God's Man in Washington

It all started with bacon bits. There were bacon bits on my wedge salad. As a semi-observant Jewish guest sitting down to a private dinner at the swank Capitol Hill Club in Washington, DC, I debated whether to speak up. Then Cheyne Day, who teaches the Christian Bible to lawmakers in Arkansas, did it for me.

"I can't have that," Day said.

"Me neither," I said.

A waiter brought us new bacon-free salads. I soon learned that Day, in addition to being a devout Christian, was a more observant follower of the Torah than I was. He had a mezuzah on his door, celebrated Hanukkah, read the weekly Torah portion in Hebrew plus some Talmud, and occasionally worshiped in synagogue.

"The Lord placed that on my heart," he said. "I have a love for Israel." He had been to Israel twice — once shortly after the 2014 Gaza war. He'd lobbied Arkansas lawmakers to fund Israeli defense initiatives like the Iron Dome. "It's hard to separate the land from the people," he said.

The other side of our table was listening closely. One attendee offered the opinion that it wasn't exclusively Jews who were exiled from Egypt in Exodus. It was mostly Jews.

"Jews who reject Christ today are not God's people," said another, in the flat, decisive tone of a preacher.

"Mmm…" said Day. "Be careful now."

Instead, the person doubled down: "Israel without Christ is lost!"

Day took a breath. "I would be very careful to say it that way," he said.

But these two Bible teachers weren't there to argue about how far Jews had fallen from God's grace. This was a gathering of the armies of Christ in exile. They were there to turn the United States — democratically, fairly, legally — into a Christian nation, along with the rest of the world, in the most direct way possible, by burrowing into the souls of lawmakers. Our host, Capitol Ministries, gathers politicians around the globe into specially tailored, exclusive Bible studies. The dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, part of Capitol Ministries' global summit, was organized to honor Rick Perry, the former energy secretary who is a leading light of a weekly Capitol Ministries Bible study for Trump Cabinet officials.

But occurring as it did as Trump was formally consolidating his front-runner status for the GOP nomination, the event had an anticipatory feel, a sense of gathering momentum. Several Republican members of Congress were present, and after dinner the group would march over to the Capitol to sanctify the building in the presence of its current leader, Speaker Mike Johnson — a stalwart Christian soldier if ever there was one. But as Trump plotted his return to the White House, it was hard to avoid thinking about the biggest prize of all: next year in the West Wing.

In some ways, the bickering Bible teachers represented the two sides of our host and Capitol Ministries' founder, Ralph Drollinger. The fire-and-brimstone ideologue across the table embodied Drollinger's teachings — a doctrinaire literalist view, where every word of the Christian Bible is the ironclad word of God. Day was displaying the more diplomatic, ecumenical style that has helped Drollinger plant himself into so many centers of global power, especially Washington. And somewhere between those two poles was the secret that had kept the GOP on its feet over the past eight years, with Trump carrying the party's banner and millions of evangelicals setting aside their qualms and falling in line behind him.

The global rise of Capitol Ministries was engineered by its 7-foot-tall founder, Drollinger, a former NBA center. He was sitting a few feet away at the head table, with Alex Acosta and Perry, two of his Bible students who had served in Trump's Cabinet (Acosta was secretary of labor, Perry ran the Department of Energy).

The dinner was being held in honor of Perry, who had flown in from Texas for the occasion. After the main course was served, Drollinger stood up to roast Perry.

"You do look good tonight, compared to Friday mornings," he said.

Indeed, Perry looked good. The former Texas governor had the craggy face of a Hollywood gunslinger. At 73, he looked ready to lead a wagon train.

"He did show up without his shirt on one morning," Drollinger went on. "Fortunately, some of the female members of our study had not yet arrived."

The event to which Perry had arrived shirtless was a Drollinger-led gathering of the Trump Cabinet Bible study. The study, which Drollinger launched during Trump's presidency, has hosted a rotating group of Trump appointees including Mike Pompeo, Betsy DeVos, Sonny Perdue, Ben Carson, and Jeff Sessions. After Trump left the White House, the study went remote. It continues to meet weekly, over Zoom, every Friday morning. Drollinger has logged in from Seoul, Kathmandu, and Bogotá. Trump's departure from the White House hasn't stopped him from using the old administration's star power to fuel Capitol Ministries' growth. It now teaches old-school Christianity to politicians in 60 world capitals.

