Host kate boler, where did you get the title everything happens for a reason and other lies i have loved . Oh, i think it just came to me because it was one of the many boomerang theologies that people give to you when youre sick is surely everythings gonna workout. God is making a way. When i wrote the book, i was trying to explore that maybe this was a lie i loved all along. So the book is kind of a theological excavation project where im trying to dig into my own secret terrible belief. Host how sick are you . Well, stage 4, cancer is not decorative, so its its its hard. But i am doing better than a lot of people. I moved from the Crisis Management to the more chronic part of this. But thankfully, so far, drugs and doctors and all kinds of things are making a way. Host went to first find out you have cancer . Guest two years ago, 35, and theres no cancer in my family. I didnt imagine that it was possible. And then one day out of the blue i got a phone call that explained my stomach pain and i realized i was in deep. Host what kind of cancer . Guy cancer. I didnt imagine everyone imagining me and my colon for the rest of my life, but as it turns out, it is increasingly, it is increasingly, that young people are getting this traditionally thought to be an Older Persons illness. Host you say in your book that it is in the liver . Guest its fred often to the lip it spread often to the liver, as it did with mine. Host what is magic cancer . Guest that was just a little phrase. They give you a series of horrible options when you have stage 4 cancer. Like, it could be this and this treatment might work, or it could be this other much worse horrible thing, immediate death sentence or this tiny little i have a they call a mismatch repair disorder. Where the cells replicated incorrectly. It could be genetic or not, but if you have this group cancer, the data therapy there were no immunotherapy possibilities available for me. So when i found out that i had this tiny little 3 kind of cancer, then i declared it was the magic cancer because it was one of the only kinds that opened me up for new treatment. Host where do you live . Guest durham, North Carolina. But in from canada. Canadians bring up stuff all the time. Host where do you live and what do you do in durham, North Carolina. Guest i am a professor of American Christian unity at duke divinity school. I teach all kinds of pastors and nonprofit workers. Dogooders of all kinds. I specialist in modern american am a christianity. And then for the last ten years ive been studying televangelists and mega churches and just people with beautiful hair. [laughter] host i want to show you a picture you had on your blog of your husband tobin and your son zach. How old is zach in that picture . Guest that is his baby dedication. We all grew up mennonite, and so he has an i heart anabaptism onesie to just make clear that he is being dedicated and not that bad, because otherwise, ill be honest, baptists would immediately reject us. I think he was nine months or something, and thats in tobins parents backyard among all mennonites. Host what is a mennonite . Guest people who loved about their suffering. Menno simons was their leader in the 1700s, and they moved largely communally through germany and then russia, and then a whole bunch of them moved to canada in the late 1800s. They populate a lot of rural manitoba and ontario and in the states, indiana and nebraska, kansas and then pennsylvania. Different kinds of groups, but all have a really thick account of their suffering which is largely why they commit to doing things together. Simplicity, pacifism, the desire to rule and salads with jello. Sometimes deli meat. [laughter] i have always gone to a Mennonite Church and have found that they are my very favorite people to be wonderfully sad around because they almost expect it. Host what kind of things do mennonites do that say baptists dont or catholics dont . Guest they are most famous for their pacifism. My husbands grandpa, for instance, was a Conscientious Objector in world war ii. My grandpa was flying bomber planes. His grandma was in the mines. So its an entirely alternate history. Theyre most famous for their pacifism, often for their anti materialism. Usually cant tell anymore the difference between them because they are often pl ainclothed like the rest of us. They look like every average capitalist, but deep down, they feel really guilty for the things they have. Host how many are in the world . Guest there is a tremendous growth in like rwanda, uganda, theres some a lot of international growth. A lot in the plains of canada. Not sure what the overall total is. Host when you teach that duke, what kind of degrees are the people that youre teaching getting . Guest i teach in the graduate program. Most of them will get ph. Ds, but most of them will get a masters in religious studies or a masters in divinity, which means they will become a reverend and go off to inflict my views on other people. Host why did you want to teach this . Guest i like the idea that ideas always have traction and we are beholden to communities of care. Maybe that has become more and more important now that i have been living with my diagnosis, is you realize that you are giving people a worldview and they have to go out and live in the hospitals and boardrooms and the living rooms holding peoples hands during the most important moments of their lives. Host during this process of finding your cancer, how many doctors did you see . Guest i had a number of undiagnosed, entirely unrelated, it turned out, illnesses. So i saw over 100 within the last few years. In the last stretch, 15. Host you ended up having another illness before the cancer, what was that . Guest it sounds it ended up being 1000 times more dramatic than it seems. I lost use of my arms for over a year. As it turns out, it was just an an some kind of very easy to fix nerve disorder related to having overly laxed joints. Its so boring. But when i had it, it was very dramatic. I find i was like locked in bathrooms for too long because i couldnt