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 youre 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 Persons 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 im from durham, North Carolina, but i am from canada. Im a professor at divinity school. A professor of american i teach christianity. Dogooders 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 megachurches. Then i do smaller seminars. Im 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 wont 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 jello. 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 antimaterialism. 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. Theres 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 phds 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 youre giving people a worldview and then they have to go out and live in the hospitals, boardrooms, and living rooms holding peoples 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 debtfree 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 debtfree house and 12 months. I did not see how that could be, but i got my debtfree 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 oldschool 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 1980s 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 murdocks, they would write for things like a new washing machine or the nerve to go to a new sewing circle and make friends. Selfesteem, 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. Lets 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. Im 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 havent 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 1980s televangelist television. They had the mostwatched 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 morethanenoughness. They called everyone family. They really reached into peoples living rooms and asked people to celebrate a pentecostalism that had come of age. Of course in the late 1980s, 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 lefthand 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 roundrobin 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, im , i still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable. He would bring reallife 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 selfesteem. 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 lets 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, dont 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 selfesteem, 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