President Trump’s personal pastor, the televangelist Paula White, is facing criticism after praying for the miscarriage of “all Satanic pregnancies” during a sermon earlier this month.
A video widely circulated shows part of a nearly three-hour-long service at the City of Destiny church in Apopka, Fla., on Jan. 5.
In it, White can be seen talking about fighting witchcraft and demonic manipulation.
She called for any “strange winds that have been sent to hurt the church, sent against this nation, sent against our president, sent against myself” to be broken.
“In the name of Jesus, we command all satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now,” White said. “We declare that anything that’s been conceived in satanic wombs, that it’ll miscarry. It will not be able to carry forth any plan of destruction, any plan of harm.”
As of today, the video had been watched more than eight million times.
“We command all satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now” — Special Adviser to the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative Paula White pic.twitter.com/gtdZyGfkxy
— Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons (@GuthrieGF) January 25, 2020
After White’s sermon emerged, many commenters interpreted her meaning literally, arguing that she was calling for the end of certain pregnancies.
Some, including author and OB/GYN Jennifer Gunter said that White seemed to be advocating for abortions.
Many commenters interpreted White’s comments as a theatrical, politically motivated attack calling for literal miscarriage for those who are either anti-Trump or deemed to be evil.
The Rev. Rob Schenck, an ordained evangelical minister for 37 years who has advised many Republican politicians in Washington, said White’s words were “typical” of a small, insular slice of American evangelicalism that uses provocative, emotionally charged rhetoric in speeches and sermons.
He said he had never heard a connection between “satanic pregnancies” and the passage White cited to explain the clip.
He said many evangelicals would find her words “repugnant.”
“There’s a deep and well-informed ethic that places the highest of value on first, the pre-born child in the womb and secondly, the pain and anguish of losing a pregnancy, whether by intentional abortion or by miscarriage,” Schenck said.
He said Ms. White’s speech may drive evangelicals away from Trump.
However, White attempted to clarify her comments in a statement on Twitter, writing that her words had been “taken out of context.”
“Let’s be clear what is really going on,” White said in a tweet. “This is a disingenuous attempt to use words out of context for political gain. I will just keep praying!”
White is one of America’s foremost promoters of the divisive “Prosperity Gospel.”
The Prosperity Gospel is an evangelical niche teaching that promotes donations to religious causes as a route to material wealth and physical health.
The Prosperity Gospel had its beginnings in revival tents where itinerant preachers boasted that financial success and physical healing awaited people who dug deep into their pockets to support God’s ministry.
Benny Hinn is one of the most recognized prosperity preachers in the world.
He founded Orlando Christian Center church in 1983 and began holding his healing services there.
Benny Hinn
Followers believe Hinn can heal any of their ailments if he prays over them.
His net worth is estimated around $60 million.
However, Hinn recently condemned prosperity teaching, saying it is offensive to the Holy Spirit.
“I’m sorry to say prosperity has gone a little crazy and I’m correcting my own theology, and you need to all know it, because when I read the Bible now, I don’t see it with the same eyes I saw it 20 years ago”, Hinn told an audience last month. “I think it’s an offense to the Lord, it’s an offense to say: ‘Give $1,000’. I think it’s an offense to the Holy Spirit to put a price on the gospel. I’m done with it. If I hear one more time: ‘Break the back of debt with $1,000,’ I’m going to rebuke them.”
The faith-healing evangelist Oral Roberts oversaw a ministry that eventually surpassed $110 million in total annual income and expanded to include a Tulsa, Oklahoma university bearing his name.
His chauffeur and pilot, Kenneth Copeland, was an Oral Roberts University student when they met.
He followed in his teacher’s footsteps, planting a ministry whose success led others like Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker to take up the cause.
White is among the best-known heirs to their tradition.
Others include Joel Osteen and the coincidentally named Creflo Dollar.
Dollar reportedly owns two Rolls-Royces, a Gulfstream III jet and at least three million-dollar homes.
He has declined to disclose how much he personally earns from his Georgia-based World Changers Church International.
Its preachers are polarizing figures in modern Christianity, but White’s status near the top of their ranks didn’t deter Trump from inviting her to deliver the invocation at his 2017 inauguration.
Speaking to the Washington Examiner on Friday about her forthcoming autobiography, ‘Something Greater,’ White said she and Trump made plans in 2006 to build a megachurch together.
‘He wanted to build a house of God,’ she said Friday. ‘He said, “Let’s do this, let’s build this before we’re too old”.’
White claimed Trump hired an architect and wanted her to take the project over once it was built, but a divorce from her second husband a year later sidelined everything.
Trump, she said, is a quiet Christian who ‘doesn’t know “Christian-ese”.’
But he proposed ‘a crystal cathedral for God,’ similar to televangelist Robert Schuller’s Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles. Schuller, then an active preacher, died in 2015.
She is now married to Jonathan Cain, the keyboardist from the rock band Journey.
Trump’s lack of command with Christian vernacular showed up duringhte 2016 campaign when he stumbled in a Liberty University speech with a reference to ‘two Corinthians,’ a novice’s misreading of the New Testament book ‘2 Corinthians,’ usually spoken aloud as ‘Second Corinthians.’
White told the New York Post that she is still close to Trump and sometimes visits the White House several times a week.