turn the door handle all of a sudden. So it made writing my first book blessed mostly a nightmare because i would often have to have like double arm casts. The healing crusade. Or then have to try to replicate Research Notes or my book while using terrible voice Dictation Software to a computer. So i look back on that as a very dark, lightly comical time of my life. Host your first book, blast, was about and when was it published . Guest 2013. It was a history of the prosperity gospel. The first historical account of this widespread movement. It took me 10 years of obsessive research stalking people in order to map the contours of it. It was really hard to study at the time because no one calls themselves a prosperity preacher, so you cant do an easy survey, like, will all the prosperity preachers in the room please put up your hands . Because it sounded so naturally insulting to assume that they were just preaching the gospel. Host i wanted to ask you whether these men were about to show you in about a minute is a prosperity minister, and if he is, how do you know that . I got money. I got land. I got houses. Do you mind me bragging for just a moment . Do you my new dragon . [applause] [speaking another language] i dont have anything god didnt give me. Everything i have came from god. If you are my protege, if i wanted a debtfree house, i would do what i did. I sold a seed equal to one months mortgage payment. A preacher said if id sow a seed equal to my monthly house note, my mortgage, it was 3400. He said i would have a debtfree house in 12 months. I didnt see how that could be, but i got my debtfree house in eight months. Guest mike murdock. He is one of the most unrepentant of prosperity preachers. He doesnt mind talking about money all the time. So, if anyones up too late, theyve usually watched mike murdock on 24hour christian tv. He is a famous kind of old school prosperity preacher. When it was uncommon for pentecostals at that time to really talk that much about money. Mike came along and talked about it all the time, and sold like seven secrets to seven kingdoms, he does a lot with spiritual numbers. You can see him doing that spiritual math with people, like, if you give me this much, god will reward you in this way. Host based in texas. Talks about a seed . Guest yes. It was a new language pioneered largely by oral roberts, a handsome and charismatic founder of oral roberts university. He pioneered this ecocultural language. The idea is kind of genius insofar as it helped explain how many was the post work when you give it to someone else. The idea is your donation is that is needed and you have to planted in the ground, the ground being the righteous pastor. And there is a time of waiting. Oral roberts wrote his first book, i think in 1963 or something, called the miracle of seed faith vehicle he explained that every good believer is almost like a spiritual farmer and has to learn how to live according to these seasons of sowing and reaping. It also really helped explain what happens when you give money and you dont see a return. The answer is that it is still in the ground and then you have to pray for the rain and the seasons to change so you can fairly receive your harvest. Host how much of that do you believe . Guest none of that. I think that is partly why i was trying to remain so open when i was doing this study, is, someone like mike murdock is the caricature of that late 1980s televangelist who weeps in front of the camera and for donations. I mean and ask for donations. I mean, he is the caricature. But so often, the people i met in the pews wanted average things. If you look at the little letters people used to write to pentecostal healers and like the early mike murdocks, they would write for things like a new washing machine or like the nerve to go to a new sewing circle and make friends. Selfesteem, tiny advances. All the Little Things that make life a little more bearable. And that gave me a lot of compassion for the people who stay up late watching mike. Host the next clip is of a man that we knew years ago. He went to prison. Guest yes. Host name is jim baker. He was married to tammy faye baker. Shes dead and hes remarried. His new wife is named lori graham. Lets watch this. Its got a couple of clips and i want you to explain how this always works. [video clip] [laughter] donald trump donald trump is president [applause] this was a miracle not by man. You know, god called him to do it. And i am going to be bringing the prophets in and they are going to talk. And those who prophesied and those who watched this thing. Because it is the hour of the church in america again. Host 78 years old. Still active. He does television every day like this. What do you make of him . Guest i had not seen that with, but it doesnt entirely surprise me that so much of his ideas of more than enoughness were always rooted in p judaism. There is a slice of prosperity gospel in which republicanism and the sense that the prosperity gospel of both the individual and the nation are connected come together in someone like jim baker. He and tammy were the king and queen of 1980 still evangelis he had the mostwatched christian program. Their theme park which they called heritage usa that was built around the border of North Carolina and south carolina, was meant to be this expression of their jubilant more than enough ness. You could come down and slide the water slide and watch a live taping of jim and tammy in their living room. They called everyone family. They reached into 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 both a sexual and financial scandal that sends him to prison. And weirdly enough, i ended up eating a number of people he had met while in prison when i gave a talk in, as it turns out, the federal prison where he had been held. I was giving this history of the prosperity gospel talk, and normally i usually have to talk people into caring. A bunch of guys in the back put up their hand and said, we knew jim [laughter] they had all kinds of stories. Host did you interview him . He is now in