Capitol Ministries, a group that runs weekly right-wing Bible studies for members of Congress and did the same for Cabinet members during the first Trump administration, has announced the return of the “White House Cabinet Bible Study.”
According to a March 6 announcement, the first Bible study of the new administration took place early on the morning of President Donald Trump’s first Cabinet meeting and included some governors participating by Zoom.
Capitol Ministries “disciples” public officials with its founder Ralph Drollinger’s very conservative interpretation of scripture and his belief that the Bible mandates support for right-wing economic, social, environmental, immigration, and criminal justice policies. He teaches that the government’s primary job is to “quell evil” and punish sin and teaches that entitlement programs lack “any basis of biblical authority.” Drollinger believes that elections are “first and foremost a spiritual battle.”
According to Drollinger, God only hears and acts on prayers from Christians; prayers of those who “passively or actively reject the Son of God,” he has written, “are worthless and go unheard.”
Drollinger shows little respect or tolerance for Christians who disagree with his interpretation of the Bible. He has suggested that Christian leaders who support marriage equality are “Satan’s pawns.” As Right Wing Watch has reported previously:
He has called the “social Gospel” that motivates millions of liberal American Christians “a perversion of scripture” and “not Christianity whatsoever!” He has called Catholicism “one of the primary false religions of the world.” He urges public officials not to take part in “syncretistic” events like the National Prayer Breakfast, arguing that by participating in events that combine different forms of belief, attendees invite God’s wrath rather than his blessing.
In one Bible study, Drollinger offered Christian lawmakers an explanation for why their “unregenerate” non-Christian colleagues “do not seem to get your biblical argument.” It’s because, Drollinger wrote, “they are spiritually incapable of getting it.” Not only that, “The longer a person rejects Christ, the greater his depravity becomes.”
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, former head of the America First Policy Institute, and OMB Director Russell Vought, former head of the Center for Renewing America, are sponsoring Drollinger’s Bible study.
Rollins is closely aligned with Tim Dunn, who Texas Monthly has called “the billionaire bully who wants to turn Texas into a Christian theocracy.” Under Rollins’ leadership, AFPI called its MAGA policy agenda a plan for “restoring a nation under God.” Capitol Ministries’ 2023 annual report includes an endorsement from Rollins in which she wrote that “our Founding Fathers established this great nation by God’s instructions and designed our country’s government based on biblical principles.” She wrote that Capitol Ministries gives her “the strength I need to endure the righteous fight for the soul of this nation.”
Vought has embraced Christian nationalism, and his Center for Renewing America listed Christian nationalism as one of its priorities for the new Trump administration.
Drollinger insists that he is not a Christian nationalist, theocrat, or dominionist because he does not want the church institutionally controlling the government, teaching that the two institutions have different God-ordained roles. He does want public officials to embrace and govern according to his definition of biblical Christianity, hire only “righteous” people to work for them, and refuse to support policies that “compromise biblical absolutes.” In “Oaks in Office,” his handbook for public officials, Drollinger wrote that “the critical and preeminent duty of the Church in an institutionally separated society” is “to evangelize and disciple—to Christianize—the leaders of the State and its citizenry.”
After beginning his work with legislators in California, Drollinger started his congressional Bible studies in 2010. When some of his congressional students joined the first Trump administration, he began holding Bible studies for members of the Cabinet, later expanding to other administration officials. He claimed in 2018 that Trump sent him handwritten notes praising his written studies.
In 2023 Drollinger launched weekly Zoom-based Bible studies with sitting and former governors. Drollinger produces written Bible studies (some translated into multiple languages) that form the basis for in-person gatherings and a weekly radio program that launched on the Salem radio network last year.
Drollinger’s global ambitions extend well beyond Congress and the White House. During the first Trump administration, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opened doors to help Drollinger take his model to foreign capitals. A 2024 year-end letter from Drollinger boasted that Capitol Ministries held five global training conferences last year in Kathmandu, Nepal; Cape Town, South Africa; Bogota, Colombia; Brussels, Belgium; and Hebron, Kentucky. Its goal is to “plant and develop” ministries in 200 national capitals.
Capitol Ministries is also seeking, with the help of former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, to recruit men – and only men – to lead Bible studies for elected officials in every state capital and every one of the more than 4,000 local government jurisdictions in the U.S.
During Trump’s first term, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and former Rep. Michele Bachmann helped raise money for Capitol Ministries. Two former members of Congress, Tom Price of Georgia and Trent Franks of Arizona, currently serve on its board of directors.
