'False teacher': Conservative Christians turn on Trump's spiritual adviser
Some conservative Christians are unhappy with the leadership of Donald Trump's new White House Faith Office, which was established through the same executive order directing the Department of Justice to prosecute alleged cases of "anti-Christian bias."
The president put his longtime spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain in charge of the Faith Office to assist Attorney General Pam Bondi in pursuing those cases and protecting religious liberties, but some conservative Christians say the administration has failed to protect religious charity groups from its government funding cuts, reported NOTUS.
“The most significant distinction here is that under both Republican and Democratic administrations, the Faith Office, what’s now being called the Faith Office, has thought well of religious charity in this country,” said Michael Wear, a writer and founder of a Christian nonprofit who worked in Barack Obama’s faith-based partnerships office. “This might be the first administration that has set out to disparage faith-based charity in this country."
ALSO READ: 'Not much I can do': GOP senator gives up fight against Trump's tariffs
White-Cain, president of the National Faith Advisory Board and pastor of a church in Florida, has been the president's spiritual adviser since 2002, but she has long faced criticism for her prosperity gospel theology and for being a female pastor, which some Christian denominations don't permit.
“Anybody that you know holds true to strong biblical conviction and discernment wouldn’t be involved with Paula White,” said conservative influencer Jon Root. “She’s 100 percent a false teacher.”
Franklin Graham, founder and CEO of Samaritan’s Purse, said he supports the president's actions, including the DOGE freeze to foreign aid and refugee settlements that some charities say had cut into their mission.
“The Faith Office is a good thing,” Graham said. “It gives groups across the country, churches, denominations, a person in the White House that they can take their concerns to.”
But many faith-based organizations say they still haven't seen funds flowing back to their international and domestic charity work despite court orders to spend the congressionally approved funding.
“It feels like an attack on the faith-based nonprofit providers,” one senior leader at a network of Christian charities told NOTUS. “Our question is: Are we going to see more of this challenge to faith-based social ministry, health and human service organizations? We’re wondering where this goes, and that’s our concern.”