join the discussion. >> billy graham who died last week at the age of 99 will lie in honor at the u.s. capitol this week for the public to pay respects. in memorial service picks place with paul ryan and mitch mcconnell. that happens wednesday and we have live coverage here on c-span. ♪ ♪ announcer: this week on q&a, announcer: this week on q&a, duke divinity school professor and prosperity gospel scholar kate bowler. professor bowler, who was diagnosed with incurable stage four cancer at age 35, discusses her memoir, "everything happens for a reason and other lies i have loved."

brian: kate bowler, where did you get the title "everything happens for a reason and other lies i have loved"? kate: i think it came to me because it is one of the boomerang theologies people give you when you're sick. everything will work out, or god is making away. i wrote the book to explore, maybe this was a lie a have loved all of along. the book was kind of a theological project where i dig into my you own secret, terrible beliefs. brian: how sick are you? kate: stage four cancer is not decorative. it is hard but i am doing better than a lot of people. i moved from the kind of crisis management to the more chronic part of this, i in which i live scam to scam.

thankfully, so far drugs and doctors and all kinds of things are making a way. brian: when did you find out you had cancer? kate: two years ago. there is no cancer and my family, so i did not imagine it was possible. one day i got a phone call that explained my mysterious stomach pain. brian: what kind of cancer? kate: colon cancer. as it turns out, it is increasingly common that young people are getting what was traditionally thought as an older person's illness. brian: in your book you say it is in the liver? kate: yes, it spread to my liver. i guess it does that often, and it did to mine. brian: what is magic cancer? kate: they give you a series of

horrible options when you have stage for cancer. it could do this, and we could do this. or it could be this other worse, horrible thing. there is something that is called a mismatch repair disorder where the cells replicate incorrectly. it could be genetic or not. if you have this 3% kind of cancer, then new immunotherapies are open. when i find out i had this new tiny little 3% kind of cancer, i declared it was the magic cancer because it was one of the only kind that opened me up for new treatment. brian: where you live? kate: i'm from durham, north carolina, but i am from canada. i'm a professor at divinity school. a professor of american i teach christianity. do-gooders of all kinds. pastors, nonprofit workers, people with hopeful thoughts as they stare at the horizon. it is a lovely place to work. brian: what do you teach? kate: survey courses.

puritans to mega-churches. then i do smaller seminars. i'm a specialist in modern christianity. for the past 10 years, i have been studying televangelists and peopleurches and just with beautiful hair. [laughter] brian: i want to show you a picture you have on your site of your husband and your son. how old is zach in that picture? kate: that is his baptism. we all grew up men at night. so he is wearing it to make it clear that he is being dedicated not baptized. that is so all the mennonites won't reject us. he is wearing that once he to onesie to maket it clear that he is being dedicated, not baptized. i think he was nine months or something.

brian: what is a mennonite? kate: they are a people who love to talk about their suffering. they came out with their leader and they moved largely communally through germany and russia. a whole lot of them to canada. they populated a lot of rural manitoba and ontario, indiana, nebraska, and kansas. different groups. they all have a really sick account of their own suffering. which is largely why they commit to doing a lot of things together. simplicity, passes of it some -- desire to ruin salads with jell-o. i have always enjoyed being said -- sad around mennonite people. they are wonderful to be sad around. brian: what kind of things do mennonites do that baptist or catholics do not? kate: they are most famous for their pacifism. my husbands father, for example was a pacifist.

so while my grandpa was flying bomber planes, his grandpa was in the mines. it is an entirely alternate history. their most famous for their pacifism, also for their anti-materialism. he usually cannot tell the difference anymore because they are often plain clothing like the rest of us. they look like every average capitalist but deep down they at least feel really guilty for the things they have. brian: how many are there in the world? take: i do not know. there's tremendous growth in rwanda, uganda. a lot of international growth. there are a lot of them in the plains of canada. i am not actually sure what the overall total is. brian: when you teach a duke, -- at duke, what kind of degrees are the people that you are teaching getting? kate: i think in the graduate program, some of them have phd's but most of them will get either a masters in religious studies or they will become a reverend and go off to inflict my views on people.

