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How Trump’s MAGA Pastor From Florida Is Connected To The Black Community

How Trump’s MAGA Pastor From Florida Is Connected To The Black Community

MAGA pastor
Paula White, Trump’s MAGA pastor from Florida, considered megachurch Pastor T.D. Jakes to be her spiritual father and she has insisted that Trump is not racist. Trump smiles as White prepares to lead the room in prayer during a dinner for evangelical leaders in the White House, Aug. 27, 2018. White now has a formal role in the administration with the Public Liaison office, which oversees outreach to the president’s base. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Married three times, lives in a mansion, has a TV following — we not talking about President Donald Trump but his newest White House advisor and longtime personal pastor, Paula White.

White, a TV evangelist from Florida who worships at the church of prosperity — she’s a “prosperity gospel” pastor — now works at the Trump administration office responsible for outreach to religious voters. Those are the voters considered essential to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign.

Prosperity gospel is an aberrant theology, according to Christianity Today. It teaches that God rewards faith—and hefty tithing—with financial blessings. Prominent televangelists Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Bakker got very rich and famous preaching prosperity gospel in the 1980s despite being dogged by sex scandals.

MAGA Pastor White, who delivered the invocation at Trump’s inauguration, is now an advisor to Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative in the Office of Public Liaison, the New York Post reported.

Trump isn’t known for being a man of faith but White has been connected to him and his family since 2001 when Trump saw her on a Christian TV show.

“I can say 1,000 percent our president is not a racist,” White told journalists on Sept. 9, 2017, at the Religion News Association annual conference in Nashville.

A survivor of child sexual abuse, White started her religious ministry at the South Tampa Christian Center in 1991 with then-husband Randy White. The church struggled financially and they changed its name to Without Walls International Church. By 1999, they reported 5,000 attendees a week. In 2002, they expanded to Lakeland, Florida, and reported 14,000 members. By 2004, they reported a congregation of 20,000 — the seventh-largest church in the U.S. Without Walls received $150 million from 2004 to 2006, according to a U.S. Senate committee audit.

By 2014, Without Walls was without cash and filed for bankruptcy. White insisted she had resigned by then and had no part in the bankruptcy.

White diversified, getting into life coaching, motivational speaking and women’s wellness retreats, and ministering to icons, Washington Post reported. These included Michael Jackson, Gary Sheffield, and Darryl Strawberry.  White was the personal pastor to Strawberry, starting in 2003 following his release from prison on charges of cocaine possession. Charisse Strawberry, Darryl’s wife at the time, was an assistant to White and went with her on speaking engagements. White was Tyra Banks’ personal coach and appeared on the “Tyra Banks Show” in 2006 to talk about promiscuity.

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White considered megachurch Pastor T.D. Jakes her spiritual father, according to Wikipedia. Jakes invited her to speak at his “Woman Thou Art Loosed” conference in 2000. She also participated in the Mega Fest, hosted by Jakes in Atlanta, in 2004, 2005 and 2008.

“The theme of my life is overcoming,” said White, who authored self-help books including “Daily Treasures: Words of Wisdom for the Power-Filled Life”. “It is my personal mantra and what I help other people do.”

Her message attracted a mix of Black, Asian and Latino members rarely seen in a congregation headed by a white couple, Julia Duin reported for Washington Post.

“You know you’re onto something new and significant when the most popular woman preacher on the Black Entertainment Network is a white woman,” Ebony magazine said of White in a 2004 report.

“Paula White is an incredible trailblazer,” Clemson University political science professor Laura Olson told the Washington Post. “Like it or not, she is extraordinary for what she has accomplished. She’s willing to be feminine, to be the wife, to take direction from her husband in certain areas, but then she’s leading a congregation — and not just a congregation of white people but of African Americans. How many white women do that?”