branson, missouri. Guest no. I never did. I would love to. He wrote a book called i was wrong, saying that he repented of much of his prosperity theology. But then as you can see, hes a natural salesman and went on largely to sell dehydrated foodstuffs for the elderly on his new program. Host hold it right there. Host oh no, its happening. [laughter] some people know when they watch it. There is the big buckets. And if you keep your eye on the screen on the lefthand corner you can see that more buckets you buy, the more money you pay. But its a bargain, the more you buy. But anyway, this is jim baker setting the buckets of food. [video clip] this food, we will extend it a couple more days because i feel that we should. Its four months worth of food so you only need three of them to make a euro food. So actually give you four buckets. So, hey . This food lasts up to 30 years on your shelf. These are great because they are waterproof even if you are in a flood and it gets wet, and their ownership free today. You are getting 10,472 servings, so youre getting a lot of food. A lot of food for those grandkids. Host grandkids. 3700 dollars for that. What do you think of that . Why do they do this . Guest i know a very pragmatic reason. He was from day one and amazing salesman. He used to say i could have been , anything, but i just ended up selling the gospel. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of old ptl footage that i watched for the research of the book, it was also fun because whenever tammy faye sings, my son dances. It was this roundrobin of different agitators and speakers. It really showed you how little they actually reached and how much it was this atmosphere very often pitched towards the elderly. For him to go from the prosperity gospel of theirs more than enough, just donate to me, to a more scarcity model in which theres not enough, also give money to me. It shows how incredibly pragmatic and adaptable these preachers can be. Host in your current condition of stage iv cancer, what would you believe if the minister says to you this is the future, what would turn you off . Guest one thing i did learn from pentecostals is their sense of openness to the idea that god can do surprising things. I try to take that in the spirit of generosity, but so often it is incredibly prescriptive. If you give this donation, here is this miracle oil. A lot of transsexualism. I get a lot of that stuff a lot of transsexualism. I get a lot of that stuff in the mail a lot of transactionalism. I get that stuff in the mail still. Host do you believe them . Do they believe themselves . Guest many of them do. They are consummate salesman. Always very pragmatic and entrepreneurial. So, for instance, even when they just had tents, they would travel around, these tent revivalists, the earliest ones were tent revivalists, when they were done with the tent either because their crowds were too big or too small, they sued to cut up the tent into tiny little squares and then sell the pieces as if all the spiritual power had been absorbed into the fabric. It goes to show that at every stage theyre promising Something Like a tactile reminder people want. Someone like me when i got very sick, right away i want to think that i could touch and feel, little reminders that i was still myself. I can see these very material things catch on. Host here is the president of the United States talking in 2015. President trump Norman Vincent peele, the great Norman Vincent peale was my pastor, the power of positive thinking. Everybody has heard of Norman Vincent peale . He was so great. He would give a sermon, you never wanted to leave. Sometimes we have sermons and everyone once know where we think about giving sermons. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale would give a sermon. I am telling you, i still remember his sermons. It was unbelievable. He would bring reallife situations, modernday situations into the sermon, and you could listen to him all day long. Host in your book, did you write about Norman Vincent peale . The prosperity gospel involved in these different streams and one of them was the pentecostal version we soften people like mike murdock. Host define pentecostal. Guest sure, it is a movement predicated on the idea that we are in a new era of science and wonders and it started in the early 1900s. Most often it looked to healing and the gift of tongues, so an unknown language. In some of the clips, you will see people switch into what does that sound like intelligible words. Host have you heard mike murdock talk that way . Guest yes. It is called glossolalia, and in some versions its supposed to be a translatable language, but in most iterations it just sounds like syllables that seem random. But they believe is a spiritual heavenly tongue that is given to them to communicate with god. Host so, Norman Vincent peale. Guest Norman Vincent peale does not come from that pentecostal strain unit he comes from mainline protestantism. He had a methodist background plus this theology of selfesteem. They are borrowing from this seedbed of theology new thought which was a movement that said the man was a really powerful spiritual incubator. Whatever you could think or articulate would come true. Like you are unleashing a surgical force. So, someone like donald trump who latches onto a figure like Norman Vincent peale, what we see there is a very respectable version of what you say and confess, you will possess. Host lets watch him, this is back in 1987. It is called the hour of power at the crystal cathedral. What do you want to be . Then dedicate it to jesus christ along with your whole life. And dont doubt him. Believe. And then form a picture in your mind of that goal. Hold it tenaciously in the conscious mind until by process of intellectual osmosis, it sinks into the unconscious. And when it gets into the unconscious, you have it because it will have all of you. Guest i mean, they really make visualization and mental processes the kind of theological infrastructure for how it works. So how is it then, like, what is different than