brian: why did you want to teach this? kate: i think i like the idea that ideas have traction and that we are beholden to communities of care. maybe that has become more important to me now that i have been living with my diagnoses. you realize you're giving people a worldview and then they have to go out and live in the hospitals, boardrooms, and living rooms holding people's hands during the most important moments of their lives. brian: during the process of finding your cancer, how many doctors did you see? kate: wow, i had a number of undiagnosed, entirely unrelated illnesses as it turns out. i saw about 100 of the last few years. then in that last stretch, maybe 15. brian: you had another illness before the cancer. what was that? kate: it ended up being 1000 more dramatic than it seemed. i lost the use of my arms for over one year. it turns out it was just some kind of very easy to fix nerve disorder related to having

overly lax joints. so boring. but when i had it, it was very dramatic. i found out i was like locked in bathrooms for too long because i could not turn the door handle all of a sudden. it made writing my last book almost a nightmare. aid oro have a human replicate research notes by reciting it into a computer. i often had a double arm cast on. a very dark,t as very comical time of my life. brian: when was your last book published? kate: 2013. it was the first historical account of this really widespread movement. it took me 10 years of obsessive research and stalking people to map the kind of contours of it. it was really hard to study at the time because nobody called

"prosperity preacher." so you cannot do like an easy survey. what all the prosperity preachers in the room please put up your hands? because it sounded so naturally insulting to assume they were not just preaching the gospel. brian: i want to ask you about this man. this is about a minute. this is a prosperity minister? if he has, have you talked to him? [video clip] >> i have a house, i have land. do my me bragging for just a moment? do you mind me bragging get? [applause] ngues]bn in times ♪ >> i do not have anything god did not give me. everything i have came from god. if you are my protege, if i want

a debt-free house i would so as sow a seed equal to one months mortgage payment. if i would sell a cd equal to my monthly mortgage. $3400. he said, i would have a debt-free house and 12 months. i did not see how that could be, but i got my debt-free house in eight months. [end video clip] kate: mike murdock. he is one of the most unrepentant of prosperity preachers. he does not mind talking about money all the time. so, if anyone is up to late, they have usually watched mike murdock on christian tv. famousind of a old-school prosperity preacher, when it was uncommon for pentecostals to talk about money. mike came along and talked about it all the time. and he sold like, seven secrets to seven kingdoms. he does a lot with spiritual numbers. you can see him running the

spiritual math for people. if you give me this much, god will reward you in this way. brian: based in texas. talks about a seed. kate: it was a new language. it was pioneered largely by oral roberts, who was handsome and charismatic founder of oral roberts university. he pioneered this language. this agricultural language. the idea is kind of genius in so far as it helps explain how money was supposed to work when you give it to someone else. the idea was, your donation is a seed and you have to planted in the ground. the ground being the righteous pastor. and then there is a time of waiting. oral roberts wrote his first book in 1963 called "the miracle of seed faith." it explains that every good believer is kind of like a spiritual farmer.

you have to learn how to live according to the seasons of sowing and reaping. and explains what happens when you give money and do not see a return. the answer is, it is still in the ground. you have to pray for the rain and the season to change that you can finally see the harvest. brian: how much of that do you believe? kate: none of that. yeah. but i think that is why i was trying to remain so open when i was doing this study. someone like mike murdock is like the caricature of that late 1980's televangelist who weeps in front of the camera and asks for donations on tv. i mean, he is the caricature. but so often, the people i met in the pews wanted very average things. if you even look at the little letters people used a write to pentecostal healers and early mike murdock's, they would write for things like a new washing machine or the nerve to go to a new sewing circle and make friends. self-esteem, tiny advances. all of the things that make life a little more bearable. that gave me a lot of compassion for the people who stay up late

watching mike. brian: next up is a man we knew years ago. he went to prison. his name is jim bakker. he was married to tammy faye bakker. she is dead. he is remarried to lori graham. let's watch this. we have a couple clips. i want you to explain how all of this works. [begin video clip] >> donald trump has been a cleared! declared! donald trump is president! >> this is a miracle not by man. you know, god called him to do it. i'm going to be bringing the prophets in. we are going to talk. those who prophesied and watched this, this is the hour of the

