] i have always gone to a mennonite church and have found that they are my very favorite people to be wonderfully sad around because they almost expect it. host: what kind of things do mennonites do that say baptists don't or catholics don't? guest: they are most famous for their pacifism. my husband's grandpa, for instance, was a conscientious objector in world war ii. my grandpa was flying bomber

planes. his grandma was in the mines. so it's an entirely alternate history. they're most famous for their pacifism, often for their anti -materialism. usually can't tell anymore the difference between them because they are often pl ain-clothed like the rest of us. they look like every average capitalist, but deep down, they feel really guilty for the things they have. host: how many are in the world? guest: there is a tremendous growth in like rwanda, uganda, there's some a lot of international growth. a lot in the plains of canada. not sure what the overall total is. host: when you teach that duke, what kind of degrees are the people that you're teaching getting? guest: i teach in the graduate program. most of them will get ph.d's, but most of them will get a masters in religious studies or a masters in divinity, which means they will become a reverend and go off to inflict my views on other people.

host: why did you want to teach this? guest: i like the idea that ideas always have traction and we are beholden to communities of care. maybe that has become more and more important now that i have been living with my diagnosis, is you realize that you are giving people a worldview and they have to go out and live in the hospitals and boardrooms and the living rooms holding people's hands during the most important moments of their lives. host:during this process of finding your cancer, how many doctors did you see? guest: i had a number of undiagnosed, entirely unrelated, it turned out, illnesses. so i saw over 100 within the last few years. in the last stretch, 15. host: you ended up having another illness before the cancer, what was that? guest: it sounds -- it ended up

being 1000 times more dramatic than it seems. i lost use of my arms for over a year. as it turns out, it was just an an some kind of very easy to fix nerve disorder related to having overly laxed joints. it's so boring. but when i had it, it was very dramatic. i find i was like locked in bathrooms for too long because i couldn't turn the door handle all of a sudden. so it made writing my first book blessed mostly a nightmare because i would often have to have like double arm casts. the healing crusade. or then have to try to replicate research notes or my book while using terrible voice dictation software to a computer. so i look back on that as a very dark, lightly comical time of my life. host: your first book, "blast," was about and when was it published? guest: 2013. it was a history of the prosperity gospel. the first historical account of this widespread movement. it took me 10 years of obsessive research/stalking people in order to map the contours of it. it was really hard to study at the time because no one calls themselves a prosperity preacher, so you can't do an

easy survey, like, will all the prosperity preachers in the room please put up your hands? because it sounded so naturally insulting to assume that they were just preaching the gospel. host: i wanted to ask you whether these men were about to show you in about a minute is a prosperity minister, and if he is, how do you know that? >> i got money. i got land. i got houses. do you mind me bragging for just a moment? do you my new dragon? [applause] >> [speaking another language] i don't have anything god didn't give me. everything i have came from god. ♪ if you are my protege, if i wanted a debt-free house, i would do what i did. i sold a seed equal to one month's mortgage payment. a preacher said if i'd sow a

seed equal to my monthly house note, my mortgage, it was $3400. he said i would have a debt-free house in 12 months. i didn't see how that could be, but i got my debt-free house in eight months. guest: mike murdock. he is one of the most unrepentant of prosperity preachers. he doesn't mind talking about money all the time. so, if anyone's up too late, they've usually watched mike murdock on 24-hour christian tv. he is a famous kind of old school prosperity preacher. when it was uncommon for pentecostals at that time to really talk that much about money. mike came along and talked about it all the time, and sold like "seven secrets to seven kingdoms," he does a lot with spiritual numbers. you can see him doing that spiritual math with people,

like, if you give me this much, god will reward you in this way. host: based in texas. talks about a seed? guest: yes. it was a new language pioneered largely by oral roberts, a handsome and charismatic founder of oral roberts university. he pioneered this eco-cultural language. the idea is kind of genius insofar as it helped explain how many was the post work when you give it to someone else. the idea is your donation is that is needed and you have to planted in the ground, the ground being the righteous pastor. and there is a time of waiting. oral roberts wrote his first book, i think in 1963 or something, called "the miracle of seed faith vehicle he explained that every good believer is almost like a spiritual farmer and has to learn how to live according to these seasons of sowing and reaping. it also really helped explain

