No, Paula White doesn't represent me.

David French's confused indictment

On Monday I started my morning by pouring a cup of coffee and digging into a New York Times article by David French. Then I went to a dental cleaning. It’s not clear which was more unpleasant. The dental hygienist was at least careful.

French begins with a statement I assume he means to be principled and provocative: “America needs to nail 95 theses to the megachurch door.” He doesn’t suggest what any of those 95 theses would be, but I would suggest, “Learn about your subject matter before writing.” He then launches into a critique of Paula White, Lorenzo Sewell, and the prosperity gospel. No argument here. The prosperity gospel—the belief that God will bless you with health and wealth in proportion to your faithfulness, and particularly your giving to prosperity teachers—is a nasty perversion of orthodox Christian belief.

Particularly offensive to French is the close relationship between White, other preachers of her ilk, and Donald Trump. Again, I find no cause for argument. If a president is going to seek out Christian religious advisors, I would prefer those advisors to represent something akin to the faith once and for all entrusted to the saints (Jude 3). Saints and martyrs have suffered for the faith across the ages, and to treat the Christian life as a financial transaction is to spit upon their witness.

French then continues, “At this point, it’s safe to say that evangelicals are more responsible than any other American group for Trump’s political power. It is my community that has made him president — twice. If you removed white evangelicals in particular from his coalition, he would have lost all three of his presidential races by a landslide” (emphasis original).

Wait… I thought we were talking about Paula White and Lorenzo Sewell. Now we’ve shifted the discussion to “evangelicals.” What’s going on? Why the subtle conflation of these prosperity preachers and “evangelicals” writ large?

French continues,

[Trump’s] bond with evangelicals isn’t just a result of flawed theology. It’s a result of the broken culture that flawed theology helped create. And in some parts of American Christianity the theology is so flawed, and the culture is so broken, that evangelicals don’t see Trump contradicting their values at all — he’s exactly like the men and women who lead their church.

He then returns to White and Sewell.

If the term “evangelical” refers to any Protestant apart from mainline progressives, then, sure, you can lump together Paula White, Russell Moore, Derwin Gray, and John Mark Comer. At that point, however, the category is so broad as to be of little use. By conflating White, Sewell, and other evangelical figures, however, French subtly delegitimizes the entirety of American evangelicalism—a tradition he claims to represent.

Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

It should go without saying that many evangelicals reject the flamboyance and false teaching of the prosperity gospel. That includes many charismatic evangelicals, which brings us to French’s next category mistake:

White and Sewell are part of the independent charismatic movement, also known as independent network charismatic Christianity.

Independent charismatics are Christians who, roughly speaking, believe strongly in the supernatural works of God (such as gifts of healing and prophecy) and worship at nondenominational churches.

White and Sewell may be independent charismatic Christians, but is it fair to describe them as typical of other independent charismatic churches? Two things are at work here. First, more and more churches are choosing independent (i.e., nondenominational) governance. Like French, I view this trend negatively. I agree that such governance has serious liabilities. Then again, I came out of a denomination that experienced spectacular failures of governance. Denominationalism does have its own liabilities.

Second, more and more Christians in the U.S. may rightly be described as “charismatic.” When people ask me what a charismatic Christian is, I simply respond that charismatics are Christians who believe that God does things. God has agency. More specifically, we affirm the gifts described in 1 Corinthians 12:7-11 and Romans 12:4-8. If you expect those gifts in your churches, you are a charismatic Christian. This distinguishes charismatics from liberal Protestants, who believe that the supernatural events described in Scripture are simply ancient myths, and cessationists, who believe the gifts of the Spirit ceased after the time of the apostles.

To his credit, French cites Matthew Taylor, who has done extensive research on these issues. Among the matters Taylor has taken up is the rise of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which is probably the appropriate category for White et al. The NAR is often associated with dominionism, or the idea that Christians must take dominion over society by acquiring political and social power in specific areas. Dale Coulter provided a broad historical overview and critique of the NAR in a 2021 Firebrand article. Even within the NAR, however, one finds considerable diversity with regard to the extent to which various figures have become politically involved. Some have tried to stay away from politics. Others have embraced it enthusiastically.

Regarding the leadership of these “independent network churches,” French writes, “In addition to the prosperity gospel, there’s also the concept of an ‘anointing,’ an irrevocable divine authority to lead.” Within charismatic circles, “anointing” is simply a blessing for leadership. Many Christians who don’t use this term would still affirm the concept. Notions of ministerial calling and ordination are not altogether different from what charismatics mean by “anointing.”

The idea is rooted in the anointing of Israel’s kings—particularly Saul and David—which was both a physical act (anointing with oil) and symbolic of God’s choosing of that person for leadership. God chose Saul and sent Samuel to anoint him (1 Samuel 9:16-17). Yet God later rejected Saul: “[T]he Lord has turned from you and become your enemy” (1 Sam 28:16). The anointing is revocable. Yes, some charismatic Christian groups have a “touch-not-the-Lord’s-anointed” approach to their leaders. This is not, however, a universal approach among charismatic Christians.

French hedges at the end of the article.

Independent charismatics are a subset of conservative evangelicalism. There are countless Christian Trump voters who are appalled by the theology and morality of his more extreme followers. People I love and respect voted for Trump, and they think of White as a heretic and reject Cahn’s prophecies (emphasis original).

If this is the case, then, why spend so much time talking about evangelicals and independent charismatics? What do these have to do with White and Sewell? Why tar everyone with the same brush until the “to-be-sure” disclaimer at the end of the article? Is this simply a case of guilt by association, no matter how distant or strained that association may be?

Some people will skim this post and conclude it is about Trump, either for or against him. It is not. It is about rhetoric, persuasion, argument, and the ways we Christians talk about our faith. I can abide disagreement, including political disagreement. Yet I struggle to have patience for bad arguments. Whatever giftedness in reason and writing French may have, it is not apparent in this piece. If he wishes to criticize American evangelicals for supporting Trump (which he has before), that is one thing. To link them as a whole with the diseased religion of prosperity preaching and its most flamboyant representatives, however, is entirely another.

American evangelicalism is a large, diverse, complex collection of churches, networks, and denominations. The very definition of the term “evangelical” is contested. The muddled logic of French’s article may reinforce the assumptions of those predisposed to sneer at evangelical Christians in their broad support for Trump. For anyone trying to understand the reasons for this support, or to get a sense of the interplay of politics and religion within evangelicalism, or to understand the relationship between the NAR and the Trump administration, French’s article offers little help. And these issues, it seems to me, warrant considerable examination and discussion.