Right now I have a casserole illness - one in which people will bring me food, in which I can acknowledge it publicly. To admit that one was still sick and dying would be to “negatively confess,” denying healing had been accomplished. This beautiful woman had not been able to speak out loud about the sickness that put her there, so as not to “negatively confess.” I talked to families that were turned away from more prayer because a prayer for healing is once and for all, a “positive confession,” a confession that healing had already happened. Negative things could not be spoken out loud, neither death nor illness. But I was saddened by some of the examples you gave, such as the story of you at the church you were attending for research, sitting between a widower on one side and a woman in a wheelchair on the other, neither able to speak of their grief or pain.
You were very gentle and gracious in your book, Blessed, describing the history and presence of the prosperity gospel and its preachers and congregations. Life is so hard.” I wanted to hear more and am so grateful to Kate for giving her time to interview at The Well. I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. I can’t help noticing the brittleness of the walls that keep most people fed, sheltered, and whole. In my vulnerability, I am seeing my world without the Instagrammed filter of breezy certainties and perfectible moments. Even when I am this distant from Canadian family and friends, everything feels as if it is painted in bright colors.
Perhaps worse, it has replaced Christian faith with the most painful forms of certainty.” Bowler goes on to acknowledge something else she is experiencing: “.cancer has also ushered in new ways of being alive. Though she writes with great respect for its followers, she rejects the theology of the movement she studied: “The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all. I was deeply moved by Duke Divinity School professor Kate Bowler’s February New York Times article, “ Death, the Prosperity Gospel, and Me.” Oxford University Press published Bowler’s book Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel in 2013, and in 2015 she was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer.
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