england, one of the staging points for the invasion of france. wednesday afternoon the president will meet with the irish prime minister. the president is in france on thursday attending a d-day ceremony in normandy and will meet with the french president. the president returns to washington, d.c., on friday. kate boller pan, discuss hers memoir. and the house is back at :00 eastern working on a disaster aid package today. live house coverage here on c-span.

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 ou when you're sick. everything will work out, or god is making away. i wrote the book to explore, maybe this was a lie i loved all 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, 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.

35. there is no cancer in my family. i just did not imagine it was possible. one day i got a phone call that explained my mysterious stomach pain. and i realized i was in really deep. brian: what kind of cancer? kate: colon cancer. i'm not very specific about that because i didn't want people imagining me and my colon for the rest of my life. 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. >> 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.

immediate death sentence. there is something that is called a mismatch repair disorder where the cells replicated incorrectly. it could be genetic or not. if you have this 3% kind of cancer, then new immunotherapies are open. when i found 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 anada. brian: what do you do in durham, north carolina? 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 american christianity.

for the past 10 years, i have been studying televangelists and mega-churches and just people 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's his baby dedication. we grew up me mennonites. t-shirt. an i heart 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 onesie to make 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. hey came out with their leader in the 1700's, 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 things together. simplicity, pacifism, the desire to ruin salads with jell-o. i've always gone to a mennonite church, and i found they are my very favorite people to be wonderfully sad around because they almost kind of expect it. brian: what kind of things do mennonites do that baptists or catholics don't? kate: they are most famous for their pacifism. my husband's grandpa was a consciencious objector in world war two. my grandpa was flying bomber planes, his grandpa was in the mines. it is an entirely alternate history. they are most famous for their pacifism, also for their anti-materialism.

that's partly why it was -- you usually can't tell the difference between them because they are often plain clothes 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 at duke, what kind of degrees are the people that you are teaching getting? kate: i teach 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 other 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. i think that's become more and more important now that i've been living with my diagnosis. 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 over 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 times 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 first book lmost a nightmare. i had to have a double arm cast at a human crusade. tried to replicate research notes by reciting it into a computer. i often had a double arm cast on. i look at that as a very dark, very comical time of my life. brian: when was your last book published? ate: 2013. "blessed" his think of the prosperity gospel. 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 themselves a "prosperity preacher." so you cannot do like an easy survey. will 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. is he a prosperity minister, and if he is, have you talked to him? [video clip] >> i got the money. i got land, i got houses. i got about -- do you mind me bragging for just a moment? do you mind me bragging a bit? [applause] [speaking in tongues] >> i do not have anything god did not give me. everything i have came from god. if you're my protege, if i wanted a debt-free house i would do what i did. i sowed a seed equal to one month's payment. a preacherer said if i sowed a

seed equal to my monthly house moat, mortgage, it was $3,400, he said i would have a debt free house in 12 months. i didn't see how that could be. i got the my debt free house in eight months. 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. he is kind of a famous 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 really pioneered 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 plant it 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 it 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 so 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 of clips. i want you to explain how all of this works. >> donald trump has been a declared! donald trump is president! >> this was 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. brian: 78 years old. still active. 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 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 televangelism. they had the most-watched christian program. heir theme park, heritage usa, that 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. you could slide down the waterside and watch a live taping. in their living room, come on down. 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 both a sexual and financial scandal that sent him to prison. weirdly enough, i met a number of people that he met in prison when i gave a talk at the prison here he had been held. i was giving the history of prosperity talk. i unusually have to talk people into caring. a lot of the bunch of guys in the back said we knew 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 prosperity theology. as you can see, he is a natural salesman. he went on largely to sell dehydrated food stuff to the elderly.

brian: there 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. [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. to make a year of food. we give you four 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. 10,043 servings. a lot of food. >> yeah. >> it is for those grandkids. 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 salesman. he said i could be anything, but i ended up selling the gospel. if you watch, i actually have hundreds and hundreds of hours of old "p.t.l." footage that i watched the research of the book. it was fun. every time tammy faye sings, my 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 there is more than enough, just donate to me, to more of a 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 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 is their sense of wonderment. and 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. like, if you give this donation here is this miracle oil. a lot of transactionallism. 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. the earliest ones were 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 spiritual 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. [video clip]mr. trump: the great norman vincent peale was my pastor. the power of positive thinking. everybody has heard of him. norman vincent peale. he was so great. he would give a sermon. you would never want to leave. sometimes we have sermons, and every once in a while we think with leaving a little early, right, even though we're christian. he would give a sermon, i'm telling you, 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. brian: in your book, did you write about him? kate: the prosperity gospel evolved in different streams. one of them was the pentecostal version that we saw, people like ike murdock. brian: define pentecostal. kate: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. kate: 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. they believe it's a spiritual heavenly tongue that's given to them to communicate with god.