church in america again. [end video clip] brian: 70 years old. does television every day like this. what do you think of this? kate: i haven't seen this but it does not surprise me that a lot of his preaching is rooted in patriotism. there is a slice of the prosperity gospel where republicanism and a sense that the prosperity gospel of the both the individual and nation are connected and come together in someone like jim baker. he and tammy were the king and queen of 1980's televangelist television. they had the most-watched christian program. their theme park, heritage usa, was built right around the border of north carolina and south carolina. it was meant to be this expression of their jubilant more-than-enoughness.

they called everyone family. they really 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 a sexual and financial scandal that sent him to prison. weirdly enough, i met a number of people who he met in prison when i gave a talk at the prison where he had been held. the federal prison where he at been held. i was giving this history of prosperity gospel talk. normally i have to talk people into caring. a bunch of the guys in the back put up their hands. they said, we know jim. they had all kinds of stories. brian: did you interview him? near branson, missouri. kate: no. i never met him but would love to. he wrote a book called "i was wrong." saying that he repented of much of his press party the elegy. it as you can see, he is a

natural salesman. he went on largely to sell dehydrated food stuff to the elderly. he is right now. so people know, there are big buckets. if you keep your eye on the screen in the left-hand corner you can see, the more buckets you buy, the more money you pay. but it is a bargain, the more you buy. but again, this is jim bakker selling the buckets. [begin video clip] >> all of this food, we will extend a couple more days. because i just feel like we should. it is four months of food. you only need three of them. we give you for buckets. this food lasts 30 years on your shelf. and that is great in america. >> they are even waterproof. if you are in a flood and it gets wet, it is good. it is all shipped free. >> you are getting a lot of food. a lot of food. >> yeah.

>> it is for those grandkids. [end video clip] brian: all of that for $3700. what do you think of this? why do they do this? kate: the pragmatic reason is from day one, he was an amazing. a salesman. he said i could be anything, but i ended up selling the gospel. i have hundreds of hours of old ptl footage that i watched for the research of the book. it was fun. faye sings, myy son dances. it was a round-robin of different entertainers and speakers. it showed you how little they actually preached and how much it was this carnival family atmosphere. very often pitched toward the elderly. for him to go from a prosperity theology to a more scarcity model, where there is not enough. also give money to me. it shows how incredibly pragmatic and adaptable this preacher can be. brian: in your current stage four cancer, what we do not -- what would you not believe if

a minister says to you, this is the future. what would turn you off? kate: one thing i learned about pentecostals with their sense of wonderment. that god can do surprising things. i try to take that in the spirit of generosity, but so often it is incredibly prescriptive. like, if you give this donation here is this miracle oil. a lot of transactional as him. i get a lot of that stuff in the mail, still. brian: do you believe it? kate: no. brian: do they believe it themselves? kate: i think many of them do. but there are consummate salesmen among them. they were always really pragmatic and entrepreneurial.

for instance, even when they just had tents. they would travel around, these tent revivalists. when they were done with the tent, either because their crowds were too big or too small, they used to cut up the tent into tiny little squares and then sell the pieces, as if all of this virtual power had been absorbed into the fabric. it goes to show you that at every stage they are both promising something like a tactile reminder that people want. someone like me, when i got very sick, i wanted things i could touch and feel. a little reminder i was still myself. i can see why these very material things really catch on. brian: here is the president of the united states talking in 2015. [begin video clip] mr. trump: the great norman vincent peale was my pastor. the power of positive thinking. everybody has heard of him. peale.vincent i still remember his sermons. it was unbelievable. nobody wanted to leave. he would give a sermon, i'm , i still remember

his sermons. it was unbelievable. he would bring real-life situations, modern day situations into the sermon. you could listen to him all day long. [end video clip] brian: in your book, did you write about him? kate: the prosperity gospel a -- is abundant in different streams are you one of them was the pentecostal version we saw and people like mike murdock. pentecostal, they believe we are in a new air of science and wonders. it started in the early 1900s. it most often looked to healing. also, the gift of tongues, an unknown language. you will see people talking and what does not sound like intelligible words. brian: we heard mike murdock talked that way. yes, it is called glossolalia. in some versions, it is supposed

