Paula White

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Julia Duin: It's been a long road and we've reached the end of our GetReligion journey

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Julia Duin: It's been a long road and we've reached the end of our GetReligion journey

It’s been almost nine years since that day in February 2015 when Terry called me in Alaska to ask if I’d join the GetReligion team starting March 1.

(We already had a reminder of the Mattingly family sitting in our home; an enormous lion gifted by Terry and Debra to my daughter Veeka when she was 6 1/2, about the time she stayed with them for several days while I was on a reporting trip. I’ve included a photo of the Aslan-like creature with her delighted face just after she received it. The lion still keeps vigil by her window).

The GetReligion assignment, Terry told me, was that I’d concentrate on West Coast media and culture wars coverage.

 Since then, my writing has ranged w-a-y beyond that, from John Allen Chau to Josh Harris. I have picked up a lot about analytical writing, hopefully have not made too many enemies and have shown some light into dark corners.

Sometimes I hit it out of the park. With the election of President Donald Trump and the ascendancy of his pastor, Rev. Paula White, I spread word of  an ascendant Pentecostal/charismatic movement that was way more powerful than its non-charismatic evangelical counterpart.

This was years ahead of the curve. Not a whole lot of folks were listening until Jan. 6, 2021.

But you, dear readers, were seeing it here first, starting my Nov. 10, 2020, column that begins with the frantic prayers in White’s Florida church in the face of a Trump loss. By the time my Dec. 15, 2020, column about the “Jericho March” in DC surfaced, there were prophets nationwide saying Trump would win no matter what and other disturbing trends that not enough reporters were tracking.

Why? These prophets were considered wackos by most.

My Jan. 11, 2021, column, about the aftermath of Jan. 6 (when some of those ‘wackos’ showed up on the streets of Washington) and the resulting “civil war” among charismatics got a lot more ears — and a ton of hits. By this time, the “Trump prophets” who had erroneously prophesied that the 45th president would win a second consecutive term were in the middle of a theological maelstrom. The day of Biden’s inauguration, I penned one last column on the topic here.

I count the work I did on the prophets and my coverage on Cardinal Theodore McCarrick as among the best work I did for this blog.


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Pentecostalism from soup to nuts: A (near) complete history of this movement in America

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Pentecostalism from soup to nuts: A (near) complete history of this movement in America

In early January, The Conversation, an academically oriented website affiliated with Religion News Service, ran an explainer with this headline: “What is Pentecostal Christianity?”

That’s a big, complicated question. While I appreciated the article’s emphasis on how Pentecostals are a little-noticed component in American Christianity, it was very much a Cliffs Notes version of a complex, 123-year-old movement. And it didn’t even mention the Charismatic Renewal movement, a massive spiritual shift in the 1960s that brought millions of mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics into the wider Pentecostal fold.

Pentecostalism has hit the news in recent years with revelations of the “Trump prophets,” but their rise has a long back story that few journalists understand. For many years, pentecostals have been seen as evangelicalism’s crazy sister and media coverage has hardly been incisive.

Thus, tmatt suggested that we post the following comprehensive look at the history of the movement here in the United States. I wrote this as a backgrounder for a meeting of religion reporters at the University of Maryland in 2000. I have updated it twice because the movement keeps on shifting. Some of this will sound very basic, but it’s important to know who the main players have been.

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Without a doubt, the portion of Christianity known as Pentecostalism was — by far — the fastest-growing movement of the 20th century, going from zero members on Jan. 1, 1901 to 644 million adherents worldwide now. It is the primary expression of Christianity in the Global South. It is the one form of Christianity to mount a serious challenge to the growth of Islam, mainly because of its appeal to the very poor and its reliance on the miraculous.

During my travels in places like India and Egypt years ago, I was told by religious leaders that the heavy hitters in evangelism in Hindu and Muslim contexts were the Pentecostals. When I was in Israel researching a piece on the country’s messianic Jews, my sources told me half of them, at least, were charismatic. The world’s largest churches in Korea and Nigeria are Pentecostal.


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Give the charismatic world's 'new prophets' more ink? Julia Duin still says 'yes' (updated)

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Give the charismatic world's 'new prophets' more ink? Julia Duin still says 'yes' (updated)

Surely you’ve heard of the “new prophets” in the rowdy world of charismatic Christianity?