what happens when you give money and you don't see a return. the answer is that it is still in the ground and then you have to pray for the rain and the seasons to change so you can fairly receive your harvest. host:how much of that do you believe? guest: none of that. i think that is partly why i was trying to remain so open when i was doing this study, is, someone like mike murdock is the caricature of that late 1980's televangelist who weeps in front of the camera and for donations. i mean -- and ask for donations. i mean, he is the caricature. but so often, the people i met in the pews wanted average things. if you look at the little letters people used to write to pentecostal healers and like the early mike murdocks, they would write for things like a new washing machine or like the nerve to go to a new sewing circle and make friends. self-esteem, tiny advances. all the little things that make

life a little more bearable. and that gave me a lot of compassion for the people who stay up late watching mike. host: the next clip is of a man that we knew years ago. he went to prison. guest: yes. host: name is jim baker. he was married to tammy faye baker. she's dead and he's remarried. his new wife is named lori graham. let's watch this. it's got a couple of clips and i want you to explain how this always works. [video clip] [laughter] >> donald trump! >> donald trump is president! [applause] >> this was a miracle not by man. you know, god called him to do it. and i am going to be bringing the prophets in and they are going to talk. and those who prophesied and those who watched this thing. because it is the hour of the church in america again. host: 78 years old. still active.

he does television every day like this. what do you make of him? guest: i had not seen that with, but it doesn't entirely surprise me that so much of his ideas of more than enoughness were always rooted in p judaism. there is a slice of prosperity gospel in which republicanism and the sense that the prosperity gospel of both the individual and the nation are connected come together in someone like jim baker. he and tammy were the king and queen of 1980 still evangelis he had the most-watched christian program. their theme park which they called heritage usa that was built around the border of north carolina and south carolina, was meant to be this expression of their jubilant more than enough ness. you could come down and slide the water slide and watch a live taping of jim and tammy in their

living room. they called everyone family. they reached into people's living rooms and asked people to celebrate a pentecostalism that had come of age. of course in the late 1980's, jim is toppled by both a sexual and financial scandal that sends him to prison. and weirdly enough, i ended up eating a number of people he had met while in prison when i gave a talk in, as it turns out, the federal prison where he had been held. i was giving this history of the prosperity gospel talk, and normally i usually have to talk people into caring. a bunch of guys in the back put up their hand and said, "we knew jim!" [laughter] they had all kinds of stories. host: did you interview him? he is now in branson, missouri. guest: no. i never did. i would love to. he wrote a book called "i was wrong," saying that he repented of much of his prosperity theology. but then as you can see, he's a natural salesman and went on

largely to sell dehydrated foodstuffs for the elderly on his new program. host: hold it right there. host: oh no, it's happening. [laughter] some people know when they watch it. there is the big buckets. and if you keep your eye on the screen on the left-hand corner you can see that more buckets you buy, the more money you pay. but it's a bargain, the more you buy. but anyway, this is jim baker setting the buckets of food. [video clip] >> this food, we will extend it a couple more days because i feel that we should. >> it's four months worth of food so you only need three of them to make a euro food. so actually give you four buckets. so, hey? >> this food lasts up to 30 years on your shelf. >> these are great because they are waterproof even if you are in a flood and it gets wet, and their ownership free today. >> you are getting 10,472 servings, so you're getting a lot of food. a lot of food for those grandkids.

host: grandkids. 3700 dollars for that. what do you think of that? why do they do this? guest: i know a very pragmatic reason. he was from day one and amazing salesman. he used to say i could have been , anything, but i just ended up selling the gospel. i have hundreds and hundreds of hours of old ptl footage that i watched for the research of the book, it was also fun because whenever tammy faye sings, my son dances. it was this round-robin of different agitators and speakers. it really showed you how little they actually reached and how much it was this atmosphere very often pitched towards the elderly. for him to go from the prosperity gospel of theirs more than enough, just donate to me, to a more scarcity model in which there's not enough, also give money to me. it shows how incredibly pragmatic and adaptable these preachers can be.

