A theck won on q a, duke devimbity School Professor and prosperity gospel smaller kate bob doler. Professor boller who was diagnosed with incurable stage 4 cancer at age 35 discusses her memoir. Everything happens for a reason and other lies ive loved. Kate, where did you get the title, everything happens for a reason . And other lies i have loved. I think it just came to me because it was one of the many boom rangs that people give to you when youre sick. Surely everythings going to work out o, god is making a way. And i wrote the book to try to explore maybe this was a lie i loved all along. So the book is a theological excavation project im trying to dig into my own secret terrible belief. Brian how sick are you . Kate stage 4 cancer not decorative. Its hard. Im doing better than a lot of people. I moved from that Crisis Management to the more chronic part of this in which i live skintoskin. Thankfully so far drugs and doctors and all kinds of things are making a way. Brian when did you first find out you had cancer . Kate two years ago. 35, there is no canser in my family. I just didnt imagine it was possible. And then one day out of the blue i got a phone call that explained my miss serious tomach pain and realized i was in deep. Brian what kind of cancer . Kate colon cancer. Im never specific about that partly because i didnt imagine everyone imagining me and m my combon the rest of my life. Its increasingly common that young people are getting what was traditional thought to be an Older Persons illness. Brian you do say its in the liver . Kate it spreads often to the liver t did with mine. Brian whats magic cancer . Kate that was just a little phrase i gave to try to explain. They give you this a series of horrible options when you have stage 4 cancer. It could be this. And this treatment might work. It could be this other much worse horrible thing. Immediate death sentence. Or this tiny little they call a mismatch reparodies order where the cells replicated incorrectly which could be genetic or not. But if you have this 3 cancer, then new immunotheir if i possible. When i have the 3 cancer i declared it was the madge inc. Cancer because it was the only kinds that opened me up for new treatment. Brian where do you live . Kate im from canada. I live in durham, north arolina. Brian what did you do in durham, North Carolina . Kate i teach dogooders of all kinds. Pastors, nonprofit workers, people with hopeful thoughts when they stair at the horizon. By yan what do you teach . Kate the big survey courses. Their puritans to megachurches courses. Then i do smaller seminars. Im a specialist in modern american christianity and for the last 10 years i have been studying teleadvantagelists and megachurches and people with beautiful hair. By yan i want to show you a picture you have on your blog site of your husband and son. How old is zach . Kate thats his baby dedication. We all grew up mennonite. He has an ipart and a baptism oncey to make clear he is being dedicated not baptized. All the anna baptists would reject us. Hes nine months or something and thats in tobaccoins parents backyard. Brian whats a men none identity . Kate they are a people who love to talk about their suffering. Nnon came out of a me simons was their leader. They moved through germany and russia and a whole bunch moved to can in a can in the late 1800. They populate a lot of rural manitoba and ontario and the states, indiana, nebraska, kansas. Then pennsylvania. Different kinds of groups they all have a really sick account of their own suffering which is largely why they put to doing things together. Simplestity. Pacifism. Desire to ruinal lids with jello. I have always conto a Mennonite Church and i found they have very fine people. They almost expect you to be sad. Kite they are most famous for their pacifism. And antimaterialism. Thats partly why you usually cant tell the difference between them because they are often plain clothes like the rest of us. They look like every average apitalist. Brian how many are in the world . Kate there is tremendous growth. A lot of international growth. A lot in the plains of canada. Brian when you teach at duke what, kind of degrees are the people that youre teaching get . Kate i teach in the graduate program. Some of them will get ph. D. s. Most will get either a masters in religious studies or m. J. They will be a reverend. Kate i like the idea were beholden to communities of care. Thats become important to me since i have been living with the dying know sifments you are iving people a world view. 40e8ding peoples hands during the most important moments of their life. Brian during this process of finding your cancer, how many doctors did you see . Kate wow. I had a number of them diagnose entirely unrelated. I saw over 14u7bd within the last few years. In that last stretch maybe 156789brian 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. I had to have a human aid or 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. T 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 account of this really preacher. So you cannot do like an easy survey. 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 . Is, how do you know that . Have you talked to him . I have a house, i have land. Do my mind me bragging for just a moment . Do you mind me bragging a is, h bit . [applause] speaking in tongues] 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 do what i did, i sowed a seed equal to one months mortgage payment. If i sowed a seat equal to my monty house note, mortgage, it. S 3,400 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 of 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. He is kind of a famous 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. And he sold like, seven secrets 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 plant it in the grund. 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 entecostal healers and early make friends. Selfesteem, tiny advances. All of the things that make life a little more bearable. 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. Rack begin video clip] 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 of video] 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. Heir 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. You could call and slide down the water slide and watch a taping of jim and tammy. 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 prosperity theology. As can you see hes 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 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. [videotape] 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. 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. Every time tammy faye sings, my 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 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 hings. 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. Lot of transaction manyism. Transactionlism. 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. [[video clip]mr. Trump the great Norman Vincent peale was my astor. The power of positive thinking. The power of positive thinking. Everybody has heard of him. Norman vincent peale. He would give a sermon, you never wanted to leave. Sometimes we have sermons, every once in a while they think about leaving early even though were christian. Norman vincent peal would give a sermon. He would give a sermon, im telling you, 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. Brian in your book, did you write about him . Kate the prosperity gospel is abundant in different streams are you one of them was the pentecostal version we saw and people like mike murdock. Pryian define pent costal efine pentecostal. 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 nknown language. You will see people talking and what does not sound like ntelligible 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 is a spiritual heavenly tongue given to them. He comes from what looks like mainline protestantism. He had a methodist background. Brian we heard mike murdock talked that way. Kate yes, it is called plus this that heology 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. [video clip] what do you want to be . Then dedicate it 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 onscious 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 intellectual process the theological infrastructure for ow it works. So whats different than having good selfesteem and doing this . Their answer is you absorb it in such a way you can actually unleash it into the world. Goodm so, Norman Vincent peale, he kind of develops it into other ntellectual preachers like how Robert Schuller did and donald trump who becomes the first president ial candidate whose onlyle religious biography stems from the prosperity gospel. Brian he said do not doubt it. Why not . Kate there is positive confession and negative confession. You have bt it, created a mental obstacle, then it wont 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 israel with benny hinn. With 900 of his followers to walk where jesus walked. You have created a mental obstacle, then it wont come true. 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. You go with a,000 other people into giant tour buses. 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 . 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 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 f the one i serve. Leave this young lady. Leave her now in the name of the lord my god.