In terms of hooks for news, these folks have everything.

We’re talking about lots of energy and egos, with the kind of on-camera talent that produces megachurches and social-media outbursts that go viral. There are also plenty of links to the powers that be around Donald Trump. This is “charisma” in every sense of that word.

Julia Duin has been sounding this horn here at GetReligion for years, long before the events surrounding January 6th caught the attention of Big Media. Here is a chunk of a 2018 post: “Religion News Service — Movie claims 'red tsunami' will vindicate Donald Trump in November.”

… (S)ecular America doesn’t get how vehemently many people believe that God orchestrated President Trump’s 2016 victory. And what’s more, many of those people believe God has mandated another victory for Trump in 2020.

You’ve not heard this? Folks, you’re not reading the right websites. …

It’s not so much evangelical Protestants who are pushing this idea, but a daughter movement made up of charismatics and Pentecostals (linked up with Liberty University film people). I’ve been amazed over the years how few religion reporters follow these folks, even though this demographic was instrumental in getting Trump elected. Plus, a growing percentage of world Christianity is Pentecostal/charismatic (see this classic major Pew Forum study). Visit Brazil, if you don’t believe me. And much of Africa.

You want more? How about this piece early in 2020: “About Todd Bentley and 2020 prophecies: How are reporters supposed to cover this stuff?”

Julia was back with more information and news hooks linked to the this new generation of self-proclaimed prophets (and the people who warned about getting tied up in politics) months later with this piece: “Who's covering this? Are charismatics and Pentecostals behind Trump's refusal to concede?”

Everyone remembers that viral “strike and strike and strike” rap from the Rev. Paula White-Cain.


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Lighthouse parable again: Faith-shaped hole in report on Donald Trump's brush with death

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Lighthouse parable again: Faith-shaped hole in report on Donald Trump's brush with death

Something is missing from that riveting Washington Post report by Damian Paletta and Yasmeen Abutaleb about Donald Trump’s battle with the coronavirus that may have been much more dangerous than the White House team let on.

The headline: “Inside the extraordinary effort to save Trump from covid-19.” This long feature was adapted from the upcoming book “Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History.”

This is a story about Trump’s hubris that is, for a change, packed with on-the-record material. Thus, I kept waiting for a specific name to show up — but it never did. I was thinking, of course, about the “lighthouse parable” that I have shared many times here at GetReligion. If you prefer the Sherlock Holmes story about the dog that didn't bark, that will work, too. Here is a flashback to that lighthouse tale:

Once there was a man who lived in a lighthouse on the foggy Atlantic. This lighthouse had a gun that sounded a warning every hour. The keeper tended the beacon and kept enough shells in the gun so it could keep firing. After decades, he could sleep right through the now-routine blasts.

Then the inevitable happened. He forgot to load extra shells and, in the dead of night, the gun did not fire.

This rare silence awoke the keeper, who lept from bed shouting, "What was that?"

Now, in my experience, when religious believers get really sick — especially if they are close to the “critical” stage — they will almost always send for their pastor. In a life-and-death situation ministers are a source of prayer, comfort and, often, sound advice (my late father spent the final decade of his ministry working as a hospital chaplain).

Thus, I kept waiting to see a reference to the Rev. Paula White, the charismatic megachurch leader who Trump supporters frequently called his spiritual advisors (click here for a Julia Duin post on White). There were other clergy who, in this case, were candidates to get a call from the White House, like the Rev. Franklin Graham, perhaps.


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What's new about Joe Biden's White House faith office and why this story bears watching

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What's new about Joe Biden's White House faith office and why this story bears watching

Not to anyone’s huge surprise, President Biden has resurrected a faith-based office as the religious face of the Biden White House.

Don’t yawn yet. There are some intriguing differences between what President Obama’s faith-based office was like and what Biden is proposing. The office’s most recent incarnation includes discussion about race, Covid, pluralism and “constitutional guarantees.” From Religion News Service:

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Sunday (Feb. 14) reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, undoing former President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape an agency that went largely unstaffed for most of his tenure.

I do need to take some issue with the top paragraph. Trump did have a faith-based office called the Faith and Opportunity Initiative, and it was headed up by Paula White-Cain, a Florida-based televangelist with no government experience.