having just good selfesteem in doing this . The answer is that you absorbed it in such a way that you can actually unleash it to the world. So Norman Vincent peale, he kind of browns his version of the prosperity gospel into positive thinking and it develops into this long lineage with other famous preachers like Robert Schuler and some are like donald trump who becomes the first president ial candidate whose only religious biography stems from the prosperity gospel. Host Norman Vincent peel said dont doubt it. Why not . Guest so there is positive confession and then there is negative confession. The idea that if you doubt it, if you create for mental obstacle, then it will not come true, which means, of course, that whatever bad things happen, you really just have to look at yourself to figure out why he didnt come to be. Host this one will hit home with you by the way, have you ever met benny hinn . Guest i did. I went on a trip to israel with him and his followers for that trip to walk where jesus walked. Host in he is originally from israel . Guest he is also a little bit from canada, from israel and lives in the states. A complicated biography. Host when you say then hundred followers, is that the only followers he has got . Guest no, they take a tour where you go with a thousand other people in 30 giant tour buses and travel around israel. You pay a lot of money that is partly why i was interested, what kind of person is financially investing in the faith healer and what are their hopes for an experience like that . Host why do you call him a faith healer . His specialty is the idea that if you believe enough, that your body will reflect the glory of god and be restored. He also has a Strong Financial message, but he is mostly known for his faith healing. Host do you believe him . Benny hidden is not someone i have a lot of intellectual and theological affinity toward. I see a lot of him. He is one of the pastors that i watch the most and he is often the most dramatic. He is the one on youtube where he will raise his hand and then you will see 100 people fall over at the same time. He is very dramatic. His very dramatic approach to faith healing is one i often found to be somewhat manipulative. Host you are only going to see one person in this one, this was december 18, 2017. Benny hinn. I rebuke that cancer. [video clip] in the mighty name of jesus. I come against you in the name of the one i serve. Leave this young lady. Leave her now in the name of the lord my god. [heavy breathing] [indistinct whispers] complete healing. Its really gone, right . Theres no pain in your stomach, right . Ok. Well, then thats real. [sighs] when i see something at that, i can only see it from her perspective. I have had a lot of people pray for me similarly and as a christian, i believe that christianity has a very long tradition of divine healing, so i certainly dont think that its not possible for god to heal people. But you can see how quickly he moved from praying for her. He has the anointed vessel of god. And then his confidence in yourself as that vehicle. And then the idea that because she didnt have pain in that moment that she is definitely healed. Host have you ever seen one of these where somebody stood up and said, no dr. Hinn, i got , pain where i had it before. Guest i saw one where there was it was for financial healing. It was during the recession, at this Big Convention center. And it was one of hinns proteges, it was paula white and when they said, we need donations for this and this and this. One person in the back just started yelling, we dont have it there was this horrible silence and then left her. Because the truth was it was in a financiallyexhausting time. And the response was a 10minute sermon berating people for lack of faith. Host our next clip happens to be paula white which i know you didnt know. Who is she . Guest paula white was a spiritual, protege of benny hinn and also t. D. Jakes, a famous africanamerican preacher in dallas. And shes now most famous as Donald Trumps personal pastor. But she has a large mega church in florida called without walls. She is a chipper preacher of more than enough. Host have you met her . Guest i have seen her live a few times at her church. Host was that when you were doing her research . Guest yes, thats right. Host here is paula white, based in florida. [video clip] at the beginning of this year, i want you to make a commitment. The first hours of your day give to god. I want you to spend time in prayer. I want you to spend time on his word but its crucial because he says do not come before me empty handed. For your firstfruits offering firstfruits is the full of. Its not the tide. Tide is the its not the tithe. Tithe is onetenth of your gross income, its the first tenth not just any 10th. That is what it redeems the course. The whole of. Some of us bring one day. Some of us bring one week. Some of us bring an entire months salary because we understand the principle of all firsts belong to god. Host who made up the 10 tithe . Guest there are all kinds of scriptural precedent for money that goes first back to the Faith Community and theres a lot of argument about spiritual math, whether it is 10 . What you can see there with first fruits is a kind of thickening of categories that the prosperity gospel develops in order to ask for different kinds of donations. So the 10 doesnt just become a suggestion. It becomes mandatory. So, some large churches will even ask for believers financial records in order to make sure that theyre actually giving 10 . Otherwise, the threat is, and you can hear it there, in order to redeem the curse. The idea that you are spiritually in danger if you are not fully giving. Then there is the seed faith offerings which can be spontaneous and related to the person. You might have a guest richer so you give a guest preacher, so you give a seed faith. Host wait, seed faith. Guest seed faith like we talked about before with oral roberts. And thats just the idea that that language means that you should give in hopes that that person would be the