Capitol Ministries’ Ralph DrollingerYou probably wouldn’t recognize his face, but at over 7 feet, Ralph Drollinger is hard to miss. A former center for John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins, he had a brief professional career before turning to ministry. In recent years, he swapped basketball courts for the halls of power. These days, he’s not posting up in the paint, but presiding over Bible studies for members of Congress—and, during Trump’ first term, for Cabinet officials as well. Drollinger is the founder of Capitol Ministries, a right-wing evangelical group devoted to bringing Scripture to political leaders. Drollinger has claimed to have led the first White House Bible study among executive cabinet members in at least 100 years.
How influential is he? Drollinger claims credit for helping insert a work requirement for Medicaid. As Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla reported, the provision requires individuals between 19 and 64 to work at least 80 hours a month to qualify. CNBC noted that by 2034, this could leave about 4.8 million additional people uninsured, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan legislative scorekeeper.”
Mantyla noted that during a recent episode of “Capitol Ministries Weekend” podcast, boasted “that his ministerial efforts shaped the process of crafting the Republican spending bill when members of his Bible study inserted the work provision into the legislation to reflect the teaching in 2 Thessalonians that ‘if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.’”
“Relative to the Big Beautiful Bill,” Drollinger said, “when the House passed it and it went to the Senate, it did not have that Pauline theological principle inculcated into the policy it was portending. It basically did not have a caveat that said, ‘If you don’t work, you shouldn’t get … Medicaid.’”
“And so, the Senate—because of our Bible study in the Senate with 12 Senate members—amended the bill to say … you have to work at least 80 hours a month in order to qualify for Medicaid,” Drollinger said. “And so I applauded that because I’m thinking, ‘Here is our Bible study being enacted into policy.’ And then it went back over to the House and the House passed, and the president signed it.”
According to Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery, Drollinger’s Capital Ministries “’disciples’ public officials with … [a] 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.’”‘
As Montgomery reported earlier this year, “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.’”
In addition to his work with Trump administration officials and members of Congress, Capitol Ministries is “plant[ing] ministries in foreign lands including Latin America, Eurasia, Europe, South Pacific Islands, Asia, Caribbean island nations, and Africa.”
Both Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor) and the late Bill Walton played for John Wooden’s UCLA Bruins, led their teams to national championships, and went on to storied NBA careers. Jabbar has become a lifelong civil and human rights activist, as well as a profound historian of the Black experience. Walton, an unabashed Deadhead, became one of the game’s most beloved voices, celebrated for his free-spirited commentary and progressive politics. Ralph Drollinger, who followed Jabbar and played alongside Walton, has taken a very different path—where in the corridors of power, his Christian nationalist Bible studies promote intolerance and continue to influence Washington politics.