We are so excited to announce that our 2018 Women's Connection keynote speaker will be divinity professor, young mother, historian, and author Kate Bowler! At thirty-five, after writing her first book about the American prosperity Gospel, Bowler was a professor at the school of divinity at Duke an
d a new mother when she received the earth-shattering diagnosis of Stage IV colon cancer. Reckoning with the news, Bowler discovered, to her chagrin, that she would have to learn how to give up her own “prosperity gospel.” As she struggled to find the balance between optimism and delusion, she wondered how to accept her own finitude without feeling like she was giving up.
As she learns to live with cancer as a chronic condition, Bowler speaks powerfully about the ways in which her brush with mortality transformed her. She also frankly addresses the uniquely American concept that tragedy is a test of character, and looks at the different ways that people try to rationalize suffering and catastrophe, for better or worse.
