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Tag: prosperity gospel
Donald Trump, Rev. Franklin Graham

Cohen Book Hilariously Describes Trump Mocking And Deceiving Evangelical Leaders

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Michael Cohen's book about his years as Donald Trump's fixer is a clarion call to Christians to wake up and recognize that the man many of them revere as a heavenly agent is a religious fraud who loathes them and mocks their faith.

In Disloyal, published this week, Cohen shows how Trump is a master deceiver. He quotes Trump calling Christianity and its religious practices "bullshit," soon after he masterfully posed as a fervent believer. In truth, Cohen writes, Trump's religion is unbridled lust for money and power at any cost to others.


Cohen's insider stories add significant depth to my own documenting of Trump's repeated and public denouncements of Christians as "fools," "idiots," and "schmucks."

In extensive writing and speeches, Trump has declared that his life philosophy is "revenge." That stance is aggressively anti-Christian. So are Trump's often publicly expressed desires to violently attack others, mostly women, and his many remarks that he derives pleasure from ruining the lives of people over such minor matters as declining to do him a favor.

Cohen reinforces these facts with new anecdotes about Trump's utter disregard for other people and his contempt for religious belief. Cohen's words should shock the believers who were critical to his becoming president, provided they ever read them. By denouncing the book Trump has ensured that many of those he has tricked into believing he is a deeply religious man will never fulfill their Christian duty to be on the lookout for deceivers.

None of the evangelicals I have interviewed in the past five years knew that in writing Trump has denounced their beliefs and written of the communion host as "my little cracker."

Despite the irrefutable evidence that Trump detests Christianity and ridicules such core beliefs as the Golden Rule and turning the other cheek, America is filled with pastors who praise him to their flocks as a man of god. Trump himself has looked heavenward outside the White House to imply he was chosen by god.

Pastors who support Trump were scolded two years ago by Christianity Today, a magazine founded by Billy Graham, for not denouncing Trump as "profoundly immoral." Many evangelical pastors then attacked the magazine rather than following the Biblical incantation to examine their own souls.

Cohen writes that as a young man who grew up encountering Mafioso and other crooks at a country club he fell into the "trace like spell" of Trump, whom he describes as an utterly immoral, patriarchal mob boss and con man. Cohen says he was "an active oparticipant" in everything from Trump getting "golden showers" in Las Vegas to corrupt deals with Russian officials.

Trump is "consumed by the worldly lust for wealth and rewards," Cohen writes, which puts him at odds with the teaching of Jesus Christ about what constitutes a good life.

"Places of religious worship held absolutely no interest to him, and he possessed precisely zero personal piety in his life," Cohen writes.

Cohen explains that the only version of Christianity that could possibly interest Trump is the "prosperity gospel." That is a perverse belief that financial wealth is a sign of heavenly approval rooted in 19th Century occult beliefs that is anathema to Christian scripture.

Many actual Christians regard the prosperity gospel as evil. The evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham, Christianity Today, calls it "an aberrant theology" promoted by such disgraced televangelists as Jimmy Swaggart and Jim and Tammy Baker.

Early in Trump's aborted 2012 presidential campaign, Cohen writes, he was ordered to reach out to faith communities. Soon Paula White, now the White House adviser on faith, proposed a meeting at Trump Tower with evangelical leaders. Cohen writes that Trump liked White because she was blonde and beautiful.

Cohen said that among those attending were Jerry Falwell Jr., who recently resigned in disgrace as head of Liberty University, and Creflo Dollar, who solicited donations for a $65 million corporate jet and who was criminally charged that year with choking his daughter. Dollar said those charges were the work of the devil.

Once the evangelical leaders took their seats, Cohen writes, Trump quickly and slickly portrayed himself as a man of deep faith. Cohen writes that this was nonsense

After soaking in Trump's deceptions, the leaders proposed laying hands on Trump, a religious affirmation of divine approval. Cohen was astounded when Trump, a germaphobe, eagerly accepted.

"If you knew Trump as I did, the vulgarian salivating over beauty contestants or mocking Roger Stone's" sexual proclivities, you would have a hard time keeping a straight face at the sight of him affecting the serious and pious mien of a man of faith. I knew I could hardly believe the performance or the fact that these folks were buying it," Cohen writes.

"Watching Trump I could see that he knew exactly how to appeal to the evangelicals' desires and vanities – who they wanted him to be, not who he really was. Everything he was telling them about himself was absolutely untrue."

To deceive the evangelicals, Cohen writes, Trump would "say whatever they wanted to hear."

Trump's ease at deception became for Cohen an epiphany, though a perverse one.

In that moment, Cohen writes, he realized the boss would someday become president because Trump "could lie directly to the faces of some of the most powerful religious leaders in the country and they believed him."

Later that day, Cohen writes, he met up with Trump in his office.

