Robert Jeffress recently joined a group of faith leaders at the Oval Office to lay hands on the president.
Pastor Robert Jeffress of the 16,000-member First Baptist Dallas church was among the handful of conservative faith leaders who flocked to the White House to visit President Donald Trump last week.
The 69-year-old Southern Baptist from North Texas advised Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign, celebrated Trump's victory at an election watch party in Florida and applauded their recent creation of a Faith Office and task force to root out "anti-Christian" bias in the U.S. Now, as a still image of the March 17 event circulates across social media platforms showing Jeffress and others with their eyes closed as they prayed over Trump in the Oval Office, the reality that conservative pastors have significant influence in national politics is settling in.
In a Fox News interview over the weekend, Jeffress appeared confident as he pledged his continued allegiance to Trump and to the current administration’s mass deportation plans and executive orders targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. The pastor even alleged that former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden "hated conservative Christianity and everyone who followed it."
"Thank God for this president," Jeffress said on March 22. "One of the great ironies in history is going to be [when] people look back and see that it took a secular, New York real-estate tycoon from New York City to put faith back into its proper place in American life."
His remarks echoed the growing sentiment that some conservative pastors from Texas simply no longer have an interest in appealing to Christian Democrats, though his use of the term "secular" seemed to go against Trump's statements that he is a Christian without a formal denomination. In a majority Christian country, Trump has managed to build a loyal base in white evangelical Protestants despite his wavering on abortion issues. Biden is reportedly Catholic and attends mass regularly. Obama has identified as a non-denominational Christian.
Appearing on the same Fox News segment, Paula White-Cain, a Florida televangelist and senior advisor to the president's newly established White House Faith Office, said that she joined about 16 other religious leaders in "working on policy issues and listening sessions" before visiting with Trump for about half hour to discuss a range of issues.
"As Pastor Jeffress and a few others began to pray, you could just feel the presence of God in the Oval Office," White-Cain said on Fox News. The event also included William Wolfe, the former Trump administration staffer who created the Center for Baptist Leadership in Texas out of concerns the Southern Baptist Convention was starting to lean leftward; and David Barton, a self-described "amateur historian" who has aimed to work with Texas lawmakers to popularize the idea that the separation of church and state is nothing but a myth.
Speaking to a Fox News anchor, Jeffress hit on a popular GOP talking point, describing his gratitude towards Trump for "having the courage to push back against these leftist judges who are trying to destroy our country by not allowing the president to perform his God-given and constitutional mandate to protect citizens." The pastor didn't name any particular judge, yet his comment came after a federal judge notably blocked the president's plans to deport Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador.
https://www.chron.com/culture/religion/article/texas-pastor-prays-for-trump-20238571.php