to be a translatable language, but most iterations it sounds like the land of syllables. he comes from what looks like mainline protestantism. he had a methodist background. yes, this was the theology of self-esteem. they are all borrowing from new thought. it said the mind was a spiritual incubator. whatever he can think and articulate will come true. like you are unleashing a spiritual force. and someone like donald trump, who latches onto a figure like norman vincent peale, that is what you see is a very respectable version. a version of what you say and confess backing you up. brian: let's watch. this is back in 1987. it is called the hour of power. it was at the crystal cathedral.

[begin video clip] >> what do you want to be? then, dedicated to jesus christ along with your whole life. and, don't doubt it. believe. 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. [end video clip] kate: yeah, i mean they really make visualization and intellectual process the theological infrastructure for how it works.

first self-esteem, doing this, their answer is you absorb it and such a way that you can unleash it into the world. so, norman vincent peale, he kind of develops it into other intellectual preachers like how robert schuller did and donald trump which stems from the prosperity gospel. and other famous preachers like -- brian: he said "do not doubt it." why not? kate: there is positive confession and negative confession. if you create a mental obstacle, then it will not come true. which means whatever bad things happen, you really just have to look a yourself to find out why it did not come to be. brian: have you ever met benny hinn? kate: i did. i went on a trip to many -- hinn. with 900ny

where folowers to walk jesus walked. brian: and he is also from israel? kate: yes. he is a little bit from canada, a little bit from israel and the states. brian: when you say 900 of his followers, is that the only 900 he has? kate: no. they go on these really big tours. traveling around israel. you pay a lot of money. what kind of person is financially investing in a faith healer, and what are their hopes for an experience like that? brian: why do you call him a faith healer? kate: his specialty is that if you believe enough, your body will reflect the glory of god and be restored. he also has a strong financial message, but he is most known for his faith healing? brian: do you believe in him?

kate: benny hinn, i do not have a lot of intellectual and theological affinity towards him. i have seen a lot of benny hinn. he is one of the pastors that i watched the most and is often the most dramatic. he is the one on youtube where he raises his hand and you will see 100 people fall over at the same time. his very dramatic approach is one that i found somewhat manipulative. brian: you will only see one person in this one. this was december 18, 2017. benny hinn. [begin video clip] ♪ >> i rebuke the cancer 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] [whispering] enny: complete the healing. it is really gone, right? there is no pain in your stomach? well then, that is real. [end video clip] kate: when i see something like that, i can only see it from her perspective. i have had a lot of people pray for me similarly and as a christian, believe christianity has a very long tradition of divine healing. so i certainly do not think it is not possible for god to heal people. it you can see how quickly he moved from praying for her, he has the anointed vessel of god and then his confidence in himself as that vehicle. then the idea that because she did not have pain in that moment that she is definitely healed. brian: have you ever seen one of

these where someone stood up and said, i still have pain right where i had it before. kate: yes. it was financial. it was a session where they were at this big- convention center -- it was one of his proteges, paul white. likethey said, we would donations for this and this and this, one person in the back started yelling, we do not have it! and there was this horrible silence and then laughter. the truth was, it was a financially exhausting time. the response was a 10-minute sermon be rating people for lack of faith. paula white was a spiritual protege of benny henn. and also td jakes, a famous african-american preacher in dallas. she is now most famous as donald trump's personal pastor. she has a large mega-church in florida called without walls.

she is a chipper preacher of more than enough. brian: have you met her? kate: no, but i have been to her church. i have seen her live for a few times. brian: was at when you are doing your research? kate: yes, that's right. brian: harris paula white, based in florida. [begin video clip] >> i want you to spend time in prayer, went you to spend time in his word. it is crucial because he says, do not come before me empty-handed. for your first offering, not the tithe. tithing is 1/10 of your income. it is the first fruit, not just any fruit. many of us bring one day, some bring one week.