With the Iowa caucuses only a few weeks away, the prospect that Drollinger's Zoom group of White House exiles might return to power was suddenly very real. But regardless of what happens this coming November, Capitol Ministries is quickly becoming the face of American GOP-style evangelicalism around the world.

The dozens of Drollinger-trained teachers at the Capitol Hill Club had come from as far away as Rwanda, Ukraine, and the South Pacific. Other than Ralph's wife, Danielle, and a few members of Capitol Ministries' administrative staff, the room was almost entirely men. When Drollinger lit into Perry with his lighthearted locker-room ribbing, they put down their forks and chuckled. Here was an anecdote of fellowship and intimacy that seemed to underscore their own proximity to power. They were, after all, part of an exclusive group that got to see Rick Perry as he really was — unburdening his soul, using the Bible to unpack the riddles of leadership. Sometimes first thing in the morning, without a shirt. Their laughter seemed to encourage Drollinger.

Drollinger shifted, for a moment, to a more pastoral mode. "What a blessing you've been to us," he said. Casting his eye forward to November 2024, he added, "Hopefully certain things will happen next year around this time. We'll have our cabinet study back."

Certain things will happen. Drollinger was, to my ears, referring to the reelection of Donald Trump. While Capitol Ministries doesn't formally endorse political candidates, Drollinger wasn't shy about sharing his personal enthusiasm about the possibility of a second Trump presidency. I had already heard a series of justifications, some from Ralph directly and some from his Bible studies when I profiled him for the first time, in 2019:

Trump was like Samson — rough and tough, with interesting hair.

Trump was like the ox in Proverbs 14:4 — lots of crops harvested, lots of shit to clean out of the stable.

Trump was the one who had been chosen by the voters, so his constitutional authority deserved everyone's respect, as per Matthew 22:21 — "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

That last point rang hollow to me in the wake of Trump's ongoing refusal to accept his 2020 loss. I had shown up to the Capitol Hill Club partly to hear which biblical circumlocutions Drollinger would use to justify his continued affinity for Trump in the wake of January 6, 2021, attack, though I already knew, deep down, that certain traits he shared with his congressional clientele — a pragmatic flexibility, combined with an attraction to power — didn't leave him with much of a choice. There was, in other words, a lot more shit in the stable. But the farmers were still standing by their ox.

At that moment, I was more interested in Perry, who had called Trump "a cancer on conservatism" before joining his Cabinet. Then, in the midst of the scandal over the "perfect phone call" with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which Perry had helped arrange, he resigned. He'd campaigned for Trump in 2020, but now, with the 2024 cycle taking shape and the Iowa caucuses weeks away, he had still not endorsed Trump.

That lapse did not appear to be lost on Drollinger.

"Most of the guys in the Trump Cabinet feel like they're in exile," he said. "Do you think that way, Rick?"

Perry didn't say a word. He just sat there, scrolling through his phone.

"Are you paying attention right now?"

Perry looked up. He gave Drollinger a quick nod.

At that moment, I thought I had witnessed a bit of daylight between the two friends on the Trump question. I was wrong. Talking to Perry later, I learned he was no less enthusiastic than Drollinger about the prospect of a Trump victory and the return of a Drollinger-led Trump Cabinet Bible study. It was true that Perry had not endorsed Trump yet — "I'm keeping my powder dry," he said. "I'm not sure my endorsement matters." But the glimmer of dissent that I thought I had witnessed at the Capitol Hill Club turned out to be a projection.

The one person Perry was ready to stump for was Ralph Drollinger. "I wish I could have grown up with access to Ralph Drollinger's Bible studies," he said. "Allow for the Bible to be your checklist, whether you're running your personal life, your family, your state, or your country. Use the Bible as your checklist, and your success will be enhanced."

This wasn't my first experience watching Drollinger minister to political principals. In 2019, I flew with Drollinger to Nicaragua, to sit in with him during a lengthy meeting with Daniel Ortega, the country's strongman president. As he often does, Drollinger brought along his wife, Danielle, the former head of a California political action committee. The idea to found Capitol Ministries was born 30 years ago, on their second date, and while Ralph is the public face of the organization, Danielle is arguably his most influential advisor.