brian: norman vincent peal? kate:he comes from what looks like mainline protestantism. he had a methodist background. plus this theology of self-esteem. they are all borrowing from new thought. it said the mind was a spiritual incubator. whatever you can can 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. brian: let's watch. his is back in 1987. it is called the hour of power. it was at the crystal cathedral. [video clip]>> what do you want to be? then, dedicate it to jesus

christ along with your whole ife. 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. kate: yeah, i mean they really make visualization and mental processes the kind of theological infrastructure for how it works. how is it then, what is it different than just having good self-esteem and doing this? their answer is you absorb it in such a way you can can unloosh it into the world.

-- you can unleash it into the world. so, norman vincent peale, he kind of brands it into this positive thinking, and into other intellectual preachers like how robert schuller did and donald trump who becomes the first presidential candidate whose only religious biology stems from the prosperity gospel. brian: he said "do not doubt it." why not? kate: there is positive confession and negative confession. the idea, if you doubt it, if you create a mental obstacle, then it will not come true. which means, whenever 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: yes, i did. i went on a trip to israel with benny hinn with 900 of his followers to walk where 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.

he has complicated biography. brian: when you say 900 of his followers, is that the only 900 he has? kate: no. they go on these really big tours. you go with a thousand other people in giant tour buses and travel around israel. you pay a lot of money. that's partly why i was interested. 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 the idea 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? katie: benny hinn is not someone i have a lot of intellectual and theological affinity towards. 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 anipulative. brian: you will only see one person in this one. this was december 18, 2017. benny hinn. [video clip]>> i rebuke the cancer in the ighty 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 beating]

benny: complete the healing. it is really gone, right? there is no pain in your stomach? well then, that is real. 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, i 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. but 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 for financial healing.

it was during the recession and it was at this big convention center and it was one of hinn's proteges. t was paula white. when they said, we would like 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 laughter. the truth was, it was a financially exhausting time. the response was a 10-minute sermon berating people for lack of faith. our next clip happens to be paula white, which i know you didn't know. who is she? >> paula white was a spiritual protege of benny hinn. she has a large church in florida called church without calls. -- walls. she is a 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: here is paula white, based in florida. [video clip]>> i want you to spend time in prayer, i want 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's the first 10th, not just any 10th. the first fruit is the whole of it. many of us bring one day, some bring one week. some of us bring an entire month's salary because we understand the principle of all irsts belong to god. brian: who made up the 10% tithe? ate: there is a lot of

arcment about spiritual math whether it's 10%. 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 become 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 order to redeem the curse. the idea that you're in spiritual danger if you're not fully giving. then there are seed faith offerings that can be spontaneous and related o a speaker. brian: seed faith. kate: seed faith like we talk about before 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 pastor's anniversary at that hurch. there are just more and more categories where we need to -- with 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 pass the hat. what is your reaction to that? if you are in a church like that, what would your reaction be? kate: weirdly enough, most people i interviewed really like seeing their pastor do well as an expression of who they are. look how well he lives. that's 40u67 he demonstrates the spiritual principles at work. the argument is if it works for him, it can work for me. some of it ends up being really celebrated. pastors with jets, pastors with his mercedes-benz out front. some people will put the parking space of the pastor with the luxury car right in front with the vanity plate 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? i remember oral roberts, i was down there one time doing a story and he had two large mercedes outside his home. 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 hard because their argument is one that 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? kate: there may have been a very -- brian: she said that. kate: paula white was talking about the imagination, the densely 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 spoke more about self-esteem. he used a lot of psychological language. someone like paula white, very much into the pentecostal stream of prosperity, will sheik a lot about supernatural forces always work against you and you using god's principles to counter them. brian: the next man is well known. he has a 17,000 square foot home. the home is worth about $10.5 million. he has a 17,000 square foot home. home's 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. [video clip] >> 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 and flooding the building once again. without those floodgates, we would not be in here today. the waters started receding. 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 lost their lives, it would be a whole different story. i am at peace with taking the heat for being pre-cautious but i do not want to take the heat

for being feel in. -- foolish. brian: what do you think? kate: i do not know enough about he 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 national 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 by all accounts 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-for 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 for 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 fits into all of this. [video clip]>> if nelson mandela had not been mistreated, had not been ostracized, he would not have the passion to do what he does.