some of us bring an entire months salary because we understand the principle of all first belongs to god. [end video clip] brian: who made up the 10% tithe? kate: there is a lot of arguments about whether it is 10%. spiritual math. what you see there with "first fruits" is categories that the prosperity gospel develops to ask for different kinds of donations. so the 10% does not just becomes a suggestion, it becomes mandatory. in some congregations, they even ask for believers financial records to make sure they're actually giving 10%. otherwise, the threat is in the curse.deem and other words, you are spiritually in danger if you're not fully giving. then the are our offerings that can be spontaneous and related to a speaker. if you have a guest speaker. seed faith. like we talked about with oral roberts. that language means you should

give in hopes that that person will be the reason it is returned back to you. first fruits, there is even pastors appreciation day when you are supposed to give a certain amount to celebrate the pastors anniversary at that church. there are just more and more categories where we need to give. reasons to give. brian: i have a friend to when the pastor goes on vacation, they passed the hat. when it is his birthday, they passed the hat. what is your reaction to that? if you are in a church like that, what would your reaction be? most people i interview really like seeing their pastor do well as an expression of who they are. that is how they demonstrate the spiritual principles at work. some of it ends up being really celebrated. pastors with jets, pastors with his center mercedes-benz out

front. the parkingwill put space of the pastor with the luxury car right in front with the vanity plates so everybody has to walk past it. they are certainly not hiding it. brian: what would your reaction be if he asked for another thousand dollars from you and you see him with a mercedes? one guy had two large mercedes outside his home. oral roberts. kate: i have an uncomfortable feeling about those displays in part because so often those churches have -- they are run like family businesses in which brothers and sisters are often board members. there has been a real push for financial transparency but it certainly makes it hearts because their argument is one that christians, parishioners

believe. we live in a spiritual universe that is more than enough and if god gives to them, god can give to me. brian: what does it mean, redeem the curse? she said that. white was talking about the imagination, densely the spiritual universe. that everything you are doing is not just for something but against something. someone like norman vincent peale did not really talk about that. he used a lot of psychological language. someone like paula white, very much into the pentecostal thought is always talking about supernatural forces against you. fight against to them. brian: the next man is well known.

he has a 17,000 square foot home. the home is worth about $10.5 million. looking at the web, he sees something like 52,000 people a week. he stands in front of. here he is, joel osteen. >> we installed large floodgates all around the building. last sunday morning during all of the rain, the waters came within a foot or two of breaching the walls on flooding the building once again. without those floodgates, we would not be inherent today. the waters started receding. the water started to recede late sunday maybe 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 people be atheir lives, it would whole different story. i am at peace with taking the

heat for being precautions, but i do not want to take the heat for being full us. clip]ideo brian: what do you think? kate: i do not know enough about the details to say whether he was appropriately cautious. it does raise the question of what a large prosperity church is for. part of the critique he got was, is his job to be the front line of charity? it is a real question for prosperity preachers when their entire theology says if i can do it, you can do it. it is heavily individualistic. in moments like that, as the pastor of the largest church in this country, he sets an international example. it does call into question what churches are for. historically they have been fundamentally social services. brian: in your opinion, why does

someone want to sit in a room with maybe 30,000 people to listen to a sermon like that? kate: he is easy to listen to. he tells adorable corny jokes. there is an atmosphere of positivity and celebration. he is very kind. it is easy to like him and want to be around like-minded people. the people who go there are often aspirational in some way. it works like that for all classes. for the poor, it is for an imagined, hoped-four life. for the middle class, it often explains what people already have. for the upper class, it gives them reasons to keep caring and also a justification of what they have. brian: he is based in houston, this next fellow is based in dallas. i will run the clip and then you can explain how he this into all of this.