Drollinger was looking to plant a Bible study in the Nicaraguan capital. He wanted me there to attest that he wasn't cutting backroom deals to engineer a worldwide takeover by Christian evangelicals. And indeed, he wasn't. Instead, he was simply teaching his version of the Bible to political leaders and letting them do the rest. The result was a mix of American family-values conservativism and contemporary Trumpism: According to Capitol Ministries' interpretation of biblical doctrine, marriage is an institution where men should take the lead, homosexuality is ungodly, abortion is infanticide, climate change is unproven at best, and family separation at the Southern border is a reasonable punishment.

What might society look like if redrawn along such lines? That was, after all, Drollinger's hope. He wanted his version of the Bible to be adopted by political leaders, ratified by voters through the democratic process, and then institutionalized. That wouldn't be a patriarchal theocracy, not exactly. It would just be the same set of policies that a theocracy would most likely want, achieved through democratic means.

The Christian-ends-through-democratic-means stance was easier to defend in 2019. That was before Trump made clear his willingness to torch the most basic democratic norms for a chance at another four years in power. Even if I didn't agree with everything Drollinger had to say back then, it seemed like a fairly reasonable journalistic decision to give his views a hearing.

This time around, things were more complicated. The thing is, I liked Drollinger. Even after we left Washington, I kept on sending him holiday cards. I had been rather hard on him in print, and he'd been a good sport about it. We both felt like outsiders in Washington — too candid, too trusting — but our relationship was Washingtonian to the core, a bilateral seduction. I had witnessed firsthand Drollinger's ability to effortlessly arrange weird triangles of self-interest like the one with Ortega, these webs of relationships that are underwritten by a transactional logic and yet somehow don't feel transactional.

Late last year, Drollinger told me about another story that he wanted told. This was the story of Capitol Ministries eclipsing a longtime competitor, the Fellowship. Like Capitol Ministries, the Fellowship serves evangelical politicians looking to practice their faith in a group setting, while holding itself out worldwide as a portal to what might be called Beltway Christianity. It was also, until recently, the organizer of the National Prayer Breakfast.

On this point, I was ready to give Drollinger his due. Capitol Ministries was eating the Fellowship's lunch. Douglas Coe, the well-connected evangelical who engineered the Fellowship's rise, died in 2017 (the Fellowship didn't respond to my requests for comment). Meanwhile, the vaunted National Prayer Breakfast had become overrun by unregistered foreign agents — including Maria Butina, a bona fide Russian spy — and Congress essentially took it over and turned it into a hybrid remote event. Now, the senators, members of Congress, and a select group of their vetted guests would be kept a safe distance away from the international men of mystery and assorted Beltway hustlers who once paid handsomely to rub their shoulders at the Washington Hilton. The breakfast is still a big event. President Joe Biden showed up for it this year, at National Statuary Hall inside the Capitol. But now that the breakfast is being run by a new foundation, the Fellowship has been pushed to the sidelines. Meanwhile, Capitol Ministries, clean as a whistle, had set up shop on every inhabited continent, 43 US state capitals, plus the three weekly studies that Drollinger himself hosted — one for the Senate, one for the House, and one for the Trump Cabinet alumni.

Some of what Capitol Ministries offers members is meat-and-potatoes spiritual guidance, what Drollinger calls a "high-protein diet." Democracy pulls elected officials away from their families and thrusts them into an unfamiliar environment with a number of trapdoors. Capitol Ministries offers them a safe spiritual anchorage. They are gently counseled to stay loyal to their spouses, attentive to their children, humble before their constituents, and to refrain from alcohol. The "Ministry Leadership Training," a 31-page workbook, offers more clues to the organization's success. It identifies "problem group" competitors — the religious right, the Fellowship, WallBuilders, and official state-salaried chaplains — and counsels the kind of calm, divinely informed forbearance that Drollinger himself embodies. "We need to recognize that we are not in control," the workbook says, quoting Ben Carson. "God is in control." It later adds: "What we experience here, the attacks and the battles, they're nothing against the backdrop of eternity."

After dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, we poured out onto the sidewalk. Perry jumped into a black SUV. The Drollingers headed back to their hotel. The rest of us walked over to the Rotunda. Two Republican members of Congress, both Bible-study attendees, would be giving us a private nighttime tour.

One of those members was Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, whose manner reminded me of Drollinger — conciliatory, polished, low-key. The other was Rep. Glenn "GT" Thompson of Pennsylvania, a history buff with a solid build and straight-shooting, blue-collar presentation. Thompson had made a career in nursing homes, starting off as an orderly working the overnight shift before being promoted to administrator. The two men led a group of about 30 Bible-study teachers through the metal detectors, past the "Members Only" signs, and into the very center of the Rotunda.

The men looked up at the ceiling and sang "To God Be the Glory." Thompson claimed that the paintings around the top of the Rotunda all have a biblical theme, "which is interesting," he said, "given the separation of church and state." He pointed out the central figure, George Washington rising up into the heavens, accompanied by the goddesses of Fame and Liberty, not biblical exactly, but certainly beyond the realm of mortal experience. "It is really because of Washington's humility that we do not have a monarchy today," Thompson said.

We followed Thompson and Westerman out onto a balcony overlooking the Mall. I tried to make some small talk with Thompson about his district, but it turned out that Worlds End State Park, a three-hour drive northwest of Philadelphia, was still to the east of his district. Thompson was gracious about it. But I still felt the inverse form of the awkwardness that I had experienced during the bacon-bits dinner-table exchange. I had assumed that GT Thompson and I shared a common identity as Pennsylvanians, and that it meant I knew something about the land where Thompson was from. I was wrong.

Back inside, a small crowd had gathered around a short, youthful man with the aggressive earnestness of a high-school debate coach or game-show host. It was Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House.

"We're in a spiritual battle for the future of this country," he said. "And the future of freedom around the world. What's happening in Israel right now has got a lot of people's attention. And I think what Benjamin Netanyahu said is exactly right. This is a battle of good versus evil. Light versus darkness. Civilization versus barbarism."

The battle took different forms in different places, he said. In the US theater, "we need all the prayer we can get. And so these ministries in the Capitol, this is pivotal stuff. This is important work."

The ministry leaders laid hands on Johnson. They closed their eyes. They prayed over him. A member of Johnson's staff then ushered us into the Congressional Prayer Room, a tall, narrow alcove dominated by a stained-glass portrait of Washington, kneeling in prayer, and four words from the Gettysburg Address, "This Nation Under God."

Next, the members took us onto the floor of the House of Representatives. Thompson scrupulously pointed out the room's religious iconography including a bust of Moses along its centerline, high up on a wall. The majority of the founders had seminary degrees, he said, a claim that has been fact-checked and debunked by NPR.

"Does the media black out 'In God We Trust'?" someone asked, pointing to the words carved into the black marble above the speaker's rostrum.

"Some may be tempted," Thompson replied.

"Censorship!" someone muttered under their breath.

"I've noticed that TV cameras will often leave those words out of the frame," Westerman offered. "I don't know if that's intentional or what."

Another voice piped up: "What was your most memorable day in this chamber?"

From another seat in the chamber came the whisper: "January 6."

Thompson took the cue. "Having to evacuate the Capitol," he said.

"I stayed in the Capitol," said Westerman.

Trump's name went unmentioned. The Q&A transitioned to Thompson's experiences with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. "There were a few of us wondering if he had American citizenship," he joked. "We were looking for a good candidate for president."

As with Perry, I thought I'd glimpsed a crack of daylight between the GOP leaders and its rank and file. But maybe, as with Perry, I had imagined it.

"He's a good man," Thompson said of Netanyahu.

Westerman agreed. "A very good man," he said.

Ralph and Danielle had not come along for the Capitol Hill tour. When I told them what Johnson had said about Israel, over lunch a few of days later, the Drollingers said they approved of his words.

"He wears his Christianity on his shirtsleeves," said Drollinger, taking a pause from his burger. "I think that's why God elevated him. I'm just so delighted that God had put a really strong Christian as speaker. First time in our lifetimes."