reason that its returned back to you. First fruits. X theres even a pastors Appreciation Day in which you have to give a certain amount to celebrate the pastors anniversary at the church. There are just more and more categories and reasons to give. Host i have a friend who talks about her pastor. He gets, when he goes on , they pass the hat. When it is his birthday, they pass the hat. What is your reaction. If you were in a church like that, what would your reaction be . Guest clearly enough, most of the people i interviewed lexie seeing the pastor do well as an expression of who they are. Look how well he lives. That is how much he demonstrates the spiritual principles at work. Because the argument is, well, if it works for him, it can work for me. So, pastors with jets or pastors with his and her Mercedes Benzes out front. I mean sometimes the megachurch will put the parking space of the pastor with the luxury car right in front with a vanity plate, so that everybody files past it. There is they are certainly not hiding it. Host what would your reaction be if he said, i need 1000 from you, and you see him with a gold mercedes oral roberts, i remember i was down there one time years ago doing a story, and he had two large mercedes outside of his home. Guest i mean, i have a really uncomfortable feeling about this kind of displays, in part because often those charges are run like Family Businesses in which brothers and sisters are also board members. There has been a push in recent years, especially since the 2008 senator grassley investigation for financial transparency. But it certainly makes it hard, because their argument is one that parishioners believe, which this belief that if we live in more than enough spiritual universe, if god gives to them, god can give to me. Host what do you mean by redeem the curse . She said that. Guest paula white was talking about just the imagination that is this denselypeopled universe. Everything youre doing is not just for something, it is against something. Someone like Norman Vincent feel really never spoke like that. He talked more about selfesteem and use a lot of psychological language and categories. Someone more like paula white whos very much in the pentecostal stream of prosperity is going to think a lot about supernatural forces always at work against you. And you are using gods principles to counter against them. Host the next man is well known. Reportedly online, he is worth 40 million to 60 within dollars. He has a 17,000 squarefoot home. The home is worth about 10. 5 within dollars. And he sees, i think i wrote down, some are like 52,000 people a week. Anyway, here he is, joel alstyne. [video clip] we installed floodgates around the building. During the reign, the waters came within a foot or two of breaching the walls and flooding the building with a gun. Without those floodgates, we wouldnt be here today. The water started receding. [applause] that water started to recede late sunday into monday. We felt it was safe to start taking people in on tuesday. If we had opened the building earlier and someone was injured or perhaps it flooded and someone lost their lives, that would be a different story. I am at peace with taking the heat for being precocious, but i dont want to take the heat for being foolish. [applause] host what do you think of his story . You got beat up over harvey when he didnt let people into the former basketball arena. Guest i dont know enough about the details to say whether he was up overly cautious. But it does really raise a question of what a large Prosperity Church is for. I think part of the critique you got was, it was his job to be the front lines of charity. That is the real question from prosperity preachers when their entire theology says, if i do it, you can do it, it is heavily individualistic. Moments like that, as a large pastor of the Largest Church in the country, he is meant to send an example. It does call into question what churches are for. Historically they have been fundamentally social services. Host in your opinion, why does someone want to sit in the room with 30,000 people for a service like that . Guest he is a really easy preacher to listen to. He tells adorable, corny jokes and always an atmosphere of positivity and celebration. He is, by all accounts, very kind. Its easy to like him and to want to be around likeminded people. The folks that go there are often aspirational in some way. A message like that works for all classes. For the poor, it is for an imagined, hope for life. For the middle class, it often explains what people have. For the upper class, it gives them reasons to keep caring and also a justification for what they have. Host . Host he is based in houston. This next photo, also wellknown, is based in dallas. I will run the clip. [video clip] if Nelson Mandela hadnt been incarcerated, mistreated, ostracized, he would not have the passion to do what he does. If Oprah Winfrey had not gone through the things she had gone through, she would not be so committed to making sure that everybody finds their purpose and finds their dream and everybody gets healed and everybody is ok. I am telling you, what you think is working against you is actually working for you. [applause] host pain. Guest yeah. Td jakes is probably the most famous africanamerican prosperity preacher. Although he would hate the term prosperity preacher, because so much of what he does is along the similar lines of talking about selfesteem and a god of more than enough. His brand, especially his franchise woman, thou art loosed, which was a franchise that he developed initiative he made 1990s around healing sexual abuse of women in the church, it really does bring that message out where your pain then becomes your purpose. The worst thing can be the best thing. Its these constant spiritual inversions that promise that within the course of a human life you really can have everything you hope for. Host is oprah religious or not . Guest i think so. Host i dont mean personally, i mean, does she fit into the religious world that you are talking about . Guest sure. A lot of the guests she has had, like the author of a book called the secret, was very popular. It was another expression of that new thought idea telling you about where your mind is a spiritual incubator and you can have what you conceive of. It is also the idea that there is no such thing as luck. That any obstacle can be overcome for those who work hard and make the most of every opportunity. That is just an american belief as well. It is just in the water. Guest td jakes is 60. Again, these figures are loose because you never are quite sure, but they say he is worth about 18 million. What is somebody that what he does work why is somebody who does what he does work that kind of money . Guest td jakes in particular has been incredibly entrepreneurial. He has a Film Production company. He has been involved in music. He has for profits enterprises. Part of that springs out of this prosperity theology is entrepreneurialism, is i can have it and so can you. Host what do you think of the fact that these churches and ministers live in a taxexempt environment . Guest there is a lot of controversy over the taxexempt status, especially for the home of that ministers live in. It is becoming more and more of an ethical question because churches are increasingly split between the very large of the very large of a very small. The average church has about only 70 people in it, including kids. But most people in the country go to these topheavy churches which is to say, very well resource churches. What is taxexempt status for some pastors is what helps other churches stay afloat. Host you live in durham, North Carolina. Almost all of these people are from the south. Guest they are from the sunbelt. Host why . Guest such a good question. Part of it, i think, has to do with that these are large suburban churches. Big churches need land and that is why we find they are slightly on the outskirts of cities. They are sprawling. They are mostly in that Atlanta Los Angeles kind of wide half circle. Part of it has to do with urban sprawl. Partly it has to do with immigration patterns. Host are they more religious in the south than they are in the north . Guest sometimes it surprises you. There are a lot of Prosperity Churches around seattle. That creates a kind of evangelical subculture in a largely more secular state. That i started this project in winnipeg, manitoba, which has the largest prosperity megachurch in canada. We are not supposed to have prosperity megachurch is, if you ask most people. It seems so very american. If you listen to preachers all over north america they will still say, like, in the name of jesus. Given the way they say to jesus, you could tell they had a southern preacher as a teacher. Host here is a matter that is worth 25 within dollars, allegedly, from saddleback, arizona. Rick warren. E. U. God often uses pain to get our attention. Cs lewis said god whispers to , us in our pleasure, but he shouts to us in our pain. He is going, hello. Do you think i just need you to live for yourself . That the whole purpose of life is for you to just live for you . No. You are made for so much more. God often uses pain to get our attention and to prepare us for breakthrough. So if you are in pain right now, congratulations. Host do you believe that . Guest first of all, rick warren, i dont think is a prosperity preacher. He is largely southern baptist. In his church in california. Host he is in california, not in arizona . Ok. Guest i think what he is getting to is the theology that most americans want to share which is that somehow pain is always progress. I dont believe that anymore. I really thought that life was a series of ladders and if i just kept trying and claiming, that it was going to lead to something trying and climbing, that it was going to lead to something. Host and you always had a lot of pain. Guest the pain just leveled me. Part of it was coming to grips with me not being able to cure my own cancer and assuming that i was always have the time i went with my family and being able to imagine the future for myself that i had expected. And so while i think all kinds of beautiful things can happen in our dark seasons, i think it is a beautiful lie to say that pain will always be in reward. Host here is a name certainly people my age will remember. He is still alive, 82 years old. This goes back to 1988 when he got himself in a little bit of trouble. Lets watch. [video clip] i have sinned against you, my lord. [voice breaks] and i would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain. Until it is in the seas of gods forgetfulness, never to be remembered against me anymore. [tearfully] guest yes, that apology, it defined in peoples minds the caricature of the televangelist. Host jimmy swaggart. Guest jimmy swaggart. He was an incredible orator. Assemblys oh, god pastor. Host still going. Guest yes, with his son donnie. He started off as a prosperity preacher, decided he felt it wasnt true anymore, which shows you the internal wrangling around pentecostalism and whether it was the same thing as prosperity gospel. Which it isnt. There was internal division. He was by the time of his own , fall, involved in a very heated series of rivalries with other preachers. Host didnt he out another preacher for being with a prostitute . Guest you know, there is an amazing book about ptl that just came out, by a professor, and it shows you the underbelly of that story in which so many of them were trying to sabotage the other. And then they all went down. Host he went down because the people he was against outed him. And he went on over several years to be with prostitutes. Guest yes, it ended up being mutual damnation. Host why do people go back to people like this . Guest you can see in the theology. Christianity has its own theology which is that if you repent, you can be saved. People when they fall, they can immediately just apologize and make an aboutface. These are really personal figures to people. If you watch same person that face for a long time, you feel like you know them. Even when jim baker