Tuesday's Senate Bible Lesson: God Opposes Government Helping the Poor

A Republican Bible study in the Senate Tuesday morning includes arguments against aiding the poor

I’m an independent journalist whose reporting is made possible by paid supporters. Thank you for sharing and supporting this journalism.

Capitol Ministries founder Ralph Drollinger informs a massive 2019 Nicaraguan audience that he brings greetings from the Trump White House Bible-study group and congressional Bible-study groups. (Screengrab / Vivanicaragua13 video.)

A Bible study sanctioned by Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and set for Tuesday morning on Capitol Hill includes biblical arguments against government helping the poor, according to a study guide posted online.

The same lesson will be taught at the White House on Wednesday for cabinet secretaries and for House members on Thursday in the Longworth Building, just as Pres. Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders try to persuade their party to vote for a bill that will devastate millions of needy people, causing death and suffering by depriving millions of health care and food.

The study guide for this week’s Bible lesson was posted online on Friday, just before the Senate bill’s release, and the pamphlet version was sent out Sunday, and dated today, June 30, as Senate debate began. The House could vote on it as early as Wednesday.

The lessons are led by Ralph Drollinger, the right-wing preacher whose June Bible classes — coming right after Israel began attacking Iran — included teaching that the Jews killed Jesus, a longtime antisemitic trope disavowed by major Christian denominations. Drollinger runs Capitol Ministries, which teaches his biblical views to political Bible studies in state capitols around the country and national capitols around the world.

This week’s is entitled, “God’s Design for a Societal¹ Safety Net.” It makes the case that the New Testament never talks about governments helping people. Helping the truly needy, Drollinger will teach to his Senate students Tuesday morning, is for individuals. And then families. And then the church.

But not government.

The cover page for the Bible-study guide being used Tuesday at the Senate, Wednesday at the White House, and Thursday at the House of Representatives. (Screengrab / Capitol Ministries PDF.)

Drollinger’s Bible studies are endorsed by the most powerful people in the nation not named Trump. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is named as a sponsor. So is Thune.

All the listed sponsors are Republican, with the only known Democratic participant being Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA).

The study guide for Tuesday doesn’t include the many well known verses of Jesus encouraging feeding and clothing the poor. Instead, Drollinger cobbles together evidence of his social taxonomy, dividing the world into marriages, families, the church, commerce, and government.

Taking care of the poor, Drollinger will teach congressional Republicans behind closed doors this week, isn’t the job of government. Individuals take care of themselves. Or their families do. Or a church does. Full stop.

Inset from the Capitol Ministries Bible-study guide for this week. (Screengrab / Capitol Ministries June 27, 2025, study guide.)

“Corrupt is the policymaker who twists God’s design and uses entitlement promises as a way to gain votes, appealing to the base instincts of the constituents of his district, state, or nation,” Drollinger writes.

Drollinger has a record of moving officials to the right (his right) and armoring them against reason or constituent desires with his Bible interpretations about God’s eternal, immutable right and wrong.

After then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions shared Drollinger’s immigration-policy arguments supporting child separation, Drollinger took credit. “Jeff Sessions [will] go out the same day I teach him something and he’ll do it on camera,” Drollinger said in 2017. “I just think, man, these guys are faithful, available, and teachable.”

In 2019, Thune wrote that Drollinger and his wife, Danielle, “instruct, admonish, encourage, exhort, and inspire elected officials” how to conduct themselves and what their priorities should be.

Thune also rejects the constitutional system of representative democracy, saying that politicians ultimately answer to God, not to their voters: “In a profession which relies so heavily on gaining the approval of men, it’s important for elected officials to be reminded that, ultimately, they must answer to God for their actions and the decisions they make,” Thune wrote, praising Drollinger.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) wrote that Drollinger’s Senate Bible study is “a source of direction and a source of correction that is really important to the decisions we make as individuals and as an institution.”

Some of Drollinger’s students have shown signs of coming around to his way of thinking on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), for instance, is one of Drollinger’s sponsors. An opinion piece in the Arizona Daily Star chronicled Ciscomani’s journey from defending Medicaid in February to defending it for the “vulnerable” in April. By May, he wouldn’t oppose all cuts, just “steep” ones. Then he voted for it.

Another Drollinger sponsor, Rep. Don Bacon (D-NE), went from a $500 billion “red line” for Medicaid cuts in April to voting for cuts well beyond that in May.

Johnson himself used the House chapel to promote the bill’s passage. That weekend, Focus on the Family’s Tony Perkins asked him how the bill lines up with “the Constitution and biblical principles for guiding our nation?” Johnson replied: “[T]hat should govern what we do and how we put legislation together.”

The bill passed the House on May 22, 2025, at 6:54am, about an hour before Drollinger’s Bible study was set to start. The bill cut food relief. Drollinger served up hot breakfast.

Drollinger has spent years preaching against government entitlements. Keeping in mind that he often recycles past study guides, one edition that he used for Bible study this April included several nuggets:

“…the major contributor to the crisis is the sacred cow of entitlement programs. It represents over 80% [sic] of the budget!”

“What does the Bible say about entitlement programs? … Do not be theologically naïve! America’s bankrupting entitlement policies stem from previous, pervasive bad theology: the bad theology of Theological Liberalism.”

A 2023 study guide proclaimed that “Scripture does not support the idea of governments taking from the rich to meet the needs of the poor.”

In his very first study session for the second Trump administration’s cabinet, Drollinger chose a lesson about God’s five-part division of the world, and the four areas into which government ought not tread. Like helping the needy.

That study guide included Drollinger’s claim that “God intends for man to achieve dignity through work.” And, presumably, to prove it through the dignity of onerous paperwork requirements now being debated and voted on by Congress.

