He also did not shy away from addressing hot-button issues from the pulpit, including his support for pro-immigration policies and his opposition to same-sex marriage.
“People felt that I had a kind of suicide complex,” he told RNS in 2019. “To undertake these issues from the pulpit was kind of dangerous, inflammatory and provoking … But I felt in my heart that I needed for people to know how I thought and how I felt about certain issues.”
Miranda was born in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the US as a child to join his father. Academically gifted, he graduated from Phillips Academy, a prominent prep school whose alumni include Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and later attended Princeton and Harvard.
“He is out of the demographic of most Pentecostal pastors,” Arlene Sánchez-Walsh, an expert on Latino Pentecostalism at Azusa Pacific University in Los Angeles, told RNS in 2019. “The majority are either self-taught or come from Bible colleges and evangelical seminaries.”
Miranda was also known for believing that much of his work involved spiritual warfare.
“I have delivered people from demonic powers right where you are sitting,” he told RNS writer Jeff MacDonald who was seated on a couch in his office in 2019. “I have engaged in exorcisms over the years many, many times.”
Even after three decades of ministry, Miranda was still looking forward to the future.
“I see myself as a soldier, put in a lonely outpost, fulfilling an order and awaiting the next move,” Miranda said in 2019. “I’m not sure what it is. But I know it’s out there.”
A celebration of Miranda’s life will be held Friday night (May 27) at the church, with public visitation ahead of the service. A private family funeral will be held the following day.
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This article originally appeared on ReligionNews.com.
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