I’ve never had any experience with her stuff, I got lead here when I was looking for other people for this series. A lot of the bibliographical information will be taken from Wikipedia and The Gospel Coalition, because for the purposes of this project, those sources will be good enough. It’s not a paper after all.
White was born Paula Michelle Furr in Tupelo, Mississippi, the daughter of Myra Joanelle and Donald Paul Furr III. Her parents owned a toy and craft store.[11] Donald and Myra Furr’s marriage began to fail when White was five years old. White’s mother left Tupelo and took her to Memphis; her separation from her husband and his subsequent suicide drove White, her brother, and her mother into poverty.[12] White’s mother became an alcoholic. While she worked, caregivers looked after her daughter. White has said that she was sexually and physically abused between the ages of six and thirteen by different people on different occasions. White has said that during that time, she suffered from bulimia.[13][14][15]
White’s mother married a two-star admiral in the United States Navy when White was nine years old. Her family moved to the Washington, D.C. area when her stepfather, Charles Ray Loar, was stationed at the National Naval Medical Center.[16][17] White graduated from Seneca Valley High School in Germantown, Maryland.[15][18]
While living in Maryland in 1984, White converted to Christianity at the Damascus Church of God. White later claimed to have received a vision from God shortly after her conversion.[11]
White was married and had a child when she met Randy White, an associate pastor at the church she was attending. Randy was also married and had three children. Paula and Randy divorced their spouses and married each other in 1989. In 1991, Paula and Randy started a church called South Tampa Christian Center. Because the church only had five members and could not afford to pay the Whites, the couple “lived on government assistance and the kindness of others.” By 2006, however, the church—now dubbed Without Walls International Church—claimed to have 20,000 people, making it the seventh-largest congregation in the United States. A year later, the couple announced to the church they were getting a divorce.
In 2001, White told her then-husband Randy that she wanted to start a television show. Paula White Today aired its first episode in 2001, and by 2006 the show was on nine television networks, including Black Entertainment Network (BET), Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and Country Music Television (CMT). Through her show, White attracted numerous celebrities to her ministry, including Jonathan Cain, keyboardist for the rock band Journey (whom she married in 2014), model Tyra Banks, NFL veteran Deion Sanders, and the late Michael Jackson. White even made a trip to Jackson’s Neverland in 2003 to provide “spiritual support” after the singer was arrested on charges of child molestation. Her most famous fan is Donald Trump, whom she says “called her out of the blue” in 2015, repeated three of her televised sermons “verbatim,” and said she had the “it factor.”
White’s career was boosted when prosperity preacher T. D. Jakes invited her to speak at his “Woman Thou Art Loosed” conference in 2000. White has described Jakes as her “spiritual father” (she sent him a black convertible Bentley for his 50th birthday).
Even if she rejects prosperity Gospel now, these are all the hallmarks of a person in the throws of it. Maybe God is working on her. My question is why would Franklin Graham want to be involved in this kind of stuff. Also, it makes sense why Donald Trump is so confused about Christianity when he has her for a “spiritual advisor.” It doesn’t seem like it’s the same thing. I would be confused too. So are a lot of other people probably. Hopefully God can bring her around. We don’t need people getting confused.
She’s a wild one.