“God,” a March study guide said, “has already done much of your thinking for you.”

But Drollinger’s evidence of God’s thinking is thin, even by the standards of biblical exegesis. His primary argument that government shouldn’t help is that government didn’t. In The Bible. Two-thousand years ago. When “government” was the Roman Empire, not yet holy.

Drollinger works hard to argue that The Bible — the New Testament, specifically — calls on “the Church” to serve as what he calls the final “catch basin,” assisting the needy when they and their families fail to do so.

Even ignoring the fact that “the Church” barely existed as a functioning institution, and the fact that in some communities it functionally overlapped with what we would think of as government roles, Drollinger’s arguments are a reach, at best.

Drollinger’s Logic Needs a Miracle

A former NBA player, Drollinger has a lot more Biblical and religious training than I do. Which is to say, some.

But with his proclivity to stick to the text, regardless of historical context, it’s pretty easy to assess his reasoning, since he’s kind enough to cite the relevant passages. But it’s also easy to see how his confidence, the bounty of references, and his proclivity for big words might cow and impress busy, overwhelmed public officials. (Especially given that Drollinger openly disparages them as “biblically illiterate.”)

My favorite example is Drollinger’s proof that God created man to work. Drollinger writes in the June 27 guide:

The biblical pattern is for a person to work hard. Genesis 2:15 states the concept that … hard work has always been His intent for those whom He created in His image:

Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.

This verse shares God’s original design for man. God wants him to be responsible for cultivating and keeping or maintaining the earth.

The idea that man should keep or maintain the earth is handy when Drollinger wants people working for their food. But keeping or maintaining the earth is just dumb when it might justify environmentalism.

In a video earlier this month, Drollinger said that when it’s environmental concerns, then it’s no longer humanity’s job: “Like God’s really not in charge of the environment and we have to do that for Him.”

Drollinger also vacillates on which passages to cite for which purposes.

Politicians, he says, shouldn’t hand out government relief for their own political fortunes. Drollinger calls this “a violation of God’s intended purpose of government, wherein God states in Romans 13:4 that government is a servant for your good.”

But Romans 13:4 doesn’t count, according to Drollinger, if you’d like your servant government to serve up food stamps or Medicaid.

In fact, Romans 13 commands extraordinary deference to government authority, which Drollinger himself rejects by pushing back against government authority. Here’s Romans 13:1-2:

“Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.”

Drollinger in his Bible classes this week is openly resisting federal authorities, who (currently) distribute aid and relief.

One Bible passage poses a particular challenge for Drollinger, but he tackles it gamely. Not to get into a scriptural pissing match, but he would presumably accrue a lot of dignity in the process, given all the work he does for his interpretation.

The passage in question, in Acts 2, sounds a hell of a lot like an endorsement of socialism. To his credit, Drollinger acknowledges as much, but warns that’d be just wrong: “Acts 2 should not be understood as a theological basis for economic socialism.”

It’s hard to imagine why God might inspire Scripture that’s susceptible to being understood as a theological basis for economic socialism, but Drollinger has an explanation.

Referring to Jerusalem’s emerging community of Jewish Christians, Acts 2:44-45 sounds an awful lot like Marx/Engels:

“…all those who had believed were together and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need.”

Drollinger tries to bat down the obvious socialism — or worse! — with the argument that this economic system didn’t work out. His evidence for this is Romans 15. How would Romans 15 undo the socialist paradise of Jewish Christians in Jerusalem?

Well, in Romans 15:25-26, Paul says he’s taking contributions to them, specifically, “the poor among the saints [Christians] in Jerusalem.”

Drollinger speculates that “some wrong decisions … [they began selling their property and possessions] … would later lead to the poverty in the church.” Which might be persuasive if Acts 2 itself didn’t explain it pretty clearly.

Jewish Christian socialist utopia was really popular.

Day one of Jewish Christian socialist utopia, Acts 2:41: “[T]hey that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls.”

Acts 2:46-47: “…they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.” Sounds pretty great, right?

Acts 2:47 tells us people kept coming: “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” So, the reason they needed aid from Paul, apparently, was that their hippie commune was so successful God Himself was jacking up the census every day.

As an atheist who cobbled that together from BibleRef.com, I may not know what I’m talking about, but it sure seems like a much more direct, proximate explanation than Drollinger’s reacharound to Romans, which doesn’t even explicitly say why those Jerusalem hippies needed aid. Drollinger just supposes failed socialism as the cause and then treats his guess as The Word.

To refute the clear, simple explanation self-contained in Acts 2, Drollinger Frankensteins disparate verses together to argue that, when combined, they mean the opposite: “Combined with the insight provided in Romans 15, this passage [Acts 2:44-47, but definitely not Acts 2:41] serves to illustrate precisely the opposite: the fruits of socialism, the possession of little or no personal property, evidenced both here in this passage with the Jerusalem Church and elsewhere, equates to greater difficulty in meeting one’s own present and future needs.”

Drollinger doesn’t even bother to explain why The Lord would add daily to a hippie commune that was doing economics wrong because it hadn’t yet discovered Milton Friedman.

There are numerous other examples, but honestly, life’s too short. This life, anyway.

And the Senate, House, and White House won’t be seeing any examples except Drollinger’s.

---

I’m a veteran journalist and TV news producer who’s worked at MSNBC — as co-creator of Up w/ Chris Hayes and senior producer for Countdown with Keith Olbermann — CNN, ABCNews, The Daily Show, Air America Radio, and TYT. My original reporting on Substack is made possible by a handful of paid subscribers. Thank you.

1. The word “societal” does not appear in The Bible. “Social” does once.