]begin video clip >> of nelson mandela had not been mistreated, had not been ostracized, he would not have the passion to do what he does. if oprah winfrey is not gone through what she is gone through, she would not be so committed to making sure everybody finds the purpose and dream they have. i am telling you the what you think is working against you is absolutely working or you. -- i am telling you the pain you think is working against you is actually working for you. ]end video clip brian: pain. kate: td jakes is probably the most they must african-american prosperity teacher. so much of what he does as long similar lines about talking about self-esteem. a franchise he developed in the 1990's around healing sexual abuse of women in the church, it really brings that message out where your pain becomes your purpose. the worst thing can be the best thing.

it is these constant spiritual inversions that promise that within the course of human life, you really can have everything you hoped for. brian: is oprah religious or not? kate: i think so. yeah, it sure. brian: dishy fit into the religious world you are talking about? book the author of that "secret" that was so popular, which was another expression of that new thought idea where you can have what you conceive of. there is also that 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 certainly just an american belief as well. td jakes, these figures are loose because you are loose because you're never quite sure but they say he is worth about $18 million.

why is he worth that amount of money? kate: he has a film production company. he has been involved in music. --has a fully-or did fully-orbed series of for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. part of that springs out of this entrepreneurialism where i can have it and so you can. i think there is a lot of controversy over the tax-exempt status. especially for personages is. homes that ministers live in. it is hard. i think it is becoming more and more of an ethical question because churches are increasingly's went between the very large and the very small. the average church only has about 70 people in it, including kids. but most people in the country go to these top-heavy churches, which is to say they are well-resource churches.

what is tax-exempt status for some pastors, is also what helps some churches stay financially afloat. brian: you lived in north carolina. almost all of these people are from the south. kate: they are. from the sun belt. that is a great question. part of it has to do with these are suburban churches. it churches need land. they are slightly on the outskirts of cities. really sprawling. i am giving you the hand gesture of the sun belt right now. mostly l.a., that wide circle. to do with urban fall and partly with migration patterns. brian: are they more religious in the south than in the north? kate: sometimes it surprises you. prosperity lot of

churches around seattle. i started this project in winnipeg, manitoba. they have the largest prosperity population. we are canadian. we are not supposed to have austerity mega-churches, if you ask many people. that is supposed to be american. preachers will say in the name of jesus. the way they say jesus, you can tell they had a southern preacher for a teacher. brian: here is rick warren. [begin video clip] >> i do not know if he figured this out or not, but god often uses pain to get our attention. god whispers to us and our pleasure but shouts to us in our pain. hello? do you think i made you to live for yourself? no, you are made for so much more. god often uses pain to get our attention. he uses pain to prepare us for a breakthrough.

if you are in pain right now, congratulations. [end video clip] kate: i do not think rick worn as a prosperity preacher. he is largely southern baptist. in his church in california, it is a largely evangelical church. saddleback church. at,ink what he is getting too, is the theology that most americans want to share which is that somehow pain is always progress. i do not believe that anymore. i mean, think i really thought that life was a series of letters and if i just kept climbing it would always lead to something. brian: because you have had a lot of pain. me.: the pain just leveled part of it was coming to grips with me not being able to care my on cancer and a sin that i

will always have the time i want with my family and be able to imagine the future for myself that i had expected. 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 rewarded. ofan: here's an end at some the people my age will remember. he is still alive. he is 82 years old. this can is back to 1988, when he got himself in a little trouble. let's watch. [begin video clip] >> i have sinned against you, my lord. 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. ]end video clip kate: that apology, it defined in people's minds the caricature of the televangelist. jim preschool haggart -- jimmy swaggart. assembly of god pastor. prosperityoff as a preacher and decided it was not true anymore. the internal wrangling. whether or not it was the same thing as prosperity gospel. that was the genesis of internal division. he was involved in a very heated series of rivalries with other preachers. brian: it didn't he he out

another preacher for being with a prostitute? kate: there is a book about ptl aat just came out by professor and it shows you this incredible underbelly of that story in which so many of them were trying to sabotage the other. and they all went down. ryan: he went down because the people he was against out at him. and he went on for several years to be with prostitute. kate: it ended up being mutual dam nation. -- mutual damnation. i think you can see it in the apology. christianity has it in its theology that when people fall, they can repent and be saved. when people fall, they can immediately apologize and about-face. these are personal figures to people. you feel like you know them. even when jim bakker was in prison, you had people at the