host: in your current condition of stage iv cancer, what would you believe if the minister says to you this is the future, what would turn you off? guest: one thing i did learn from pentecostals is their sense of openness to the idea that god can do surprising things. i try to take that in the spirit of generosity, but so often it is incredibly prescriptive. if you give this donation, here is this miracle oil. a lot of transsexualism. i get a lot of that stuff -- a lot of transsexualism. i get a lot of that stuff in the mail -- a lot of transactionalism. i get that stuff in the mail still. host: do you believe them? do they believe themselves? guest: many of them do. they are consummate salesman. always very pragmatic and entrepreneurial. so, for instance, even when they just had tents, they would travel around, these tent

revivalists, the earliest ones were tent revivalists, when they were done with the tent either because their crowds were too big or too small, they sued to cut up the tent into tiny little squares and then sell the pieces as if all the spiritual power had been absorbed into the fabric. it goes to show that at every stage they're promising something like a tactile reminder people want. someone like me when i got very sick, right away i want to think that i could touch and feel, little reminders that i was still myself. i can see these very material things catch on. host: here is the president of the united states talking in 2015. president trump: norman vincent peele, the great norman vincent peale was my pastor, the power of positive thinking. everybody has heard of norman vincent peale? he was so great. he would give a sermon, you never wanted to leave. sometimes we have sermons and everyone once know where we think about giving sermons. dr. norman vincent peale would give a sermon. i am telling you, i still remember his sermons. it was unbelievable.

he would bring real-life situations, modern-day situations into the sermon, and you could listen to him all day long. host: in your book, did you write about norman vincent peale? the prosperity gospel involved in these different streams and one of them was the pentecostal version we soften people like mike murdock. host: define pentecostal. guest: sure, it is a movement predicated on the idea that we are in a new era of science and wonders and it started in the early 1900s. most often it looked to healing and the gift of tongues, so an unknown language. in some of the clips, you will see people switch into what does that sound like intelligible words. host: have you heard mike murdock talk that way? guest: yes. it is called glossolalia, and in some versions it's supposed to be a translatable language, but in most iterations it just sounds like syllables that seem random. but they believe is a spiritual heavenly tongue that is given to

them to communicate with god. host: so, norman vincent peale. guest: norman vincent peale does not come from that pentecostal strain unit he comes from mainline protestantism. he had a methodist background plus this theology of self-esteem. they are borrowing from this seedbed of theology: new thought which was a movement that said the man was a really powerful spiritual incubator. whatever you could think or articulate would come true. like you are unleashing a surgical force. so, someone like donald trump who latches onto a figure like norman vincent peale, what we see there is a very respectable version of what you say and confess, you will possess. host: let's watch him, this is back in 1987. it is called the hour of power at the crystal cathedral. >> what do you want to be?

then dedicate it to jesus christ along with your whole life. and don't doubt him. believe. and then form a picture in your mind of that goal. hold it tenaciously in the conscious mind until by process of intellectual osmosis, it sinks into the unconscious. and when it gets into the unconscious, you have it because it will have all of you. guest: i mean, they really make visualization and mental processes the kind of theological infrastructure for how it works. so how is it then, like, what is different than having just good self-esteem in doing this? the answer is that you absorbed

it in such a way that you can actually unleash it to the world. so norman vincent peale, he kind of browns his version of the prosperity gospel into positive thinking and it develops into this long lineage with other famous preachers like robert schuler and some are like donald trump who becomes the first presidential candidate whose only religious biography stems from the prosperity gospel. host: norman vincent peel said "don't doubt it." why not? guest: so there is positive confession and then there is negative confession. the idea that if you doubt it, if you create for mental obstacle, then it will not come true, which means, of course, that whatever bad things happen, you really just have to look at yourself to figure out why he didn't come to be. host: this one will hit home with you -- by the way, have you ever met benny hinn? guest: i did. i went on a trip to israel with him and his followers for that

trip to walk where jesus walked. host: in he is originally from israel? guest: he is also a little bit from canada, from israel and lives in the states. a complicated biography. host: when you say then hundred followers, is that the only followers he has got? guest: no, they take a tour where you go with a thousand other people in 30 giant tour buses and travel around israel. you pay a lot of money that is partly why i was interested, what kind of person is financially investing in the faith healer and what are their hopes for an experience like that? host: why do you call him a faith healer? his specialty is the idea that if you believe enough, that your body will reflect the glory of god and be restored. . he also has a strong financial message, but he is mostly known for his faith healing. host: do you believe him? benny hidden is not someone i have a lot of intellectual and theological affinity toward. i see a lot of him.

