President Donald Trump has added Florida televangelist Paula White to his administration. She will be an adviser to the president’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative in the White House’s Office of Public Liaison.

The New York Times calls the 53-year-old White “a quintessentially Trump figure: a television preacher, married three times, who lives in a mansion [and believes] that God wants followers to find wealth and health -- commonly called the prosperity gospel.”

Her beliefs have made her controversial even in religious circles. The Rev. William J. Barber II, a protestant minister who is co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, called her message “a false gospel.”

“It is an attempt,” he said, “to interpret the gospel to be primarily about personal wealth and personal power, which is contrary to the theology of Jesus where the good news was always focused on caring for the poor, the least of these, the stranger, the sick.”

Richard W. Painter, a University of Minnesota law professor who served as White House ethics counsel during the George W. Bush administration, was harsher. He took to Twitter over the weekend to warn that she is “the face of fascism.”

White’s embrace of the prosperity gospel surely appeals to President Trump, who has long boasted of his wealth. But it’s likely her full-throated support of the president that has brought her into the White House at a time when he is facing the prospect of impeachment by the U.S. House of Representatives. In a June sermon, she denounced “demonic” networks in what’s been interpreted to be a reference to cable-news channels like CNN, which Trump repeatedly has called “Fake News.”

“We are not wrestling against flesh and blood but against principalities, powers, against rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” White declared in the sermon. “So right now let every demonic network that has aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of President Trump, let it be broken, let it be torn down in the name of Jesus.”

She continued:

“I declare President Trump will overcome every strategy from hell, and every strategy of the enemy, every strategy, and he will fulfill his calling and his destiny.”

The Rev. Johnnie Moore, who serves on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, says White has been misunderstood and has served the president well over the past three years in an unofficial capacity.

Stated Moore:

“She has been a very effective liaison to many types of Christians and deserves a great deal of credit for her role in advancing a bipartisan policy agenda.”

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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