Paula White’s pay-to-pray scam: Trump’s faith advisor wants your cash
Trump’s spiritual guru is back at it, asking for "prophetic" payments in exchange for divine blessings
This newsletter is free, but it’s only able to sustain itself due to the support I receive from a small percentage of regular readers. Would you please consider becoming one of those supporters? You can use the button below to subscribe to Substack or use my usual Patreon page!
On February 7, Donald Trump announced that Pastor Paula White-Cain would be the Senior Advisor to his reconstituted “White House Faith Office.” Over the past several weeks, she’s spent a good chunk of her time reaching out to leaders of various religious and non-relig—I’m just kidding. She’s been using her platform to promote a variety of faith-based grifts, essentially telling viewers they need to pay to pray.
In case you’re not familiar with White, she’s a televangelist who led two massive churches in Florida. A Senate Finance Committee investigation uncovered all sorts of shady business practices in her ministries. So naturally, Trump found in her a kindred spirit.
By 2016, she was appointed chair of Trump’s “Evangelical Advisory Board” and delivered an invocation at his inauguration. She later became the “special advisor” to his “Faith and Opportunity Initiative.”
Most famously, just after Election Day in 2020—when Joe Biden was leading in the race but it hadn’t been called—White called for “angelic reinforcement” as well as “an abundance of rain” in order to secure Trump a second term… all while speaking in tongues and repeating gibberish:
(The results of that election should have proven that White’s pleas to God were going unheard.)
She has called Black Lives Matter an “anti-Christ” terrorist organization, opposes same-sex marriage because it goes against God’s wishes (even though she’s currently on her third marriage), and once claimed to visit Heaven where God “put a mantle” on her. She’s just a garden variety Christian kook who has decided right-wing extremism should color everything she does.
This is the person who’s now heading up the government’s Faith Office.
If the biggest problem with that appointment was how the administration was elevating Christianity above all other faiths and no religious faith, it would be bad enough. But White is now using her notoriety to go all in on getting rich(er).
A month ago, White literally challenged viewers to give her cash in order to receive blessings from God. Specifically, she told them to give her $133, $52, or $414 (corresponding to various Bible verses she pulled out of a hat).
They never bother to cite Genesis 1:1 when they want you to plant a seed, do they..?
Maybe that didn’t raise enough money, though, because two weeks ago, White was back asking for exactly $133 per viewer. That request came with a side of coercion: If you don’t send her the money, “God can't use you.”
(Come on, everyone. Open your wallets! It’s the “prophetic season”!)
Maybe there’s a natural explanation for this. Maybe she filmed these commercials before joining the administration. After all, it’d be grossly unethical for a White House official to make a personal pitch for cash while threatening viewers with God’s displeasure if they don’t chip in... all while working for the government.
But yesterday, she was right back at it, urging viewers to give $1,000 before Easter. (Because, I suppose, inflation?)
If they give her the money—or, as she puts it, “honor God on Passover”—they’ll receive “seven supernatural blessings,” including a personal angel assigned to them, no sickness, a longer life, and a larger inheritance.
… And I believe that when you honor God on Passover, starting on April 12th at Sundown through Good Friday on the 18th and concluding on Easter Sunday, you can receive these seven supernatural blessings for you and your house.
According to Exodus 23, God will assign an angel to you.
He'll be an enemy to your enemies.
He'll give you prosperity.
He'll take sickness away from you.
He will give you long life.
He'll bring increase in inheritance.
And he'll give a special year of blessing.
You're not doing this to get something, but you're doing it in honor to God, realizing what you can receive.
[VOICEOVER:] For your special Passover offering of $1,000 or more, as the Holy Spirit leads, you will also receive a beautiful 10-inch Waterford Crystal Cross. Don't miss your moment to release seven supernatural blessings and provision into your life.
She didn’t even have the courage to make the request herself. The voiceover did it on her behalf.
And that Waterford Crystal Cross? You can buy it on the company’s website for about $70 + shipping.
To be clear, White doesn’t invoke Trump in any of these messages. These are the kinds of grifts you see all kinds of televangelists promoting—asking you to give them money for any number of supernatural “blessings” that don’t require any actual work on their end. But given that more people might be paying attention to White because she’s now working for the administration, it’s not unreasonable to think she would clean up her act, at least until she leaves that position.
That would be asking too much.
Damn near everyone in this administration, it seems, is using their proximity to Trump to enrich themselves, including Trump. And while a few conservative Christians have denounced White for reasons that range from completely vague to she’s a woman, the white evangelicals who benefit from their ties to the Republican leader aren’t going to say a damn thing against her. They don’t have the moral foundation to take a principled stand.
Paula White-Cain may be a terrible Christian, but she’s a perfect fit for this administration.
(via Right Wing Watch)
Modern day "indulgences." There truly is a sucker born every minute.
White's act here strikes me as a combination of the old Catholic trip of selling indulgences and plain and simple COERCION. "Give me money or god can't (WON'T) use you." The sad fact is that there are plenty of people out there who will hang on her every word and open their wallets and pocketbooks for her.
♫♪ And the grift goes on ... And the grift goes on ... ♪♫