Paula White

Paula White-Cain (b. 1966) is a prosperity gospel televangelist based in Apopka, Florida, who became Donald Trump's primary religious confidante beginning around 2002, when Trump began attending her church services at Without Walls International Church in Tampa. She has described Trump calling her 'the greatest religious leader I've ever met.' White's biography includes: childhood in Mississippi marked by sexual abuse (by her own account); conversion to Christianity at 18; a succession of marriages (she has been married three times, including to musician Jonathan Cain of the band Journey, whom she married in 2015); the founding of Paula White Ministries; and leadership of various megachurches. Her theology is prosperity gospel in a particularly direct form: she has urged followers to pay their tithe before their other bills, taught that giving financial 'first fruits' offerings to her ministry activates divine financial blessing, and that God's favor is demonstrated through material success. The Senate Finance Committee's 2007–2008 investigation of prosperity gospel ministries included White's ministry among those examined (Senator Charles Grassley, chair); White refused to fully comply with document requests. White's political role: 1. She delivered one of the invocations at Trump's January 20, 2017 inauguration. 2. She chaired Trump's evangelical advisory board during the 2016 campaign. 3. In November 2019, Trump named her Special Advisor to the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative — a formal White House staff position. 4. In the period following the November 2020 election, White appeared in videos praying for Trump's victory, speaking in tongues, and calling 'angels from Africa' and declaring that 'all Satanic pregnancies will miscarry right now' (that line came from a January 2020 sermon; White said it was taken out of context and referred to demonic plans, not literal pregnancies). She backed Trump's claims that the 2020 election had been stolen. Her NAR connections: White's spiritual network overlaps substantially with the New Apostolic Reformation — she is associated with apostles and prophets in the NAR network and has spoken at NAR events. The ideological transmission: White's presence in the White House made the prosperity gospel and NAR theological framework part of the official apparatus of the executive branch — completing the merger of these movements with state power.

Themes this entry appears in

• Christian Nationalism
• Political Strategy
• Anti-Democratic

Connections from Paula White

• influenced → New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) / Seven Mountains Mandate (2010) — Scholars of the movement, including Matthew D. Taylor, place Paula White in networks that overlap with the New Apostolic Reformation; her post-2020-election spiritual warfare activity (praying in tongues, calling angels from Africa, prophesying Trump's victory) reflected NAR spiritual warfare theology and connected her White House access to the NAR network.
• influenced → Prosperity Gospel Network (2002) — Paula White is one of the most prominent prosperity gospel preachers in the United States. Her theology — that faith produces material wealth, that financial giving to ministries is a spiritual investment with guaranteed return, that God's blessing is measurable in worldly success — is prosperity gospel in its clearest form. Her Without Walls International Church in Tampa (co-founded with ex-husband Randy White) and her New Destiny Christian Center in Apopka, Florida operated on the prosperity gospel fundraising model. Her role as Trump's primary religious advisor brought prosperity gospel theology directly into the White House, reinforcing the theological framework in which Trump's visible wealth demonstrated divine favor.

Sources

• Trump's spiritual adviser Paula White warns Christians to give to church before paying their bills — Newsweek (2020)
• Did Trump adviser Paula White pray for all 'satanic pregnancies' to be terminated? — Snopes (2020)
• Paula White's Strange Rise to Trump's Spiritual Adviser — New York Times (2017)
• Trump's Prosperity Gospel — The Atlantic (2020)
• Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation — Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020), pp. 270–285