courthouse weeping and pleading for him. he was like family to them. brian: this man died in 1979, he was like 97-years-old at the time. he might have been the original prosperity minister. ]begin video clip >> how many religious people are taught to believe that they do not deserve anything? oh lord, i know i am not worthy. anything you do not feel you are worthy of, you cannot have. anything you feel you do not deserve you are not worthy of, you cut yourself off from that good. [end video clip] kate: reverend ike. he was a very popular preacher in the 1960's and 1970's, and then through the 1980's. it goes to show you how the

language of prosperity can be incredibly empowering. he was talking to people who had been raised in an era where they were told they can never have enough, let alone more. this fixed strand of african-american prosperity preaching ended up being part of this vocabulary of saying god never asked you to be there with someone with their heel on your throat. that god can promise you more and you can see prosperity flourishing among the many communities that are often disenfranchised. brian: let me ask you again how long you had the cancer. what kind of treatment are you getting now? kate: a little over two years. i had a whole series. i finished one course of treatment. i'm in chemotherapy. brian: where is it being done? kate: now it is being done at duke. it is about three minutes from my office.

i go and everybody has facemasks. it is a real about-face in my day. brian: for a while, you are going to atlanta. kate: yes, every wednesday. it was a trial. those of us to qualify for trials are desperate to get it. brian: when you had an operation, what was it? kate: i had a few operations. the first one was to remove a huge tumor from my colon. brian: has there been any shrinkage? kate: yes. with everything, i mean i think that is where we are with immunotherapy. the idea of a new category of incurable. with so many things changing in science, the hope is to get from one good outcome to the other. i always try to explain that i am not terminal. it means i am not necessarily

going to die right away. i mean, we all died. at the hope is always to like try to find the next vine that will swing me over the deep end back. brian: this man who died in 2011 allesophageal cancer and through that time, people kept saying will you believe in god now because he was an atheist. we interviewed him a year before he died and here is what he said. [begin video clip] >> a lot of people ask me, doesn't it change your mind about and the net, eternal. i said, i do not see why it should. i spent a lot of my life deciding that there is not any redemption, there's no salvation.

that there is no afterlife, no supervising force. if i was to tell you, well now i have got a malignancy in my ex off a guess and that changes everything, you would think the main effect had been on my iq. [laughter] kate: he is always so clever. brian: what about your attitude? have you changed your thinking? kate: i think i have. i always considered myself a jesus-y type. so much of it was wrapped up in the assuming that god was a part of this enhancement project i was on. the second i got sick, i will admit it was a really spiritually powerful time for me. which is funny.

i feel so uncomfortable. you can hear me stuttering. like, i am good about talking about other people's faith. i am a careful observer. but it when it comes to my own stuff, it is so intimate i did not want to tell people. i really felt the presence of god. i felt the love of other people. people pouring in, the intense prayers. i mean, the second i got sick right whole community got together in a chaplain prayed like marathon runners farming me. like handing it off all throughout my surgery. part of it was reflecting back to me love and also the sense that like, my hope is that as i was preparing to die that i was having to make reparations, that someone or something meets you there. i certainly felt that way. ryan: this is one of the times you see a minister challenged. this was back in the 1980's. a man in ohio named ernest

ainsley. he is today 96-years-old. tell me what you think of this. ]begin video clip >> how you get that special knack that you can do that? >> i do not have a knack. this is no knack. don't you fear god? the bible says that god is the healer. and that jesus came and healed. the bible said they could. the bible said -- >> why can't you do it? >> god answers prayer, man. god answers prayer. i fast, pray and god answers prayer. [end video clip] kate: you can see him pressing in. is it a prayer? are you anointed? is it a special place you go to? brian: does god answer prayer? kate: i think often. sometimes, not. the question is that the prosperity gospel raises is, is

there a secret formula and can i find it somewhere? i think the answer is no. but does that barbarous than from wondering and hope? i do not think so. brian: recently pat robertson had a major stroke although they say he will completely recover from it. he is 88 years old. it you probably studied this incident. what do you think of this? ]begin video clip 200 plusthat group of people in prayer. we rebuked the hurricane, this monster in the atlantic ocean and commanded it in the name of jesus to turn around and go backward came from. the promise of that hurricane stopped. you can look at the records if you did not believe me. ]end video clip

kate: it is a wonderful arrogance. the hubris of it, i sort of love it. you can see my face when a much something like that. they have gumption like nobody else. they really believe they can turn around a hurricane. i'm glad they tried. the problem is -- >> why have there been several hurricanes on virginia beach sense? kate: it immediately opens itself up to, that one happen all the time. uniformity. the other thing is, what condemnation then lies on those who fail? this is always a problem that prosperity preachers funerals. unless they die at six-years-old or something, there is always a little bit of a bulletin that has to explain why a man of faith would pass away and people for theaming and crying meaning of it. i think that is an awful burden to bear. that they have to be a problem to be explained.

