Back in 2016, President Donald Trump had appointed televangelist Paula White as president’s chair of his evangelical advisory board. Now, in 2025, President Trump has once again appointed Paula White to another office - this time, to lead his “White House Faith Office.”
This announcement comes fresh on the heels of his directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to form and lead a task force to “end anti-Christian bias.”
White, divorced twice and currently married to former Journey rhythm guitarist Jonathan Cain, is a well-known proponent of both charismatic teaching and the prosperity gospel. Having appointed her to the position on Thursday, February 7, at a National Prayer Meeting in Washington, D.C., Trump also stated:
If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country. We probably don’t even have a country... While I am in the White House, we will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, hospitals, and in our public squares, and we will bring our countries back together as one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all.
While Trump’s move to defend and promote Christianity is commendable, his choice of Paula White is not only disastrous, but sinful. Her theology alone would be enough to disqualify any man from the office of pastor, but she is undoubtedly not a man. As a woman, she has absolutely no right to the office of pastor. First Timothy 2:11-15 very directly spells out the fact that women are not to pastor or preach:
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.
Scripture appeals to the ordinances of creation itself to make the case that women ought not to preach or pastor. This is not simply a cultural argument, but an argument from creation. This fundamentally underscores the point that women cannot, under any circumstance, pastor or preach.
In fact, 1 Timothy 3:1-7 further outlines the qualifications for a pastor, and every single qualification presupposes that the candidate in view is a man:
The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.
Not only is Paula White disqualified from pastoring on the basis of her womanhood, she also would be disqualified based on the other criteria as well. While a pastor must be “the husband of one wife,” Paula White has been the wife of several husbands. While a pastor must be “able to teach,” Paula White seems incapable of understanding or articulating just exactly who Jesus is, what He came to do, or how sinners are now saved through faith in Him. A pastor must “not [be] a lover of money,” but Paula White’s decades long ministry of preaching health, wealth, and prosperity has proved, over and again, that she loves money.
Paula White cannot pastor. Paula White cannot preach. Paula White, quite simply, cannot lead the “White House Faith Office.”
The Trump administration has proved that it has enough common sense to recognize the difference between male and female, especially as it has championed the rights of women to compete against only women. It has made strides, in just a few short weeks, in fighting against LGBTQ and feminist dogma that has ultimately tried to blur, and even destroy, a proper and biblical view of gender and sex. However, the Scriptures are quite clear: because male and female distinctions matter, there are things that God has created only man to be able to do, and things that God has created only women to be able to do.
Women cannot pastor or preach. To place a woman in charge of a task force like this is to cut the thing off at its legs before it can even get moving. God simply cannot bless the appointing of Paula White to an office like this because she is not qualified, called, or able.
Let this, then, be a call for both Trump’s repentance and for his reappointing of someone else to the role. Paula White is incapable of fulfilling the functions of this role and, as much as it is sinful for her to try, it is equally sinful to placing her in this position.
The position can be both important and good, but it will require the appointing of a biblically qualified and called man to the role. Pray that the Lord would provide such a man as this.
