it truly a kind of wonders mentality that god is. >> so when you say thing, does it mean well if you follow this way? >> show. are surprisingly true. pentecostals material. face of the body was god's home. is one of the most kind of profoundly american things you

could say. you're not just an individual do-it-yourself bootstrap or. you and someone who can be a meditation of god's very presence. so the prosperity gospel took that to say this could be interpreted even more concretely. not just in your health, which has been a kind of historic christian. but also in your finances. they develop more and more vocabulary to o of christians think through how to build detailed in life is actually prove that god was there. >> is this uniquely american? >> i think in some ways it's a kind of indigenous american gospel. it's a rugged individualism. it is supernatural bootstraps. it has an incredibly high anthropology and there's no meaning kind of sense what people can do. there truly no nation it seems more confident in what they can accomplish than this one. >> who are some of the preachers of the prosperity gospel? do they call it that?

>> that such a tough question. some the preachers i would include as most popular are joe alstyne, td jakes, joyce meyer, creflo dollar, frederick price. really everyone -- avoiders a mega church in local sliver you'll find prosperity preacher but the trend is controversy. that was kind of the burden of writing this book is how to lump people in that would naturally resist that label. >> is some of those ministers participate in your book? >> they did. i managed to visit a quarter of all of what i didn't fight as fs prosperity megachurch but i didn't put him represent the ministry from almost every major ministry. i went to every major conference. i was the annoying person pressed up against the glass at every conference hoping to get a glimpse of what was going on. >> what did you hear? what kind of message are these churches preaching? >> i think what surprised me the most was that it wasn't so much

about money. i thought national the prosperity gospel was wonderful surprising claims. sure if this is a gospel about money. what if it was people didn't talk about money nearly as much as i expected. the kind of excitement that they had was that every special detail was given god's attention. not just got in every empty parking space sort of mentality, but that their budgets, their families, their marriages, their happiness, their promotions, every little part of the life were worthy of spiritual attention. attention. >> and what does that have to do with prosperity? is it more than just wealth prosperity? >> so they will call it a whole life prosperity. i guess, i mean in theological terms we would say something like critics will call it the more overly realized eschatology many will see more of the presence of the kingdom of god

here on earth when traditional christians have thought most of the good stuff happens after we die. >> isn't in the bible, and i'm paraphrasing, would you give god gives back tenfold? >> so the search for the numbers is a tricky one. most of the hard numbers people will get from teasing parts of covenant theology. there are a few concrete numbers, three, seven, 100 but people are looking, the desire for numbers is most a desire to look for spiritual formula. what is it working we find the key that unlocks god to thank? so where there is a number in revelation, some of the apocalyptic literature in the old testament, that they will try to find formulas. but for the most part prosperity preachers have tried shy away from numbers in part because there's a greater sense that though the theology says -- we

actually do live in a relatively concrete financial universe and we can't promise everyone. >> why mega church's? >> i guess megachurches were easy because there was already a database of the 1600 or so megachurches that exist in the country. what i could do that was to go through every single one in every single website and pull them out and make my own list based on shared record, shared institutional connection. they can go to the same conferences, get accredited on ray doctor it's from the same schools. i figured then if you look and talk and walk like a prosperity document in this case, then i can lump them together on my own. >> did the megachurches become megachurches because they preach this prosperity gospel? >> excellent question. the relationship between fundraising and a large church, they seem to be kind of natural allies in many senses.

we will sometimes find a smaller church who takes on a prosperity theology and then so becomes a prosperity megachurch. but we shouldn't confuse megachurches and the prosperity gospel. there are 1600 or so megachurches in the country, and only a minority of them are prosperity mega churches. what's most unusual is they really dominate the upper tier of churches. so the biggest of big churches in the country preach a message and their influence is enormous. they can be thought of as a top of a feudal pyramid with all sorts of people under them that preach a similar message that look to them for inspiration. so the message spreads far been what you might expect a local preacher to do. >> lakewood church, job posting, self-reported 38,000 average weekly attendance. houston, texas, world changers ministries, creflo dollar, 30,000, college park georgia. the potters house td jakes

30,000, dallas, texas. are those prosperity gospel churches, doctor? >> absolutely. any of the ones, the kind of hopeful shorthand to where to find these churches are all prosperity churches and most of them will make the top 50 of the largest churches in the country. >> all tax-exempt? >> are entrepreneurial in spirit. the churches themselves are tax-exempt but with the typically do is they split the church into for-profit and proper when. td jakes has td jakes church enterprises. is a great example because he's a producer, probably a writer, a film writer and he and has all kinds of thinkers in different pots. >> that's the taxable side? >> that's right. they will say don't look at me necessarily as an example of someone who's taking money out of the coffers. most of my money comes from this other wing.