"Can you believe that bullshit," Trump said of the laying on of hands. "Can you believe that people believe that bullshit."

Cohen also writes about Trump's desire, expressed behind closed doors, to destroy those who offend him. Trump has said the same, though less vividly, in public.

"I love getting even," Trump declared in his book Think Big, espousing his anti-Christian philosophy. "Go for the jugular. Attack them in spades!"

He reiterated that philosophy this year at the National Prayer Breakfast. Holding up two newspapers with banner headlines reporting his Senate acquittal on impeachment charges, Trump said, "I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, 'I pray for you,' when they know that that's not so."

Trump spoke after Arthur Brooks, a prominent conservative, told the breakfast meeting that "contempt is ripping our country apart."

Mr. Brooks went on: "We're like a couple on the rocks in this country…Ask God to take political contempt from your heart. And sometimes, when it's too hard, ask God to help you fake it."

Everyone in the room rose to applaud Brooks except Trump, though he finally stood up as the applause died down, rose.

Taking the microphone, Trump said, "Arthur, I don't know if I agree with you… I don't know if Arthur is going to like what I'm going to say."

Trump then said he didn't believe in forgiveness. That is just as Cohen wrote: "Trump is not a forgiving person." Trump's words at the prayer breakfast made clear that he rejects the teaching of Jesus at Luke 6:27: "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you."

The question pastors should raise in their Sunday sermons, the question Cohen'sbook lays before them, is how can any Christian support a man who mocks Christianity, embraces revenge as his only life philosophy, and rejects that most basic Biblical teaching– forgiveness.

New White House ‘Faith Adviser’ Is Prosperity Gospel Grifter

New White House ‘Faith Adviser’ Is Prosperity Gospel Grifter

The ascension of Paula White as an official member of Donald Trump’s White House highlights how closely Trump is relying on his inner circle of evangelical Christian supporters as he fights an impeachment probe during his reelection bid — while giving liberal evangelicals a new opening to push back at his administration’s mingling of religion and policymaking.

White, is a televangelist who has sparked division among fellow Christians over her association with the so-called “prosperity gospel,” an assertion that God rewards believers with personal as well as financial success. She’s also frequently identified as personal minister to Trump and is now set to become an adviser heading Trump’s Faith and Opportunity Initiative, according to a White House official.

In some ways, her new position only formalizes her long-standing influence in the White House. The 53-year-old has known Trump for more than 15 years and frequently meets with him alongside fellow evangelical Christian advisers, including a White House visit this week where the group laid hands on Trump in prayer. But White is a more contentious figure within her faith than other pro-Trump evangelicals and was the subject of a years-long investigation into her finances by Iowa Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley.

That profile makes White, who uses her married name White-Cain, a compelling symbol for liberal Christians who are making an increasingly vocal appeal to religious Americans who do not align with Trump’s broader political agenda.

“The rise of the religious left has been given a shot in the arm every time Trump doubles down on his white evangelical base,” said Guthrie Graves-Fitzsimmons, a religious activist on the left who created an anti-Trump network called The Resistance Prays. “Yes, he may score short term political points. But in the long term, he really is energizing and mobilizing this whole swath of people who are religious and are astonished by what’s happening with the Paula Whites of the world.”

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a liberal evangelical preacher who works with the progressive group Red Letter Christians, said White’s use of her ministry “to exploit the poor … should be of real concern to all people of faith.”

“While we often frame religion in public life as progressives to conservatives, it’s important to say that even within that frame, Paula White is an extremist and always has been,” Wilson-Hartgrove said.

The White House role for White, whose ministry did not immediately return an interview request, was first reported by The New York Times. She distanced herself from the prosperity gospel in a 2017 statement that said she would “reject any theology that doesn’t affirm or acknowledge the entirety of scriptural teaching about God’s presence and blessing in suffering as much as in times of prosperity.”

The Florida-based televangelist’s website features a pitch for followers to purchase a $130 “Favor Seed” in order to help battle “an enemy of debt, depression, a job, or a health issue prevailing against you.”

The White House initiative she will advise was created by the Trump administration last year to help faith-based groups partner with the federal government. White’s advisory role, according to the executive order setting up the initiative, empowers her to suggest “changes to policies, programs, and practices that affect the delivery of services by faith-based and community organizations.”

Beyond White’s new position, Trump’s meeting this week with his closest conservative evangelical supporters included some discussion of how they would try to energize their contacts on Trump’s behalf, according to attendee Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Perkins said that while the Tuesday meeting with Trump was not entirely “a planning session,” attendees did perform “a quick inventory” of their own networks to determine what “we can do” to help Trump.

“Several of us have daily radio programs and some of us have TV programs and some of (us) lead very large churches and ministries,” Perkins said. “It was more looking around the room and how do we be more intentional about getting this out there and using the platforms that we already have.”