The Capitol Ministries international conference was wrapping up. Bible teachers from all around the world were milling around the hotel lobby, saying goodbyes as they waited for their flights home. The Drollingers were dressed casually. For a guy who is 7 feet tall, with an endless stock of Bible quotes at his fingertips, Drollinger has a striking lack of bombast, especially in smaller groups. He speaks in a mellow baritone, presents the same face to everyone he meets, and carefully considers everything that's said. His considerate approach to religious indoctrination recalls an old saying about negotiation — be firm, be friendly, be fair; but most of all, be firm.

I had mainly brought questions about Trump. The Drollingers made it clear that Capitol Ministries is officially a nonpartisan organization and does not endorse parties or candidates. Whatever views they shared with me about Trump, they said, were theirs and not Capitol Ministries'. Drollinger's Washington Bible studies, they said, drew both Democrats and Republicans from both chambers of Congress.

"I'm trying to cast a broad net," Drollinger said, "and get everybody to come to Christ, from every political party. So even though I hold certain political views — and you probably know what those are — I don't lead with that publicly. And I wouldn't teach on that."

He reiterated that he'd like to see the return of a cabinet Bible study to the White House. Danielle, perhaps worried that he'd veered too far in a pro-Trump direction, jumped in to clarify a bit. "And I think if any," she started, then turned to her husband. "Would you agree with me on this? Tell me," and then turned back to me. "It doesn't matter what Republican wins the primary or the general. We would hope—"

Drollinger jumped in. "The people that surround the inner atmosphere say that they want to see that reignited no matter what Republican gets elected." He added: "And if we end up with a Democratic president, I'm told by Scripture to respect the office. So I'm going to try to build a relationship with any elected leader I can, no matter what their stripes, for the sake of the cause of Christ."

I asked whether Trump had respected the office. And if it were the case that he had not, would Scripture then require Christians to take a stand against him?

"I think the jury is out as to whether he's an insurrectionist," Drollinger replied. "I don't know if the tapes of the activities would indicate that. I've never really seen them. But I would be on the side of grace. Even if Donald Trump were insurrectional, and the proof on that were patent, then I'd still be willing to give him grace and favor a relationship with him. Whether he's the president or not. Time has passed and we all grow." Capitol Ministries had board members, he said, who had been accused of various misdeeds, and that didn't stop him from continuing to work with them.

I asked whether there would be anything a presidential candidate could do that would set them outside the mitigating power of grace. What if they tried to rewrite the Constitution to end elections?

"I would say, now we're facing tyranny charges," Drollinger said with a chuckle. "And that's against the law and punishable by death, so we're not going to do that. I would stand strong against that. That's not obeying the governing authorities, which is Romans 13."

The difference between that hypothetical and Trump's actions on January 6, Drollinger said, was "huge."

What I saw as political pragmatism, Drollinger continued to frame as fidelity to Scripture. At lunch, he explicitly rejected pragmatism as a viable long-term approach for politicians. "What works today can kill you tomorrow," he said. "But if you're always tethered to Scripture, you're never going to get tripped up."

I brought up the awkward conversation from the dinner table, how the bacon bits sprinkled across the top of my wedge salad had led to a cascade of conversation about Jews.

Drollinger, in his low-key, agreeable way, cited the relevant passages from Romans and Revelation. It seemed he did not entirely disagree. Anyone who approached these texts with a "grammatical, historical, normative hermeneutic," he said, would conclude "that when the Jews rejected their Messiah, God put them on a side track. He grafts in the gentiles. But in the End Times, he brings them back on the main track. And they're leading the charge towards the second coming of Christ. You see massive amounts of Jews — 144,000 Jews — become the greatest evangelists of the world, proclaiming the second coming of the Messiah." Here, Drollinger was referring to Revelation 7:4, which gives 12,000 Jews from each of the 12 biblical tribes a role in ushering in the apocalypse, immediately before the opening of the seventh seal.

Drollinger had made the same point in a Bible study published eight days after the October 7 attacks. "God is not through with Israel," he wrote. "God has a huge future plan for Israel."

I asked whether I was personally interfering with God's plan by not converting to Christianity.

"You're not," said Drollinger.

"It sounds like I am!"

"No, it'll just happen in the future," Drollinger said. "So just look to your future. Make sure you eat well and stay alive."