he is one of the pastors that i watch the most and he is often the most dramatic. he is the one on youtube where he will raise his hand and then you will see 100 people fall over at the same time. he is very dramatic. his very dramatic approach to faith healing is one i often found to be somewhat manipulative. host: you are only going to see one person in this one, this was december 18, 2017. benny hinn. ♪ >> i rebuke that cancer. [video clip] in the mighty name of jesus. i come against you in the name of the one i serve. leave this young lady. leave her now in the name of the lord my god. ♪

[heavy breathing] [indistinct whispers] >> complete healing. it's really gone, right? there's no pain in your stomach, right? ok. well, then that's real. [sighs] when i see something at that, i can only see it from her perspective. i have had a lot of people pray for me similarly and as a christian, i believe that christianity has a very long tradition of divine healing, so i certainly don't think that it's not possible for god to heal people. but you can see how quickly he moved from praying for her. he has the anointed vessel of god. and then his confidence in yourself as that vehicle. and then the idea that because she didn't have pain in that moment that she is definitely healed. host: have you ever seen one of

these where somebody stood up and said, no dr. hinn, i got , pain where i had it before. guest: i saw one where there was -- it was for financial healing. it was during the recession, at this big convention center. and it was one of hinn's proteges, it was paula white and when they said, we need donations for this and this and this. one person in the back just started yelling, "we don't have it!" there was this horrible silence and then left her. because the truth was it was in a financially-exhausting time. and the response was a 10-minute sermon berating people for lack of faith. host: our next clip happens to be paula white which i know you didn't know. who is she? guest: paula white was a spiritual, protege of benny hinn and also t.d. jakes, a famous african-american preacher in dallas. and she's now most famous as donald trump's personal pastor. but she has a large mega church

in florida called "without walls." she is a chipper preacher of "more than enough." host: have you met her? guest: i have seen her live a few times at her church. host: was that when you were doing her research? guest: yes, that's right. host: here is paula white, based in florida. [video clip] >> at the beginning of this year, i want you to make a commitment. the first hours of your day give to god. i want you to spend time in prayer. i want you to spend time on his word but it's crucial because he says do not come before me empty handed. for your firstfruits offering -- firstfruits is the full of. it's not the tide. tide is the -- it's not the tithe. tithe is one-tenth of your gross income, it's the first tenth not just any 10th. that is what it redeems the course. the whole of. some of us bring one day. some of us bring one week. some of us bring an entire months' salary because we understand the principle of all firsts belong to god.

host: who made up the 10% tithe? guest: there are all kinds of scriptural precedent for money that goes first back to the faith community and there's a lot of argument about spiritual math, whether it is 10%. what you can see there with first fruits is a kind of thickening of categories that the prosperity gospel develops in order to ask for different kinds of donations. so the 10% doesn't just become a suggestion. it becomes mandatory. so, some large churches will even ask for believers' financial records in order to make sure that they're actually giving 10%. otherwise, the threat is, and you can hear it there, in order to redeem the curse. the idea that you are spiritually in danger if you are not fully giving. then there is the seed faith offerings which can be spontaneous and related to the person. you might have a guest richer so you give a -- guest preacher, so you give a seed faith. host: wait, seed faith. guest: seed faith like we talked

about before with oral roberts. and that's just the idea that that language means that you should give in hopes that that person would be the reason that it's returned back to you. first fruits. x there's even a pastors appreciation day in which you have to give a certain amount to celebrate the pastor's anniversary at the church. there are just more and more categories and reasons to give. host: i have a friend who talks about her pastor. he gets, when he goes on , they pass the hat. . when it is his birthday, they pass the hat. what is your reaction. if you were in a church like that, what would your reaction be? guest: clearly enough, most of the people i interviewed lexie seeing the pastor do well as an expression of who they are. look how well he lives. that is how much he demonstrates the spiritual principles at work. because the argument is, well, if it works for him, it can work for me. so, pastors with jets or pastors with his and her mercedes benzes out front. i mean sometimes the megachurch will put the parking space of

the pastor with the luxury car right in front with a vanity plate, so that everybody files past it. there is -- they are certainly not hiding it. host: what would your reaction be if he said, i need $1000 from you, and you see him with a gold mercedes -- oral roberts, i remember i was down there one time years ago doing a story, and he had two large mercedes outside of his home. guest: i mean, i have a really uncomfortable feeling about this kind of displays, in part because often those charges are run like family businesses in which brothers and sisters are also board members. there has been a push in recent years, especially since the 2008 senator grassley investigation for financial transparency. but it certainly makes it hard,

