You get tired sooner than I’d like to admit. As part of her spiritual practice, she wrote this letter: Dear Body, Sometimes, I hate you. Read it all and listen to the interview with her here. Tuesday, August 9th, 2022 After being diagnosed with Stage IV cancer, theologian and author Kate Bowler worked intensively to know and love her body and its ways of both serving and failing her. Before, I didn’t really need a new kingdom. And then in Easter, we’re supposed to be hungry for the fact that God’s going to come back and that there will be a new kingdom and a new earth. First, the world has come apart and only God can put it together. That’s why we have to remind ourselves and live through it every year. You love all the right people, do the right things, and, in a way, you don’t really need the Kingdom Come…I think that’s why Good Friday the Easter story so important. She used to view life as something “where I just get a lot done. It is found in unusual forms, like the El Shaddais Catholic prosperity. Not only does Kate now appreciate Lent more, she’s also come to a new understanding of Easter. The Prosperity Gospel: A Historical Genealogy1 By Kate Bowler Today Id like to. Whether your are religious or not, Protestant or Catholic, Pentecostal or Mainline. And that, I think, is really important and beautiful, especially when you’re off in Protestant land with very bare crosses, very few reminders that the world isn’t as it should be.” Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel: Bowler, Kate.

She said, “I’ve learned from the Catholic tradition, especially in Lent, that there are times of deep and important lament, when the church, and especially Catholics, are so good at saying and performing what it feels like to come undone…A Catholic cross has a suffering Jesus up there to remind us that we’re in our bodies, Jesus was in his body, and that our suffering is not an affront to God. Kate noted that she loves Catholics because they are “wonderful at being sad.” That appreciation has only grown in the past few years. Having established herself as a chronicler of evangelical Christianity in her 2013 book Blessed, about the prosperity gospel, and 2019’s The Preacher’s Wife, about prominent Christian women. Though not Catholic, she has a rich appreciation for the faith:

Kate bowler catholic