Photo Credits: Axios
Right Wing Watch, a group that "monitors and exposes the activities of Radical Right political organizations," posted a video clip to Twitter of Paula White-Cain, Trump's personal pastor and spiritual adviser, praying during a January 5th sermon before congregants at her City of Destiny church in Apopka, Florida. During her prayer she asked for "all satanic pregnancies to miscarry" provoking many reactions from people who accused her of praying for actual miscarriages. "In the name of Jesus, we command all satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now," she prayed according to CNN. "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."
This is not the first time that Paula White, who advises the president's Faith and Opportunity Initiative at the White House, calls for battle against Satan or demons or some other evil being. Vivid language and "spiritual warfare" are common in Pentecostalism, White's branch of Christianity. During last June, when Trump's re-election campaign started, Paula White called for "every demonic network" that comes against the president and this nation to stop. Her initiative was mocked by some media as a "political exorcism" and now she is repeating a similar move.
The phrase "satanic pregnancies" trended on Twitter and the video clip quickly went viral prompting enough backlash for a response. Paula White tried to defend herself against criticism over her prayer saying her words were taken "out of context for political gain."
"I don't normally respond, but clearly this has been taken out of context," White-Cain, the Florida megachurch pastor, tweeted as Fox News reports, adding she was praying a Scripture from Ephesians on spiritual warfare. "Anything that has been conceived by demonic plans, for it to be canceled and not prevail in your life, that is, any plans to hurt people."
Paula White's prayer was criticized on social media by different people, including priests, who found her prayer for miscarriages unacceptable. For example, James Martin, a Jesuit priest, wrote as CNN reports: "No pregnancies are satanic. Every child is a gift from God. No one should ever pray for any woman to miscarry. No one should ever pray for evil or harm to befall another person." Even before her prayer, Paula White faced criticism and has been panned as heretical together with the "prosperity gospel" she preaches by many evangelical and orthodox Christians.