that is sometimes true for some and its luster for others. they don't really have to justify how much money they make in part because of the theological structure of the movie. all they have to say is i did it and i can she had to do it. more is more and i can show you the way. >> somebody who spoke at president w. bush inaugural, kirby john caldwell, windsor village, united methodist church, 14,000, a houston, texas,. >> one of the big surprises of the prosperity movement and want to be so long to write this book in order to demonstrate how widespread it is we have to take into account not just the stereotypical prosperity mega churches which are nondenominational, but some of the denominational lines that almost every major american denomination we find at least one prosperity megachurch. said that could include the united methodists, adorable as they are, the disciples of

christ, which is shy of a presbyterian mega church i'm sure somewhere out there. >> we do this prosperity gospel -- first of all, is there a political philosophy to these churches? do they talk politics? >> they do but it's a subset. we can think of them as having different niches. you are the spiritual warfare guy. you are the prophecy lady. you're the politics duty. for this will find a john haiti, a subset that will overlap with the christian right. for the most part they don't need to talk nuts and bolts with politics because god has offered them an end run around the system that oppressed them. what they need to do is get serious about their faith and doors will open. >> went to this prosperity gospel start? >> i think the beginning of the message as the postwar revival in the 1950s. these are pentecostals,

independence tense revivalist. these are the guys who show up in small towns, put a giant canvas cathedrals and attract hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. in the postwar year, these have traditionally been healers. summerlike oral roberts with anointing in his right hand. these are usually people who people came to be healed of all kinds of diseases. after world war ii we found a number of diseases that need to be healed in this way really were mass vaccinations. there's a sense that those are quite the things we need from preachers. so there's a developing confidence that they have come a new vocabulary -- okay go this brings up a miraculous billfold that multiplied or seed face is a word that comes into terms. it's the idea that your money is not just a concrete thing. it's a representation of what could happen. you have to sew it into

hopefully my ministry and because this is good soil, then it would multiply back to you. this is all very different in language of typing which was quite discreet and concrete. tidy is 10% of which all return. seed face asked people to give in order to receive. money multiplied in an unseen spiritual universe. this was obsolete innovative, theologically speaking. >> jim and tammy faye bakker. with a prosperity gospel ministers of? >> they were and they were the perfect embodiment of the. i like writing about the fact that they started a kind of christian wonderland instead of a church. they had a very see what god can do playful attitude. tammy faye was off two seconds away from bursting into song at all times. he always had a powder blue suit and a heavy gold watch and the kind of carnival like atmosphere in their own life and marriage. and so because of that they were

pragmatic. they were so fun to watch. a kind of had a who knows, who opens the door spirit just about god brings in. >> who do these ministers appealed to? >> we know there's very little good data on the. there's pretty meager resources for us to draw on. we do know that in the '80s, those kind of televangelists eyed jim and tammy faye bakker were very attracted to this oversight, the elderly, the adult viewers. but now we can see with the megachurch phenomenon this really is a young middle-class phenomenon. everyone thinks this is the sad, indigent poor, reaching for the last penny to drop into the copper. this is the kind of thing that an aspirational middle-class audience is going to see weekly in order to practical resources to have to think about the jobs and the marriage is and the

parroting as spiritual. >> white, black, latino? >> sure. right now i'm doing nothing on latino prosperity mega churches and its overwhelming how many have started in the last 10 years. the latina megachurches are the new fresh face on the scene. before they been largely constrained to immigrant resources, like small churches with you means but now there like everybody else, have the own tv shows, their own media platforms. one of the offshoots, for example, of robert schuller's church, the crisp the -- the christian cathedral, that was -- and i never church with the river i feel like you have a prosperity gospel. the latino smaller mega church that became an offshoot is called fever day. favor a church is a latino prosperity offshoot and they have a whole post, at least

between three and 5000 weekly attenders to a church like that. >> you teach religion at duke. what dwhat you teach? >> i teach american religious history which is quietly -- slightly weird. >> what is your religious background? >> i come from a non--- non-denominational mennonite background. >> do you consider yourself a christian? >> i do. >> when you look at these mega churches, what appeals to you? >> i do find sometimes, i guess a sense of expectancy and possibility. such a departure from a lot of the mainline churches i go to where their expectancy is we'll write an excellent food program, but how robust are outrageous in terms of prison ministry. they're very concrete, very practical. i love the excitement that i love the enthusiasm. i love the intense spiritualizing of details. it gives dignity to every person in a way that really impressed