was being taken to prison, you had people at the courthouse weeping and pleading for him. He was like family to them. Host this next man died in 2009, he was 74 years old. He may have been, you could tell me, the original prosperity minister. [video clip] to many religious people are taught to believe that they dont deserve anything. And some religious people even pray that prayer. Oh, lord, i am not worthy. Anything you feel you are not worthy off, you cant have. Anything you feel you dont deserve and that you are not worthy of, you automatically cut yourself off from that good. Guest reverend ike. He was a very popular preacher in the 1960s and 1970s and through the 1980s. And it goes to show you how the language of prosperity can be incredibly empowering. He was talking to people who had been raised in the jim crow era in which black americans were told they could never have enough, let alone more. So this thick strand of africanamerican prosperity preaching ended up being part of this very often emancipatory vocabulary of saying, god never asked you to be there with someone with their heel on your throat. That god can promise you more. You can see prosperity flashing among many communities that are often disenfranchised. Host let me ask you again how long you had the cancer . Guest a little over two years. Host what kind of treatment are you getting now . Guest i had a whole series of i just finished one course of treatment. Host what is it . Guest immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Host where is it being done . Guest at duke. It is actually three minutes from my office. I leave my office and i go and all of a sudden i am in a place where everyone has face masks. It is a real aboutface in my day. Host but for a while, you were going to atlanta . Guest yes. I went to atlanta for almost a year every wednesday. Host that was a trial . Guest it clinical trial. Immunotherapy is really at the beginning stages of development and so those of us who qualify for trials are pretty desperate to get it. Host when you had an operation, what was it . Guest i had a few operations. Host the main one. Guest the first one was to remove a huge tumor from my colon. Host and has there been any shrinkage on the current tumors you have in the liver . Guest yes. That, and with everything, i think that is where we are with immunotherapy of the idea of a new category of incurable. Which is that with so many things changing in science, the hope is always to get from one good outcome to the other. That is why i always try to explain, i am not terminal, it means i am not necessarily going to die i mean, we all die but the hope is always to just try to find the next vine that will swing you over the deep and hope for the best. Host christopher hitchens, who died in 2011, had esophageal cancer. Over that period, people kept saying, will you believe in god now . Because he was an atheist. We interviewed him a year before he died and this is what he had to say. Very large number of people have asked me does he change her attitude to the infinite, the eternal, the supernatural and so forth. I said i dont see why it should. Ive never thought of it as a particularly searching question. If i spent i spent a lot of my life deciding that there isnt any redemption. That there is no salvation. That there is no afterlife. No supervising boss. If i was to tell you now have a malignancy in mice of fungus, that changes everything. You would think, i hope, that the main effect had been on my iq. [laughter] guest he was always so clever. Host what about your attitude since you got cancer at a very young age, have you changed your thinking on anything related to religion . Guest i think i have. I have always considered myself a pretty jesusy type. I think so much of this was wrapped up in me assuming that god was a part of this life and had his hands in this project i called life. The second i got very sick, i will admit it was a really spiritually is a really spiritually powerful time for me which is funny. I feel so uncomfortable. You can hear me stuttering , like, i am good at talking about peoples faith. I am a historian. I am the calculated and careful observer. But when it comes to my staff, it was almost so intimate, i didnt want to tell people. I really felt the presence of god. I felt the love of other people. People pouring in. All the intense prayers. The second i got sick, my Little Community got together in the chapel and prayed like marathon runners for me throughout my whole surgery. Part of it is reflecting back to me love and also just the sense of, the hope is that as you are preparing to die, i was having to make preparations that someone or something meets you there, and they certainly felt that way. Host its one of the times you see some of these ministers challenged, this is back in the 1980s. Its about a man that lives in ohio by the name of ernest angley. He is today 96 years old. Tell us what you think of this. [video clip] why is it that one preacher can deal with so many people . Hell assume many. But others cant. How do you have that special knack that you can do that . I dont have a knack, sir. If youre going to talk like that i wont give you an interview. This is no knack. Arent you ashamed to throw around the word of god like that and call this a knack. Dont you fear god . The bible says that god is the healer and jesus came and healed the sick. Why cant all preachers . Why cant all they could. What do they lack, do they have . Why is it they cant do it . I fast. I pray and god answers prayer. God answers prayer. Guest you can see him pressing into, like, what is the formula . Is it a prayer . Are you anointed . Is it a special place you go to . I mean, ive been encouraged to do all of those things so regularly. Host does god answer prayer . Guest yeah. I think often. And then sometimes not. I think the question that the prosperity gospel raises is, is there a secret formula and can i find it somewhere . And the answer is no. Does that bar us then from wonder and hope . I dont think so. Host recently Pat Robertson