because their argument is one that parishioners believe, which this belief that if we live in more than enough spiritual universe, if god gives to them, god can give to me. host: what do you mean by redeem the curse? she said that. guest: paula white was talking about just the imagination that is this densely-peopled universe. everything you're doing is not just for something, it is against something. someone like norman vincent feel really never spoke like that. he talked more about self-esteem and use a lot of psychological language and categories. someone more like paula white who's very much in the pentecostal stream of prosperity is going to think a lot about supernatural forces always at work against you. and you are using god's principles to counter against them. host: the next man is well known. reportedly online, he is worth $40 million to 60 within

dollars. he has a 17,000 square-foot home. the home is worth about 10.5 within dollars. and he sees, i think i wrote down, some are like 52,000 people a week. anyway, here he is, joel alstyne. [video clip] >> we installed floodgates around the building. during the reign, the waters came within a foot or two of breaching the walls and flooding the building with a gun. without those floodgates, we wouldn't be here today. the water started receding. [applause] that water started to recede late sunday into monday. we felt it was safe to start taking people in on tuesday. if we had opened the building earlier and someone was injured or perhaps it flooded and someone lost their lives, that would be a different story. i am at peace with taking the

heat for being precocious, but i don't want to take the heat for being foolish. [applause] host: what do you think of his story? you got beat up over harvey when he didn't let people into the former basketball arena. guest: i don't know enough about the details to say whether he was up overly cautious. but it does really raise a question of what a large prosperity church is for. i think part of the critique you got was, it was his job to be the front lines of charity. that is the real question from prosperity preachers when their entire theology says, if i do it, you can do it, it is heavily individualistic. moments like that, as a large pastor of the largest church in the country, he is meant to send an example. it does call into question what churches are for. historically they have been fundamentally social services.

host: in your opinion, why does someone want to sit in the room with 30,000 people for a service like that? guest: he is a really easy preacher to listen to. he tells adorable, corny jokes and always an atmosphere of positivity and celebration. he is, by all accounts, very kind. it's easy to like him and to want to be around like-minded people. the folks that go there are often aspirational in some way. a message like that works for all classes. for the poor, it is for an imagined, hope for life. for the middle class, it often explains what people have. for the upper class, it gives them reasons to keep caring and also a justification for what they have. host:. host: he is based in houston. this next photo, also well-known, is based in dallas. i will run the clip. [video clip]

>> if nelson mandela hadn't been incarcerated, mistreated, ostracized, he would not have the passion to do what he does. if oprah winfrey had not gone through the things she had gone through, she would not be so committed to making sure that everybody finds their purpose and finds their dream and everybody gets healed and everybody is ok. i am telling you, what you think is working against you is actually working for you. [applause] host: pain. guest: yeah. td jakes is probably the most famous african-american prosperity preacher. although he would hate the term "prosperity preacher," because so much of what he does is along the similar lines of talking about self-esteem and a god of more than enough. his brand, especially his franchise "woman, thou art loosed," which was a franchise that he developed initiative he made 1990's around healing sexual abuse of women in the church, it really does bring that message out where your pain then becomes your purpose. the worst thing can be the best

thing. it's these constant spiritual inversions that promise that within the course of a human life you really can have everything you hope for. host: is oprah religious or not? guest: i think so. host: i don't mean personally, i mean, does she fit into the religious world that you are talking about? guest: sure. a lot of the guests she has had, like the author of a book called "the secret," was very popular. it was another expression of that new thought idea telling you about where your mind is a spiritual incubator and you can have what you conceive of. it is also the idea that there is no such thing as luck. that any obstacle can be overcome for those who work hard and make the most of every opportunity. that is just an american belief as well. it is just in the water. guest: td jakes is 60. again, these figures are loose because you never are quite sure, but they say he is worth about $18 million. what is somebody that what he does work -- why is somebody who

does what he does work that kind of money? guest: td jakes in particular has been incredibly entrepreneurial. he has a film production company. he has been involved in music. he has for profits enterprises. part of that springs out of this prosperity theology is entrepreneurialism, is i can have it and so can you. host: what do you think of the fact that these churches and ministers live in a tax-exempt environment? guest: there is a lot of controversy over the tax-exempt status, especially for the home of that ministers live in. it is becoming more and more of an ethical question because churches are increasingly split between the very large of the very large of a very small. the average church has about only 70 people in it, including kids. but most people in the country go to these top-heavy churches which is to say, very well- resource churches.

