FRANKLIN, Tenn. — Kathie Lee Gifford is no fan of religion, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a powerful relationship with Jesus.
“I can’t stand religion,” Gifford told Fox News Digital. “Religion puts people in chains. And Jesus comes to set us free.
“What do you want? You want to go someplace and sit in the same pew week after week after week and hear the same stuff that doesn’t change your life at all. Or do you want to walk with a living creator of all things who loves you and has a plan for your life and only, only, only longs for you to have fellowship with Him? That’s the only thing I’m interested in.”
Gifford has leaned on her faith and relationship with God in the toughest of times, saying, “I could have never made it” without it.
“I’d be in an insane asylum without Jesus,” she said. “I’ve been through a lot of crappy stuff in my life. I’ve been blessed beyond belief as well. But I’ve had a lot of things that ended up being very public too, that would have put me away for a long time and done a lot of damage to my family, to my everything.
WATCH: KATHIE LEE GIFFORD EXPLAINS WHY SHE ‘CAN’T STAND RELIGION’
“I was already holding Jesus’ his hand. When you go through the kinds of things that I went through in the last, you know, 20 years, you just cling. You just cling tighter. You’re already there. You already have them. And I know people always talk about, you know, people coming to God in a foxhole. Fine. Whenever you come to God, it’s a good thing. The better thing is to come to know him early in your life and then cling to him for their whole life.”
The 71-year-old has long been a student of the Bible, even missing her high school prom and graduation to travel to Israel for a conference on biblical prophecy.
“I’m far more annoying now because I’ve learned so much,” she joked.
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But studying was important to her.
“There are so many terrible translations of the Bible. And if you’re studying a terrible translation, you’re not going to learn anything that’s going to build you up in your faith or give you power in your life. And so many of the churches around are — that’s what they’re doing. They live on it. You can’t grow unless you feast. And then the scripture talks about how my people perish for lack of knowledge. And I was perishing.”
Gifford focused on Greek and Hebrew teachings, which led her to the stories of King Herod, the focus of her recent book, “Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Risen Savior.”
“I learned so much about Herod that I came back, and I said to my son, I said, ‘Cody, get me every book there is on Herod,’” she recalled. “If Jesus is the greatest story ever told, Herod is one of the greatest stories never, ever told.”
Cody encouraged his mother to write the story, which she originally conceived as a film, and helped her find a co-writer, Dr. Bryan M. Litfin, who has a Ph.D. in ancient Christianity from the University of Virginia.
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The former “Today” host said the story is ultimately a thriller, based on the idea that “evil has always been there.”
“What I sense in the world today is a far greater presence of is fear,” she continued. “People are terrified now. Even people that have a lot of money and live in beautiful homes behind huge gates and have people with guns protecting them are afraid. Everybody’s got more fear now than ever, ever before because the world’s so topsy-turvy and it makes no sense. And it’s like nothing we’ve ever, ever seen.”
WATCH: KATHIE LEE GIFFORD ON THE ‘INCREDIBLE’ BIBLE STORIES THAT LED TO HER NEW BOOK
But diving deep into Biblical studies doesn’t just offer comfort. There’s some entertainment in it too.
“The Bible’s filled with incredible stories of drama and betrayal and, you know, bestiality, whatever you want. The Bible’s got it. People just don’t read it. They would find out what an incredibly fascinating book it is. And I’ve been reading it my whole life. And not just reading it, but truly studying it.
“We footnote every place in the story where we got it from a different place than scripture. We didn’t make up anything. We just tried to base it truly on what stands up in church history. So, people could say, ‘Well, it’s not the Bible.’ We didn’t say it was, you know? Do you want a good story or what?”
The former “Today” host also recorded the audiobook edition of “Herod and Mary” just days before she had surgery on her hip.
Unfortunately, during her recovery, she also fell and fractured her pelvis falling down stairs “because I was stupid.”
“I thought I was stronger than I was,” Gifford explained, recalling that she moved “300 books for a couple of hours” to prepare for a signing nearby. Then, the next day, a friend was picking her up, and when she rushed to meet her, she fell and broke her pelvis in two places.
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Gifford underwent physical therapy after eight days in the hospital and was walking and putting weight on her leg faster than expected.
A short time after that, she spoke with her doctor, who she described as “a devout man of God,” asking him why she wasn’t feeling the “excruciating pain” typically associated with that kind of injury even though she wasn’t even using painkillers.
WATCH: KATHIE LEE GIFFORD SAYS SHE ‘WOULD BE IN AN INSANE ASYLUM WITHOUT JESUS’
He showed her the X-ray and pointed to her new hip and her pelvis, and she noted they were “perfect,” and he told her, “Exactly.”
“‘You are completely and totally healed by the grace of God,’” he told her. “‘And you can have a glass of wine now.’”
Fox News Digital spoke with Gifford before the announcement of her one-time “Today” co-host Hoda Kotb’s retirement.
“Herod and Mary: The True Story of the Tyrant King and the Mother of the Risen Savior” is available now.