However, her connections among evangelicals and charismatics were second to none, and those were the folks who Trump saw as essential to his surprise 2016 victory. They got well-publicized visits to the White House and photo ops in the Oval Office. What’s not as well known is there were Jewish groups who also had access through White-Cain; something I learned when I was researching this 2017 profile on Paula.

In a statement accompanying the announcement of the executive order, Biden echoed his recent remarks to the National Prayer Breakfast, bemoaning widespread physical and economic suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic, racism and climate change. He added that those struggling “are fellow Americans” and are deserving of aid.

“This is not a nation that can, or will, simply stand by and watch the suffering around us. That is not who we are. That is not what faith calls us to be,” he said. “That is why I’m reestablishing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to work with leaders of different faiths and backgrounds who are the frontlines of their communities in crisis and who can help us heal, unite, and rebuild.”

I still think White-Cain let in more folks than most people knew but she got no credit for it.

The White House announced the appointment of Melissa Rogers, a First Amendment lawyer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, to oversee the office, as she did in former President Barack Obama’s second term. Rogers will also serve as senior director for faith and public policy in the White House Domestic Policy Council.

I interviewed Rogers for my Paula piece and she was helpful and knowledgeable. She was also accessible to the press and not above taking a few pot shots with how the Trump administration was running its faith-based office in recent years. Clearly, White-Cain either didn’t read or didn’t listen to Rogers’ critiques.


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Who's covering this? Are charismatics and Pentecostals behind Trump's refusal to concede?

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On Saturday night, while Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were acknowledging the cheers of a nation, a spiritual battle was going on in Apopka, Fla.

The crowd gathered at Paula White-Cain’s City of Destiny Church was clearly dispirited at the events of the day; a day that various segments of the Pentecostal/charismatic world had declared would never happen because God would make sure that His chosen instrument, President Donald Trump, would get a second term.

“Keep on believing,” White told the crowd. “There are processes at work. …Don’t get distracted by the voices of the media. Prayer brings the will of God to pass. This is a day of rejoicing. Whenever God is moving, it’s a day of rejoicing.

“We break every spirit of mockery right now. What matters is not what man says, but what God says.”

It was her fourth day of prayer meetings since Election Day to “decree” Trump’s coming victory. At one point, her son, Bradley Knight, said he will quit the ministry if Trump is not elected.

White, as many of you know, is Trump’s highest profile pastor, so we’re not talking about a minor personality here. She is arguably America’s most powerful female religious figure. She is — acting as the spiritual force behind Trump — a key figure who is refusing to concede the election to Biden.

In social media, people are talking about this like crazy. In the news?

Her first stab at praying Trump into a second term got treated as a joke by media who hadn’t a clue of what she was trying to do. They did listen to her words, which is why she’s quoted as accusing demons of rigging the election.

Yep, she did say that.

It all started when RightWingWatch posted a video of White shouting “the Lord says it is done” on Nov. 5 about Trump’s reelection. A sample of her prayers, which read like battle orders asking God to take down Biden votes, are as follows. She prayed that:

“… every demonic confederacy against the election…against who You have declared to be in the White House … we come against people working in high levels right now.

Let your hand establish the outcome of this income … for I hear the sound of victory, I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory. I hear the sound of victory.


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Post-Trump, how will U.S. evangelicals deal with internal rifts and external hostility? 

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The Donald Trump Era will end, whether in 2025 or 2021, and current state-by-state polls suggest it's the latter.

Reporters who get religion need to prepare for coverage whenever U.S. evangelical Protestantism reassesses its Trump-free past and future. That’s a big story, since this remains the most vibrant segment of U.S. religion, indeed, one of the nation’s largest movements of any type.

Evangelicalism first has internal rifts to work through. Make that white evangelicals. For the most part, Black, Latino and Asian-American evangelical churches, distinctly different in political sentiments, are unified, thriving and granted cultural respectability by the press..

White evangelicals’ public media image is all but overwhelmed by a coterie of Trump enthusiasts (think Jerry Falwell, Jr., Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, Paula White). There’s also a dogged faction of Trump skeptics (David French, Michael Gerson, Peter Wehner, or on occasion Sen. Ben Sasse or Southern Baptist spokesman Russell Moore).