happened after the super bowl when the philadelphia eagles won the game. here is their quarterback nick foles. you will see what he had to say. [begin video clip] >> just another game, right? >> just another game. unbelievable. all the glory to god. to be here with my daughter, my wife, my family and teammates, the city. we are very blessed. clip]ideo reportedly: -- brian: reportedly, he is going to be a preacher after he gets out of the football business. all glory to god. before the game starts, both sides pray. kate: the super bowl is the annual reminder. this is a country that does not believe in luck. all things are earned. you see with athletes come with a sly and bleed for a goal and

ofyou see with athletes, all them sweat and bleed for a goal and only one side wins. there will always be winners and losers. it is a tight wedge. brian: i want you to tell this story of the preacher's wife. the language of ecclesiastes. will you please tell the story? kate: sure. brian: please tell that one. do you remember it? it is the wife and the pastor. kate: of course. i learned a lot about the kind of ritualized expectation. the preacher's wife stands up in the middle of the service and says, we need to pray down the rain. the spiritual heavens will open and everything asked for will come down. stomping, shouting, praising god in hopes that everything they are praying comes true. a house, a car.

for me at the time, it was a baby. what it does is, it carves out a hope for every good thing that we are living under an open heaven. she stopped her feet, kicked off her heels and asked us all to hope for more. brian: mennonite, are they evangelicals? kate: some of them are. yeah, they are kind of a -- they are a little like the jewish faith. but the culture and a religion. it has a wide spread inside mennonite culture. mennonite both ethnic and religious. but a lot of them are evangelical. brian: the new york times with two big articles about you. how did that happen about your situation? kate: i tend to write very privately. when i first got sick, i noticed

the great irony of me being a scholar and the author of a book called "blessed." nothing in my life seemed to match that theology. so, i wanted to be the first person to point out that i was not super #blessed. people start to poor certainty on your pain. maybe you should try this, maybe if you prayed in this way or go see so-and-so, he will fix this. the desire i had to want for more, when i was not sure was possible. so i sent that article it in a and found a wonderful editor who i adore. a front page of the sunday review. then i got thousands of letters here's theying, no, solution. the only point i had was do not pour certainty on my pain.

but of course, billions of people did. so i said, guys, i love you so much. here are categories of responses to those in pain. there are minimizer's. i would like to say, i am not on trial. brian: 10 books you need to know about by kate bowler. one of them is "blessed." and her newest book "everything happens for a reason and other lies i have loved." kate bowl or has been our guest. thank you. kate: thank you. what a treat. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.

visit ncicap.org] announcer: for free transcripts or to give his show comments about this program, visit us at q&a.org. q&a programs are also available as c-span podcasts. if you like this q&a with kate bowl or, here are some others you might enjoy. christopher hitchens, who spoke with the spec in 2011 about his career and life about being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. and discussing a book "the ."esidents club and francis collins talking about the genome project and how it is important to medical research. you can find these online at c-span.org. our livelook at coverage today on c-span. the house is back at noon for

general speeches, legislative business at 2:00. and, a bill to help trauma centers and another that would allow indian tribes to develop their own amber alert system for child recovery. and in the senate is back for the annual reading of george washington's farewell address and then senators consider the nomination of elizabeth branch to be u.s. circuit judge for the 11th circuit with a procedural vote set to follow at 5:30. in a look at budgets. in the day, deputy attorney general rudd rosenstein talks about priorities for federal law enforcement. round table. body >> coming up on today's talkingon journal, about today's supreme court oral argument the challenges whether unions can collect