ideaExchange with Kate Bowler: from our archives

This podcast is from an ideaExchange session we held in the Summer of 2015, featuring the author and scholar Kate Bowler. At the time Kate was speaking to her 2013 book, BLESSED: A History of The American Prosperity Gospel. It was not that long after that session that Kate was unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at the age of 35, and her pitch battle with that cancer began. That journey is chronicled in her books Everything Happens for a Reason (and other lies I’ve loved) from 2018, and more recently No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) from 2021. In between those two books, Kate also saw The Preacher's Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities come into print in 2019.

Her battle with cancer actually birthed a very fine podcast series, titled "Everything Happens,” which she continues to produce. Over the course of several seasons she has shared conversations with a wide array of people, including Richard Rohr, Anne Lamott, Philip Yancy, Alan Alda, Barbara Brown Taylor, among many, many others. You can take a listen to these online on her website, or subscribe using the usual podcast services.

While Kate Bowler currently holds down the position of Associate Professor of the History of Christianity in North America at Duke Divinity School in Durham, North Carolina, she has deep roots in Winnipeg. This ideaExchange talk was recorded while she was home with her husband and young son, visiting family in and around Winnipeg.