if oprah winfrey had not gone through what she has gone through, she would not be so committed to making sure everybody finds the purpose and dream they have. i am telling you the pain you think is working against you is actually working for you. brian: pain. kate: td jakes is probably the most famous african-american prosperity preacher. so much of what he does is along similar lines about talking about self-esteem. and god of more than enough. 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. brian: does she fit into the religious world you're talking about? kate: a lot of her guests, the author of that book "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. brian: t.d. jakes is 60. these figures are loose, because you are never quite sure, they say he's worth about $18 million. why is he worth that amount of money? katy: he has been extremely entrepreneurial. he has a film production company. he has been involved in music.

he has a 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. brian: what do you think of the fact that these churches and ministers live in a tax exempt environment? kate: i think there is a lot of controversy over the tax-exempt status. especially for personages. homes that ministers live in. it is hard. i think it is becoming more and more of an ethical question because churches are increasingly split between the very large and 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. brian: why? kate:that is a great question. part of it has to do with these are suburban churches. big churches need land. they are slightly on the outskirts of cities. really sprawling. i'm doing the hand gesture of the sunbelt. mostly in atlanta to l.a., that wide half circle. partly it has to do with urban sprawl and partly it has to do with migration patterns. brian: are they more religious in the south than in the north? kate: sometimes it surprises you. there are a lot of prosperity mega churches around seattle. that creates an evangelical subculture in a largely secular state. i started this project in winnipeg, manitoba. they have the largest prosperity population.

we are canadian. we are not supposed to have prosperity megachurches if you ask most people. it seems so very american. if you listen to preachers all over north america, they will ay in the name of jesus. just the way they say it, you can tell they had a southern preacher as a teacher. brian: here is a man, rick warren. [video clip] i don't know if you 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? do you think the whole purpose of your life is to just live for you? 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.

brian: do you believe that? kate: i do not think rick is a prosperity preacher. he is largely southern baptist. n his church in california, it is a largely evangelical church. saddleback church. i think what he is getting at, 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, i think i really thought that life was a series of ladders and if i just kept climbing it would always lead to something. brian: because you have had a lot of pain. kate: the pain just leveled me. part of it was coming to grips with me not being able to care -- carry on with cancer, and that i will not 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 ur dark seasons, i think it is a beautiful lie to say that pain will always be rewarded. brian: here's a name some people my age will remember. he's still alive. he is 82 years old. this goes back to 1988 when he got himself into a little trouble. let's watch. [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 e anymore.

kate: that apology, it defined in people's minds the caricature of the televangelist. brian: jimmy swaggart. kate: he was an aincredible orator. assembly of god pastor. brian: still going. kate: yes. he started off as a prosperity preacher and decided it was not true anymore. the internal wrangling. whether or not it was the same hing as prosperity gospel. which it isn't. there was internal division. by the time of his own fall, he was involved in a very heated series of rivalries with other preachers. brian: didn't he out another preacher for being with a rostitute? kate: there is a book about ptl that just came out by a

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. brian: he went down because the people he was against outed him. and he went on over several years to be with priss at this tudes. 8 -- prostitutes. kate: it ended up being mutual damnation. i think you can see it in the apology. christianity has its insights on theology that if you repent you can be saved. so that people when they fall they can be saved. make an about-face. these are personal figures to people. you feel like you know them. ven 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 --died in 2009. he was 74 years old at the time, you might have been the original prosperity minister. [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. 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 the jim crow era when black americans 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. >> for over two years. brian: what kind of treatment are you getting now? i had a whole series. i finished one course of treatment. blyian: what is it? kate:i'm in immuno and 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 were going to atlanta. kate: yes, every wednesday.

for almost a year. brian: it was a trial? kate: 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. brian: the main one? kate: the first one was to remove a huge tumor from my colon. brian: has there been any shrinkage on the liver tumors. 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. that might be news to some people. the hope is always to like try

to find the next vine that will swing me over the deep end ack. -- deep and hope for the best. brian: this man who died in 2011 had esophageal cancer and all 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. [video clip]>> a lot number of people asked me, doesn't it change your mind about the eternal, super natural. i said, i do not see why it hould. 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 a malignancy in my esophagus, and that changes everything, you would think the main effect had been on my iq. [laughter] kate: he was so clever. brian: what about your attitude? have you changed your thinking? kate: i think i have. i always considered myself a pretty jesus-y type. so much of it was wrapped up in me assuming that god was a part of this enhancement project i was on. the second i got sick and you come to the end of yourself, 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.