what is tax-exempt status for some pastors is what helps other churches stay afloat. host: you live in durham, north carolina. almost all of these people are from the south. guest: they are from the sunbelt. host: why? guest: such a good question. part of it, i think, has to do with that these are large suburban churches. big churches need land and that is why we find they are slightly on the outskirts of cities. they are sprawling. they are mostly in that atlanta los angeles kind of wide half circle. part of it has to do with urban sprawl. partly it has to do with immigration patterns. host: are they more religious in the south than they are in the north? guest: sometimes it surprises you. there are a lot of prosperity churches around seattle. that creates a kind of evangelical subculture in a largely more secular state. that i started this project in

winnipeg, manitoba, which has the largest prosperity megachurch in canada. we are not supposed to have prosperity megachurch is, if you ask most people. it seems so very american. if you listen to preachers all over north america they will still say, like, "in the name of jesus." given the way they say to jesus, you could tell they had a southern preacher as a teacher. host: here is a matter that is worth 25 within dollars, allegedly, from saddleback, arizona. rick warren. e.u. > god often uses pain to get our attention. cs lewis said "god whispers to , us in our pleasure, but he shouts to us in our pain." he is going, "hello. do you think i just need you to live for yourself? that the whole purpose of life is for you to just live for you? no. you are made for so much more." god often uses pain to get our

attention and to prepare us for breakthrough. so if you are in pain right now, congratulations. host: do you believe that? guest: first of all, rick warren, i don't think is a prosperity preacher. he is largely southern baptist. in his church in california. host: he is in california, not in arizona? ok. guest: i think what he is getting to is the theology that most americans want to share which is that somehow pain is always progress. i don't believe that anymore. i really thought that life was a series of ladders and if i just kept trying and claiming, that it was going to lead to something -- trying and climbing, that it was going to lead to something. host: and you always had a lot of pain . guest:the pain just leveled me. part of it was coming to grips with me not being able to cure my own cancer and assuming that

i was always have the time i went with my family and being able to imagine the future for myself that i had expected. and so while i think all kinds of beautiful things can happen in our dark seasons, i think it is a beautiful lie to say that pain will always be in reward. host: here is a name certainly people my age will remember. he is still alive, 82 years old. this goes back to 1988 when he got himself in a little bit of trouble. let's watch. [video clip] >> i have sinned against you, my lord. [voice breaks] and i would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain. until it is in the seas of god's

forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me anymore. [tearfully] guest: yes, that apology, it defined in people's minds the caricature of the televangelist. host: jimmy swaggart. guest: jimmy swaggart. he was an incredible orator. assembly's oh, god pastor. host: still going. guest: yes, with his son donnie. he started off as a prosperity preacher, decided he felt it wasn't true anymore, which shows you the internal wrangling around pentecostalism and whether it was the same thing as prosperity gospel. which it isn't. there was internal division. he was by the time of his own , fall, involved in a very heated series of rivalries with other preachers. host: didn't he out another preacher for being with a

prostitute? guest: you know, there is an amazing book about ptl that just came out, by a professor, and it shows you the underbelly of that story in which so many of them were trying to sabotage the other. and then they all went down. host: he went down because the people he was against outed him. and he went on over several years to be with prostitutes. guest: yes, it ended up being mutual damnation. host: why do people go back to people like this? guest: you can see in the theology. christianity has its own theology which is that if you repent, you can be saved. people when they fall, they can immediately just apologize and make an about-face. these are really personal figures to people. if you watch "same person" that face for a long time, you feel like you know them. even when jim baker was being taken to prison, you had people

at the courthouse weeping and pleading for him. he was like family to them. host: this next man died in 2009, he was 74 years old. he may have been, you could tell me, the original prosperity minister. [video clip] >> to many religious people are taught to believe that they don't deserve anything. and some religious people even pray that prayer. oh, lord, i am not worthy. anything you feel you are not worthy off, you can't have. anything you feel you don't deserve and that you are not worthy of, you automatically cut yourself off from that good. guest: reverend ike. he was a very popular preacher in the 1960's and 1970's and through the 1980's. and it goes to show you how the language of prosperity can be incredibly empowering. he was talking to people who had been raised in the jim crow era

