I learned a couple of new things about the prosperity gospel. The influence of the prosperity gospel even extends up into halls of political power, in the United States White House. Blessed surveys the historical roots of the prosperity gospel, and how it continues to be a multi-billion dollar, church-based industry, filling up many of the largest megachurches, in the United States, and saturating the television airwaves, cable networks, and Internet podcasts. I read that is, listened to, Kate Bowler as she beautifully read her book to me, via audiobook, while in the midst of “lock down” mode, during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Reading Kate Bowler’s Blessed: A History of the Prosperity Gospel was not like reading a PhD thesis, even though she originally wrote this as her PhD thesis, while a student a Duke University’s graduate program, in religious history.
….the prosperity gospel offered her a chance of survival. If only she had faith, she was told, she would be healed…. So, for her to be mesmerized by a television preacher was completely out of step for her.
She went to church, but she was not someone who was avidly, evangelically minded, let’s just say. It is important to know something about my mom. The message was subtle, but consistently positive: If my mom had the right thoughts, healing was just around the corner. Night after night, she would tune into watching a very popular Pentecostal preacher, out of Houston, Texas, or another similar preacher. Yet after the surgery, when I would come by and visit her in the evening, in her skilled-nursing room, she would have the television on. After living a full, wonderful, and vibrant life, it was best simply to allow her to say goodbyes to those who mattered most to her. Radiation and chemotherapy would bring her more misery than healing. My dad and I opted for the surgery, which would give her as much time as possible, to be with family, before her ultimate death.
In her eighties, my mother had only a few months to live, at best. My heart sank when her doctor told me, over the phone, that even with surgery, the cancer had a near 100% probability of return, and it would be fatal. My mother had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer, a deadly case of glioblastoma, or cancer of the brain.
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