me. >> what doesn't appeal to you? >> i think i experience that sometimes just based on said when they visit these churches. when it's sitting near the choir i feel inspirational. their robes are beautiful. their hands are sweating. at such an optimistic beautiful thing. if i said new the wheelchair section i find that i sometimes struggle to make it to the services when you see people that are so sure that their faith has let them down, that their bodies are failing them, that they have a weekly experience of the own spiritual inadequacies because they are not yet healed or they are not yet rich. i want faith to be a place where people receive comfort, that we are told maybe but not quite yet. that's not always the message that they are getting. >> the students at the divinity school here at duke, do they admire, do they inspire to be mega church pastors of? >> are the most part they are

lovely methodists of a gentle variety. they are largely, they're stuck with the same kind of mainline problems everybody else is. mortgage churches, largely downtown that they can no longer afford. so they're struggling with on questions of prosperity gospel. what happens if they can't prove in their ministries that things will become bigger and better? what would he declined to look like and still a rhetoric of faithfulness? i think the real challenge. >> megachurches are growing, aren't they? >> you are. they are around crowded, around every urban metropolis. they are a wide open spiritual market, but they really appeal to a certain kind of preacher. you have to be wildly charismatic. project have a fabulous head of hair and you have to have an infectious sense that things always will get better. people are really going to attend a church where your kids

might not be a smart, your marriage might falter a little. americans want to hear that things are going to be better tomorrow and they will avoid the churches the challenge that disposition. >> to politicians, are they drawn to these large congregations all in one place of? >> absolutely. we seek any kind of battleground states show up whenever there's a series of megachurches in a battleground state. latina megachurches, for example, the florida are popular but it's a swing vote. they can become incredibly effective ways of mobilizing people and getting the message out. >> are there areas of the country where most big churches are aggregated? >> it's easier sometimes to do with the prosperity mega churches are not. vermont, for example, it has very few. the northeast is not fertile ground, neither is the mountain west whether our mormons or mountains. we typically find very few.

there's and a literary sin for you. >> why? >> i think it's in part because of demographics, urban excerpt population to really put churches like that at the crossroads of major highways. so where we find a big open spaces with major highways and a huge, sprawling population, albeit almost all sun belt cities, those will be fabulously fertile ground. also just places where people are on the move. places where hispanics come immigration is on the rise. that's a great, i could tell people right now where they should plant churches and it likely to the next five years but it's really about immigration. population density, major highways and the spirit of the lord stood here in north carolina near-term, any megachurches in this area? >> there are megachurches.

there's one prosperity megachurch in the area, world of newcomers i think. there's one from the 1980s. it was kind of an amazing story. one of the few that wasn't really urban. it was in a town that the church had more people than the town. they had the kind of jim and tammy faye feel. they have matching sparkly suits and the kind of exciting attitude. >> what's the difference between the mega church and prosperity megachurch? are they preaching different gospels? >> megachurches have the reputation for being non-denominational optimistic, things would get better, media savvy. but for the most part megachurches usually numbers wise, many if not most belong to the nominations and they're typically smoke the most

megachurches really are just barely getting that threshold, 2000, 2500. ross petty megachurches on the other hand, so i look for four things. i look for space, a sense that faith is not just hope or trust but it's a spiritual power that is released by believers t. it's that invisible thing that goes out into the universe and draws back blessings. so how do you know your faith is working? you look for health and wealth to those of the other two markers. a lot of pentecostal preachers that will preach health. the last is a victory that victory will put an eagle or a spinning globe in every logo but it's the thing that convinces people that things are just about to get better, keep eyes on horizon to a preach those four things, that would separate a prosperity megachurch from a church, average mega church. >> how important? >> extreme important. they are the primary litmus test

of whether the prosperity gospel is working to no one wants to see a sad man stand allowed balding at the pulpit. whether one is a beautiful blonde or at least voluminously haired wife stand beside him. it's also a great way to divide the ministry into nietzsche's. the women can do women and children at the mint can do the spiritual heavy lifting of the main prosperity were. that became popular in the 1980s and has become a major trend in almost all churches today. >> do they ministers of these prosperity mega churches flaunt their wealth to? >> absolutely. they will do in more or less tasteful ways. iv hilliard recently had some flak for advertising what his helicopter needed new plates asking people to donate. i think the number was $52 per person in order to supply more for the ministry.

that struck people as slightly too much. but you have to really -- that just goes to show just how far they can go in order to demonstrate that their lives are really marked by god,'s favor. >> so kate bowler, sunday morning jolt alstyne is on for half an hour. just his sermon. what is a full service likes because it will start with some very uplifting music by a grammy awards winning singer-songwriter. you'll have some gentle fog that makes the holy spirit come down. it will have at least 20 people greedy before you make your way from the concrete parking bays into the main sanctuary in a gorgeous, enormous building. these buildings are designed to be the most beautiful places that people are every week. truth and beauty has always been the main appeal of the christian method. they're really going for beauty. >> how long does the whole service last?