in which black americans were told they could never have enough, let alone more. so this thick strand of african-american prosperity preaching ended up being part of this very often emancipatory vocabulary of saying, god never asked you to be there with someone with their heel on your throat. that god can promise you more. you can see prosperity flashing among many communities that are often disenfranchised. host: let me ask you again how long you had the cancer? guest: a little over two years. host: what kind of treatment are you getting now? guest: i had a whole series of -- i just finished one course of treatment. host: what is it? guest: immunotherapy and chemotherapy. host: where is it being done? guest: at duke. it is actually three minutes from my office. i leave my office and i go and all of a sudden i am in a place where everyone has face masks.

it is a real about-face in my day. host: but for a while, you were going to atlanta? guest: yes. i went to atlanta for almost a year every wednesday. host: that was a trial? guest: it clinical trial. immunotherapy is really at the beginning stages of development and so those of us who qualify for trials are pretty desperate to get it. host: when you had an operation, what was it? guest: i had a few operations. host: the main one. guest: the first one was to remove a huge tumor from my colon. host: and has there been any shrinkage on the current tumors you have in the liver? guest: yes. that, and with everything, i think that is where we are with immunotherapy of the idea of a new category of incurable. which is that with so many things changing in science, the hope is always to get from one good outcome to the other. that is why i always try to

explain, i am not terminal, it means i am not necessarily going to die -- i mean, we all die -- but the hope is always to just try to find the next vine that will swing you over the deep and hope for the best. host: christopher hitchens, who died in 2011, had esophageal cancer. over that period, people kept saying, "will you believe in god now? because he was an atheist. we interviewed him a year before he died and this is what he had to say. >> very large number of people have asked me "does he change her attitude to the infinite, the eternal, the supernatural" and so forth. i said i don't see why it should. i've never thought of it as a particularly searching question. if i spent -- i spent a lot of my life deciding that there isn't any redemption. that there is no salvation. that there is no afterlife.

no supervising boss. if i was to tell you now have a malignancy in mice of fungus, that changes everything. you would think, i hope, that the main effect had been on my iq. [laughter] guest: he was always so clever. host: what about your attitude since you got cancer at a very young age, have you changed your thinking on anything related to religion? guest: i think i have. i have always considered myself a pretty jesus-y type. i think so much of this was wrapped up in me assuming that god was a part of this life and had his hands in this project i called life. the second i got very sick, i will admit it was a really spiritually -- is a really spiritually powerful time for me which is funny. i feel so uncomfortable.

you can hear me stuttering --, like, i am good at talking about people's faith. i am a historian. i am the calculated and careful observer. but when it comes to my staff, it was almost so intimate, i didn't want to tell people. i really felt the presence of god. i felt the love of other people. people pouring in. all the intense prayers. the second i got sick, my little community got together in the chapel and prayed like marathon runners for me throughout my whole surgery. part of it is reflecting back to me love and also just the sense of, the hope is that as you are preparing to die, i was having to make preparations that someone or something meets you there, and they certainly felt that way. host: it's one of the times you see some of these ministers challenged, this is back in the 1980's. it's about a man that lives in ohio by the name of ernest angley.

he is today 96 years old. tell us what you think of this. [video clip] >> why is it that one preacher can deal with so many people? he'll assume many. but others can't. how do you have that special knack that you can do that? >> i don't have a knack, sir. if you're going to talk like that i won't give you an interview. this is no knack. aren't you ashamed to throw around the word of god like that and call this a knack. don't you fear god? the bible says that god is the healer and jesus came and healed the sick. >> why can't all preachers? why can't all -- >> they could. what do they lack, do they have? why is it they can't do it? >> i fast. i pray and god answers prayer. god answers prayer. guest: you can see him pressing into, like, "what is the formula?" is it a prayer? are you anointed? is it a special place you go to? i mean, i've been encouraged to do all of those things so regularly. host: does god answer prayer? guest: yeah. i think often. and then sometimes not.