had a major stroke, although they say he will recover completely. He is 88 years old. But years ago back in 1985, you have probably studied this incident. Lets see what you think of this. [video clip] at 1030 in the morning at the old Monticello Hotel which has now been demolished, i stood up in prayer and we rebuked the hurricane. This monster in the atlantic ocean, and commanded it in the new of jesus to turn around and go back where it came from. At 10 30, the forward progress of that hurricane stopped good like a great hand went out and stopped it. Its a true story. You can look at the record and see if you dont believe me. Guest wonderful arrogance. This year hubris of it. You can see in my face whenever i watch something that. I have been in a million healing rallies. But of what i admire about them is they have gumption like nobody else. They really believe that they can turn away a hurricane. And im glad they try. The problem is, host why have there been several hurricanes in Virginia Beach since . Guest intimately opens it up to, like, why can it work all the time . Uniformity. What kind of nation then lies on those who fail. This is always the problem at prosperity preachers funerals. Unless they die at 96 or something, then there is always a bit of the bulletin that has two explain why a man of faith will pass away as people are scraping and calling for the meaning of it. I think it is an awful burden for the sufferer to bear. They can simply be a person to be loved, they have to be a problem to be explained. Host this happened after the super bowl when the Philadelphia Eagles won the game. Here is therefore back nick foles, and youll see what he had to say. Just another game, nick . Just another game. Unbelievable, all glory to god. He likes this mecca . To be here with my daughter, my wife, my family, this duty, we are very blessed. Host reportedly he is going to be a preacher after he gets out of this with small business. All glory to god. How do you explain that before the game starts, both sides pray . Guest the super bowl is on was the annual reminder to americans that somehow there is an intermediary between their prayers and gods answers. It is, this is a country that doesnt believe in luck. A country that thinks that all things are earned. So when you see, especially with athletes, it is like them sweat and bleed for a and only one side wins, it always highlights the crucial next of moments in this, that there will always be winners and losers and we dont get to pick which. Host i want you to please tell us the story before we close, the story of the preachers wife. Waiting is the language of ecclesiastes and then you go into the story. Would you please tell everyone . Do you remember it . Guest no, tell me. Host it is the wife of the pastor and guest yes, of course. I learned a lot about ritualized expectation when i went to these churches. The preachers wife stands up in the middle of the service and says that we need to pray down the rain, and that if we pray , that the spiritual heavens will open and everything that has been asked for will come down. Host and so people start stomping and shouting and freezing god in hopes that everything they are saying will come true. So, a house, a car. For me at the time, it was a baby. What it does is it carves out in you a hope for every good thing. That may be you are living under an open heaven. Host and she stood up in the church . Guest she did, she stomped her feet and kicked off her heels and asked us all to hope for more. Host are mennonites evangelicals . Guest some of them are. There are they are a little bit like the jewish faith, which is both a culture and religion. So there is a widespread inside mennonite culture. It can be both a are you a mennonite ethnic and a religious designation. A lot of them are evangelicals. Host the new york times, twice, big articles by you. How did that happen . Guest i tend to write privately. So at first when i got sick, i noticed the great irony of me being the scholar and the author of a book called blessed when nothing in my life appeared to match that the elegy. I wanted to be the first person to point out that i wasnt super hashtag blessed. I wrote about the piece on what it feels like when you are a problem to be solved and people try to pour certainty a new pain. Maybe you should try this. Maybe you should pray this way. Go see soandso and maybe you will get it fixed. The desire i had to want for more when i wasnt sure it was possible. Anyway, i sent the article in. I found a wonderful editor who i adore and he gave it a front page of the sunday review. Then i got thousands of letters about it saying, i would actually really like you to be certain, and here is the solution. [laughs] so the point had been, please dont pour certainty on my pain, and then of course a zillion people did. Host and then you wrote again. Guest so i wrote this other piece about, guys, i love you so much. Here are kind of categories of responses to those in pain. There are many misers at least you dont. And then there are problem solvers, maybe you should try. Have you seen this documentary . And then all are born of great love, but i would like to say like i am not on trial. Host two books that you need to know about by kate bullock. One of them is blessed a history of the american prosperity gospel, back in 2013. And her newest book, everything happens for a reason and other lies i have loved. Guest thank you. Thank you for having me. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more, including cox. It is extremely rare. But friends do not have to be. When you are connected, you are not alone. Coxupports cspan as a Public Service along with these other television providers. Giving you a front row seat to democracy. Coming up on washington journal washington journal this christmas morning, your calls and comments live. We continue our series with author cal thomas and his book, a watchman in the night. Washington journal is next. Host good morning. It is monday, december 25. Merry christmas. Our question for you this morning i