>> so you will have about 20 minutes or so of music, and then a meanie tagging service equally done by victoria to ask people to give with particular understanding of you did and god reward you with a more. in the buckets come out in the buckets go away, and then joel osteen will come on and he will preach for less than half an hour. then a spiritual song roundup come and that's the service. they are really quite efficient. i went to their good friday service. it was in part because i couldn't find any other good friday service at a prosperity megachurch in the houston area, which initially surprised me. if you think it through, they don't need good friday so much as they need easter. so good friday, what would a good friday service look like at lakewood? a joyfully happy good friday.

they had kind of a living view -- a living zoo. by the third song jesus had been come have died but then was resurrected quite early on in the service which i think shows how quickly they want to rush in to the end. they really want to rush to the good stuff to show that jesus is all the terrible work that i can get the kind of blessing god wants to shower on you. >> a lot of the mainline churches, some of the missions, outreach, food banks, shopping, et cetera. to the prosperity churches have those programs as well as? >> they do. here we can see i think a spectrum of approaches. a hard prosperity is a very instantaneous view of the relationship between faith and reward. you have faith, you will find yourself almost instantaneously healed and the coffers will begin to be filled. a soft prosperity is going to have a more roundabout, gentler appraisal of how the relationship works between faith

and your own reward. i find with hard prosperity there's more of an emphasis on individual social services, bootstraps kind of -- so this will be rather than advocating, for example, for education reform, they will give every kid a school bag filled with school supplies. something catered towards individuals at a family level. the soft prosperity is a more open especially among black megachurches. a lot more open to housing, prison reform, a wider macro level structural kind of solution. though for the most part prosperity tilts away from structural solutions because god has already given you everything you need in order to solve these problems. >> what's been the reaction of some of the mega church members to your book, "blessed"? >> i think there's been, i hope that there's been some level of recognition that those are categories that they use and

hold dear. i think there will always be worried that anyone who's adding the word gospel, like prosperity gospel before the word is naturally being skeptical of it. but for the most part the criticism i've gotten is that i'm too nice. i would rather have that i think and have something that people didn't recognize spin who says you're too nice? >> most everyone. evangelicals are not thrilled with me. one called it dangerous for the people will read the book and accidentally convert. i just think it's the work of history. charity and schumer is our goal, and when we tried to present things in a way that people would recognize. >> are these churches not evangelical? >> well, the boundaries of pentecostal are quite porous. so we have some the kind of straddle the line between pentecostal and evangelical. but more and more are just

straight up evangelical. they wouldn't message on a spouse spiritual gifts as a main part of their theology. i think that's the new printer for the prosperity gospel. white evangelicalism looks so much like prosperity gospel optimism that it will find it very hard to distinguish itself. >> our prosperity churches considered at the intellectual by some? >> yes, i think they are. in part because they don't want to play by the same rules. they don't want to go to the same schools are subjected himself to the same kinds of i guess the circle debates of where they fall. we should think of them as naturally restorationist by impulse. people who forget their history in order to think about god's revelation is always falling a fresh but if you ask a prosperity preacher where does your message come from, a presbyterian, they will know. you ask a prosperity preacher and then say it came to me in a dream, or god spoke to me. so it's an array sure of

history. in that moment that allows them to all kinds of creativity. the sense of cost and open revelation led him to wonder if maybe each number of the trinity had their own trendy. well, that came up the night and it got awkward but the problem especially was he was in his book, good morning, holy spirit that all result millions of copies. in subsequent things he walked back but he immediately felt sort of like people were laughing at him and that it had just been kind of, what you want as a playful mode from other people thought of as not following the sort of rules of orthodoxy. >> any of these church ideas, prosperity gospel ideas been exported to canada, mexico, europe? >> absolutely. one of the genius elements is like when you asked me is this

an american phenomenon, it's hard to do because almost immediately it is in digitized. it takes on the local form an flavor almost there is a canadian version. it's a little more staid and less classy, a little dancing. but it is by vigorously adaptable. so a nigerian prosperity gospel, there's a ukrainian prosperity gospel. there's an english prosperity gospel and there's a filipino prosperity gospel that is largely catholic. it is wonderfully variable. >> kate bowler is a professor of religion here at duke at the divinity school. she is the author of this book, "blessed: a history of the american prosperity gospel" published by oxford. >> you are watching booktv, television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv.org.

>> you are watching booktv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. >> here's a great read to add to your summer reading list, c-span slaves the "sundays at eight," a collection of source of some the nation's most influential people over the past 25 years. >> i always knew there's a risk in the bohemian national and i decided to take it because whether it's an illusion or not, i don't think it is, it helped my concentration. it stop me being bored comes to other people being bored to some extent. it would keep me away, make the evening to go on longer, prolong the conversation, enhance the moment. if i was asked what i do it again, the answer is probably