She led Trump to Christ: The rise of the televangelist who advises the White House

Evangelicals have access to the WH now---including Alabama Moore-voting Evangelicals.





She led Trump to Christ: The rise of the televangelist who advises the White House


https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/she-led-trump-to-christ-the-rise-of-the-televangelist-who-advises-the-white-house/2017/11/13/1dc3a830-bb1a-11e7-be94-fabb0f1e9ffb_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_paulawhite-1255pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d648b9d68836


By Julia Duin November 14 at 7:00 AM



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(Illustration by Peter Strain for The Washington Post)


It was an early afternoon in late July, and Paula White was holding court before an audience of about 25 Southern Baptist ministers in an ornate diplomatic reception room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The televangelist was recounting one of her favorite stories — about when Donald Trump reached out to her in 2011 for guidance on a possible White House run. “Would you bring some people around me to pray?” she said he asked her. “I really want to hear from God.” White recalled that she and another pastor gathered about 30 ministers from different evangelical Christian traditions at Trump Tower in Manhattan. After the prayer session, when Trump asked her what she thought, she responded: “I don’t feel it’s the right timing.”

He listened, she continued, and the two talked and prayed about the matter over the next four years. When White again gathered religious leaders at Trump Tower in September 2015, she backed the decision he’d already made to run. Videos on YouTube of that event show her standing on his right, head down, laying hands on him as she prayed.
's inauguration on Jan. 20. Here's why she is a considered to be controversial choice. (Claritza Jimenez/Photo: AP, Video: The Post)

So here she was in the summer of 2017 at the head of a long table in the Executive Office Building, a huge French-Empire structure just steps from the White House, addressing a group of religious leaders who had been invited to Washington by the president’s evangelical advisory council. With her blond hair, scarlet Oscar de la Renta sheath dress and matching patent leather stilettos, she was a bright bird among the forest of dark-suited clergymen — and, she made it clear, the one with the access to Trump. “The president says hello,” she told them. “I was with him first thing this morning.”


Because of White, evangelicals have “an unprecedented opportunity to have our voice and say heard” in the Oval Office, Tim Clinton, president of the American Association of Christian Counselors, informed the assembled pastors. “God has placed Paula in a unique place for such a time as this.”....................



...............Trump is not an active member of any church, has publicly said he doesn’t need to ask God for forgiveness, and infamously bragged about sexually assaulting women. But bring up those issues with White, and she responds with the story of Jesus speaking with an adulterous Samaritan woman at a well. “He didn’t lord it over her but sat with her,” she says. “He gets down in the dirty places of life. Does that make Jesus complicit with an adulteress? No. Because you stand with people doesn’t mean you’re complicit with them.” Later she tells me, “I don’t give up on people. I don’t have a dimmer switch. It’s who I am. Until I am kicked out, I will be with you. I don’t abandon people. I just don’t.”.....