Secular Leaders Call for End to White House, Hill Bible Studies
Speaker Johnson, Senate Leader Thune, Secretary Hegseth, and other Republican leaders are sponsoring far-right Bible studies in public buildings
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National secular groups are calling for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other top officials to end the Bible study groups they sponsor inside the halls of government.
In statements to me, secular leaders condemned the involvement of those two officials and others, which I revealed last month.
(The Pentagon confirmed Hegseth’s involvement, but Johnson’s office did not respond. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) had already been listed as a sponsor but his new title was added the same time Hegseth’s and Johnson’s names first appeared.)
The right-wing organization Capitol Ministries has led Bible-study groups since 2010 in both the House and the Senate. Far-right evangelical leader Ralph Drollinger claims Democrats have been involved, but none are listed as sponsors in his online study guides.
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) confirmed my reporting back in January that she helped recruit fellow members of Congress to Drollinger’s Bible study in the House.
In his study guides, Drollinger teaches Biblical support for right-wing positions on social issues such as LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights, but also economic policy.
Unlike weekly House and Senate prayer breakfasts under the aegis of the Fellowship Foundation, Drollinger’s Bible studies are much less bipartisan but far more transparent.
The May 26, 2025, study guide, as I reported, began listing Johnson, Hegseth, and other top Republican officials as sponsors. Drollinger’s list added cabinet members and two ambassadors.
The White House group, revived from the first-term cabinet group and incorporating Drollinger’s gubernatorial study group, meets in executive offices after meeting remotely during the Biden administration. That’s Wednesdays at 7am eastern.
The congressional groups meet weekly at 8am eastern, serving hot breakfast. The Senate study group uses rotating offices on Tuesdays, while the House is listed as meeting Thursdays in a Natural Resources Committee room in the Longworth House Office Building. The committee chair, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), appears to have recruited Gluesenkamp Perez.
The Secular Coalition for America told me that the Bible studies don’t belong there. “Bible studies, prayer services, and religiously motivated legislation don't belong in the halls of our government. It is up to all of us to resist these attempts to erode the wall between church and state in our country," said Communications Manager Nnenna Onwukwe.
The use of their names to promote Drollinger’s work ran afoul of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Vice President of Strategic Communications Andrew Seidel said in a statement provided to me:
“Public officials should not be lending the power and prestige of an office that belongs to We the People to weekly Bible study groups. They are, of course, free to attend such groups and study any holy books they like in their personal capacity. But government offices should not be used in marketing campaigns for purely religious purposes. Speaker Johnson and Secretary Hegseth must remember that they are public servants first, and stop letting their Christian Nationalism guide their official actions.”
American Humanist Association Executive Director Fish Stark responded to the Bible studies by characterizing them as part of a broader, theocratic effort.
“We give them credit,” Stark said in a statement, ”unlike [President] Donald Trump, [Vice President] JD Vance, and others who are cynically using religious people to build power for themselves, we actually think Drollinger, Johnson, and Hegseth drink their own Kool-Aid and believe that the only way to 'save' America is to make it a religious state where the government promotes a specific brand of evangelical Christianity and treats non-Christians as second-class citizens.”
Onwukwe had a similar interpretation. "This latest Bible study in Congress is not an isolated occurrence,” they said. “It's part of a calculated effort to reshape our government to match a specific religious agenda.”
Onwukwe argued that holding semi-official Bible study in government offices violates the nation’s founding principles. “The Founding Fathers understood that true freedom cannot exist if a nation's laws are dictated by religious doctrine,” Onwukwe said. “They created The First Amendment to safeguard our secular government against overreach like this.”
Today, a growing proportion of Americans are secular, unbelievers, or secularist, believers who support strong firewalls between church and state. And, Stark said, they have other priorities at the moment.
“[M]ost Americans would prefer they focus on things like lowering egg prices and not texting secret war plans to journalists,” Stark said, “rather than waging a war on the separation of church and state -- which the vast majority of Americans, even religious ones, believe is fundamental to preserving religious freedom and equality in this country."
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Then the GOP should also be cool with Islam call to prayer 5 times a day in the rotunda.
White Jesus got me thinking. Not a religious scholar mind you, but wasn't Jesus of Nazareth a Jew for his entire corporeal life?
Did Jesus ever become a Christian?