i think the question that the prosperity gospel raises is, is there a secret formula and can i find it somewhere? and the answer is no. does that bar us then from wonder and hope? i don't think so. host: recently pat robertson had a major stroke, although they say he will recover completely. he is 88 years old. but years ago back in 1985, you have probably studied this incident. let's see what you think of this. [video clip] >> at 1030 in the morning at the old monticello hotel which has now been demolished, i stood up in prayer and we rebuked the hurricane. this monster in the atlantic ocean, and commanded it in the new of jesus to turn around and go back where it came from. at 10:30, the forward progress of that hurricane stopped good like a great hand went out and stopped it. it's a true story. you can look at the record and see if you don't believe me. guest: wonderful arrogance. this year hubris of it.

you can see in my face whenever i watch something that. i have been in a million healing rallies. but of what i admire about them is they have gumption like nobody else. they really believe that they can turn away a hurricane. and i'm glad they try. the problem is, -- host: why have there been several hurricanes in virginia beach since? guest: intimately opens it up to, like, why can it work all the time? uniformity. what kind of nation then lies on those who fail. this is always the problem at prosperity preachers' funerals. unless they die at 96 or something, then there is always a bit of the bulletin that has two explain why a man of faith will pass away as people are scraping and calling for the meaning of it. i think it is an awful burden for the sufferer to bear. they can simply be a person to be loved, they have to be a problem to be explained. host: this happened after the

super bowl when the philadelphia eagles won the game. here is therefore back nick foles, and you'll see what he had to say. >> just another game, nick? >> just another game. unbelievable, all glory to god. he likes this mecca:. to be here with my daughter, my wife, my family, this duty, we are very blessed. host: reportedly he is going to be a preacher after he gets out of this with small business. "all glory to god." how do you explain that before the game starts, both sides pray? guest: the super bowl is on was the annual reminder to americans that somehow there is an intermediary between their prayers and god's answers. it is, this is a country that doesn't believe in luck. a country that thinks that all things are earned. so when you see, especially with athletes, it is like them sweat and bleed for a and only one side wins, it always highlights

the crucial next of moments in this, that there will always be winners and losers and we don't get to pick which. host: i want you to please tell us the story before we close, the story of the preacher's wife. waiting is the language of ecclesiastes and then you go into the story. would you please tell everyone? do you remember it? guest: no, tell me. host: it is the wife of the pastor and -- guest: yes, of course. i learned a lot about ritualized expectation when i went to these churches. the preacher's wife stands up in the middle of the service and says that we need to pray down the rain, and that if we pray , that the spiritual heavens will open and everything that has been asked for will come down. host: and so people start stomping and shouting and freezing god in hopes that everything they are saying will come true. so, a house, a car. for me at the time, it was a baby.

what it does is it carves out in you a hope for every good thing. that may be you are living under an open heaven. host: and she stood up in the church? guest: she did, she stomped her feet and kicked off her heels and asked us all to hope for more. host: are mennonites evangelicals? guest: some of them are. there are -- they are a little bit like the jewish faith, which is both a culture and religion. so there is a widespread inside mennonite culture. it can be both a -- are you a mennonite ethnic and a religious designation. a lot of them are evangelicals. host: the new york times, twice, big articles by you. how did that happen? guest: i tend to write privately. so at first when i got sick, i noticed the great irony of me being the scholar and the author of a book called "blessed" when

nothing in my life appeared to match that the elegy. i wanted to be the first person to point out that i wasn't super hashtag blessed. i wrote about the piece on what it feels like when you are a problem to be solved and people try to pour certainty a new pain. maybe you should try this. maybe you should pray this way. go see so-and-so and maybe you will get it fixed. the desire i had to want for more when i wasn't sure it was possible. anyway, i sent the article in. i found a wonderful editor who i adore and he gave it a front page of the sunday review. then i got thousands of letters about it saying, "i would actually really like you to be certain, and here is the solution." [laughs] so the point had been, please don't pour certainty on my pain, and then of course a zillion people did. host: and then you wrote again. guest: so i wrote this other

piece about, guys, i love you so much. here are kind of categories of responses to those in pain. there are many misers -- "at least you don't." and then there are problem solvers, "maybe you should try." "have you seen this documentary?" and then all are born of great love, but i would like to say like i am not on trial. host: two books that you need to know about by kate bullock. one of them is "blessed: a history of the american prosperity gospel," back in 2013. and her newest book, "everything happens for a reason" and "other lies i have loved." guest: thank you. thank you for having me. ♪

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