am a' -- i'm a historian. 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, my whole community got together and 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. brian: 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. [video clip]>> how you have that

special knack that you can do that? >> i do not have a knack. if you talk about that i won't give you an interview. this is no knack. don't you fear god? the bible says that god is the healer. and jesus came and -- the bible said -->> why can't all people heal? >> the bible said they could. >> why can't you do it? >> god answers prayer, man. god answers prayer. i fast, pray and god answers prayer. kate: you can see him pressing in. what's the formula? is it a prayer? are you anointed? is it a special place you go to? i've been encouraged to do all those things regularly. 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 bar us 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. years ago, back in 1985, you probably studied this incident. what do you think of this? [video clip] >> at 10:30 in the morning at the mold monticello hotel, now demolished, i stood up in prayer and led 200-plus 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 back where it came from. at 10:30, the forward progress of that hurricane stopped. like a great hand went out and stopped it. this is a true story. you can look at the records if you did not believe me. kate: it is a wonderful arrogance. the hubris of it, i sort of love it. you can see my face.

part of what i admire about them is they have gumption like nobody else. they really believe they can turn around a hurricane. i'm glad they tried. the problem is -- brian: why have there been several hurricanes on virginia beach since? kate: it immediately opens itself up to like why can't that happen all the time? uniformity. the other thing is, what condemnation then lies on those who fail? his is always a problem that -- as patriot parity preachers funerals. unless they die at 96-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 are scraping and crawing for the meaning of it. --clawing for the mean of it. i think that is an awful burden to bear. that they have to be a problem to be explained. brian: this 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. >> just another game, right? [video clip] >> just another game. unbelievable. ll the glory to god. to be here with my daughter, my wife, my family and teammates, the city. we are very blessed. brian: reportedly, he is going to be a preacher after he gets out of the football business. all glory to god. how do you explain before the game starts, both sides pray. kate: the super bowl is the annual reminder. to americans that somehow there's -- an indimmediateary step between their prayers and god's answers. this is a country that does not believe in luck. this is a country that believes all things are earned. you see with athletes, all of them sweat and bleed for a goal and only one side wins. it always highlights the cat -- capriciousness. there will always be winners and

losers. you don't get to pick which. 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. when i went to these churches. the preacher's wife stands up in the middle of the service and says, we need to pray down the rain. if we pray that the spiritual heavens will open everything asked for will come down. people start stomping, shouting, praising god in hopes that everything they are praying -- 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 a hope for every good thing that

we are living under an open heaven. brian: she stood up in the church. kate:she stomped her feet, kicked off her heels and asked us all to hope for more. brian: are mennonites, are they evangelicals? kate: some of them are. yeah, they are a little like the jewish faith. it is both a culture and a religion. it has a widespread inside mennonite culture. mennonite both ethnic and religious. but a lot of them are evangelical. brian: the new york times twice big articles by 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. i wrote a piece about what it feels like when you're a problem to be solved. people start to pour certainty on your pain. maybe you should try this, maybe if you pray in this way or go see so-and-so, he will fix his. the desire i had to want for more, when i was not sure was possible. so i sent that article in, and i found a wonderful editor who i adore. he gave it a front page of the sunday review. then i got thousands of letters about it saying, no, here's the olution. 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.

at least you don't problem solve. maybe you should try, or teacher, have you seen this documentary? i would like to say, like, i'm not on trial. brian: two books you need to know about by kate bowler. one of them is "blessed." the history of the american prosperity gospel, back in 2013. 8and her newest book "everything happens for a reason and other lies i have loved." kate bowler has been our guest. thank you. kate: thank you so much for having me. what a treat. >> all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast at c-span.org. fun -- [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> next sunday on "q&a," we're joined but munition and author daryle davis. mr. davis, who is

african-american, has befriended members of the cu clucks clan. klan.-- ku klux join us. >> and live now here on c-span at the national press club in washington, d.c. environmental production agency andrew wheeler will be talking about the trump administration's environmental policy and taking questions. you're watching live coverage here on c-span. >> i'm the president of the national press club. today we have a terrific program for you. and we invite you to listen, watch, or follow along on twitter at the #npclive. for those watching us today on c-span or any other program, please be aware that our audience today consists of members of the press, press club members, and members of the general public. so any applause or other reactions you hear aren't necessarily from the working press.