I asked a question I'd often wondered about Trump's Cabinet. Did Drollinger believe there was a connection between biblical eschatology — prophecies about the end of the world — and current events?

Drollinger rubbed his chin. "I do wonder if Israel drops the second shoe after they chase Hamas out of Gaza," he said, "and if they retake all of Gaza for Israel. Because there are passages that say, 'Until Israel returns to the whole of the land, you don't start the eschatological clock towards the return of the Messiah.'" Incorporating Gaza into Israel, he said, would return to Israel to "the footprint of their original holdings," which would be a "huge prophetic step."

It didn't seem constructive to ask whether Gaza had actually been under Israeli control at any point prior to 1967. That would in turn lead to even thornier questions about archeological finds, the historicity of King David, and so on. Drollinger did seem to recognize that eschatology was potentially dangerous ground. "You don't want someone driving around in a nuclear submarine reading the Book of Revelation," he said, referencing the film "The Hunt for Red October." I think he brought this up because of his instinctive courtesy, his desire to find common ground. He wanted to acknowledge that the point I was making, about the dangers of an eschatological approach to foreign policy, had some merit.

And yet, on the question of whether and why to support Israel, Drollinger was indeed looking to Revelation for answers. Not only that, but he was teaching them to elected officials who could one day find themselves issuing commands to nuclear submarines. And this wasn't just in our off-the-cuff lunch conversation. It was in the Capitol Ministries printed Bible study on the Israel-Hamas war, which cited Revelation's prophecy of 144,000 Christ-believing Jews as being among the reasons that US leaders should support Israel now.

Wild stuff. It's even wilder when one considers that within the radical universe of MAGA-sympathetic evangelicalism, Drollinger is actually something of a moderate. Unlike David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders, Drollinger doesn't endorse an unconstitutional union of church and state, and he bridles when leftist commentators claim he's a Christian nationalist.

"I don't teach that," he said at lunch, when I asked him about biblical passages that prophesy the end of the world. "You can get a big crowd with eschatology, but it doesn't really meet with what these guys need." What they need, he said, is "taking what Scripture says and applying it to the life of a public servant specifically."

Later, I followed up by email. I pointed out the apparent eschatological implications of Drollinger's Bible study on Israel. Drollinger said an adjustment to his no-eschatology rule was justified by the turmoil in the Middle East.

"The current events are so on the minds of those to whom I minister that I make exceptions like this," he wrote. He added that mentioning an occasional "eschatological truth" about "God's future plans for Israel" derived "from the Bible itself" was different from teaching the entire book of Revelation.

He followed up with two clips from The Wall Street Journal. Those stories made it clear he wasn't alone in talking about a full and permanent Israeli takeover of Gaza. The idea had significant traction on the Israeli far right as well. I could see the bind Drollinger was in. Should he just ignore what he took to be the literal word of God when it seemed to be predicting global events that were just over the horizon?

But there's a bigger issue here. Once you're quoting the Bible to justify your foreign policy, it's a slippery slope to calling the other side infidels and waging a holy war. Even George W. Bush seemed to understand that this approach wasn't a good idea. After initially framing the war on terror as a "crusade," he changed tack, condemning "those who try to pit religion against religion."

"We won't allow that to creep into the consciousness of the world," Bush said. Despite this high-minded sentiment, the millions who died as a result of Bush's post-9/11 wars, by the estimate of one Brown University study, were almost all citizens of majority-Muslim countries. But Bush's generation of GOP leadership seemed to perceive some risk in openly endorsing war as a vehicle for eradicating nonbelievers, preferring instead to rally behind "freedom" and other secular abstractions. They felt it was preferable to be seen as fighting against those regimes that use religious texts as the foundational basis for making policy.

Well, times change. Drollinger's Bible was a text steeped in forgiveness, flexibility, and the possibility of grace, at least when it came to Donald Trump's behavior. But then there were the non-Trump matters, like the question of whether women could ever teach the Bible to men. The answer was as rigid as Revelation's prophecies.

"We're pretty dogmatic about this," he said.

"Because it's God's word," Danielle added.

Mattathias Schwartz was chief national security correspondent at Business Insider. He can be reached at schwartz79@protonmail.com.