But is evangelicalism merely a political faction? Of course not.

Largely ignored by the media, there’s a vast apparatus of denominations, local congregations, “parachurch” agencies, charities, mission boards and schools where leaders (whatever they think personally about Trumpish political histrionics) focus on traditional ministry and education.

The Trump years have created a gap between that non-partisan leadership elite and grassroots folk who identify as “evangelicals” with pollsters (whatever that means in belief or practice). Innumerable news articles have reported they gave Trump 81% backing in 2016.

But white evangelicals always vote heavily Republican. The Guy advises journalists that white Catholics will decide Trump’s fate. Our own tmatt notes the evidence showing that the 2016 vote was more anti-Hillary Clinton than pro-Trump.

While the evangelicals try to overcome their political squabbles to recapture past morale, they face hostility from culture-shaping higher education and (yes) the mass media that enhances their image problems.


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Washington Post says blue USA needs 'a healer': So Oprah and Michelle are in savior biz?

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Over and over, this recent Washington Post news feature proclaims “This is not a political story,” “This is not a political story,” “ This is not a political story.”

Thus, the headline proclaims: “Greetings from the alternate universe where Oprah and Michelle Obama are running for president.”

But, of course, the whole point is that there are many blue zip-code Americans who wish, wish, wish this was a real political story. They are looking for a savior, with a small “s.”

Then again, this article — in addition to not being a political story — is not a religion story.

Maybe. It depends on how one defines “religion” right now, in the giant shopping mall of self-empowerment lingo that is American public discourse. See if you can spot a clue or two in the overture:

NEW YORK — It wasn’t long after Oprah Winfrey took the stage … for her 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus tour — equal parts Weight Watchers pitch, gospel revival and wellness fair — before she said what was on the tip of the audience’s tongues.

“In the early stages of the tour, we had trouble coming up with the right title,” she said. “We did talk about ‘Oprah 2020.’ And then I thought you would get the wrong idea.”

No, for the millionth time, Oprah is not running for president. And neither is her guest of honor that day, Michelle Obama, the nation’s most famous empty-nester, who told Winfrey she’s trying to figure out “how I want to spend the rest of my life.”

“President!” came a shout from the audience. “White House!” yelled some others.

OK, I will ask: What does “gospel” mean in this context?

Anyway, that reference opens the door for a rush of semi-spiritual lingo in this piece — even though there is no attempt to reference a brand-name religion of any kind.


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Thinker from David French: Does it matter if media elites don't 'get' Pentecostalism?

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Thinker from David French: Does it matter if media elites don't 'get' Pentecostalism?

The other day I praised Religion News Service for jumping into the Twitter tornado caused by the Rev. Paula White’s wild sermon thundering about the powers of the “marine kingdom” and the miscarriage of “satanic pregnancies” and lots of other stuff.

It was just another day in America’s shattered and splintered public discourse.

Here’s the New York Times summary of what that Right Wing Watch clip unleashed:

The video shows part of a nearly three-hour-long service at the City of Destiny church in Apopka, Fla., on Jan. 5. In it, Ms. 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,” Ms. 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 Monday, the video had been watched more than eight million times.

It appeared that no one in this shouting match had the slightest interest in promoting understanding. Some commentators weren’t even interested in accurate, honest disagreements.

However, Adelle Banks and Bob Smietana wrote a short explainer that provided crucial information about what White was saying and, most importantly, what she was not saying. Click here to see my piece on that: “RNS pros offered crucial context for 'Satanic pregnancies' sound bite.”

Now I would like to do something that I rarely do: I want to point mainstream journalists and concerned readers to another explainer digging deeper into this topic. This one is by David French, a Harvard Law graduate and First Amendment expert who is one of the most quoted #NeverTrump conservatives in American political life.

In recent weeks, the former National Review star has been doing some brilliant religion-news analysis for his new publication — The Dispatch. His new piece (“Satanic Pregnancies, Explained”) is not an attempt — obviously — to support Paula White or her political master, President Donald Trump. However, it is an attempt to explain why White’s critics, especially scribes in the mainstream press, need to slow down and try to grasp what charismatic and Pentecostal Christians believe on the topic of fierce prayer and “spiritual warfare.”


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