Far-right pastor brags that his Bible study class led to millions of Americans losing health insurance
Ralph Drollinger says Senate Republicans are turning his anti-compassion form of Christianity into law
By Kyle Mantyla, Right Wing Watch
When Republicans passed President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” earlier this year, it contained a provision adding new work requirement for those receiving Medicaid.
Now, individuals between the ages of 19 and 64 must work for at least 80 hours a month in order to qualify for Medicaid, meaning, as CNBC explained, that by 2034 “about 4.8 million additional people would be uninsured based on work requirements in the House Republican budget bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan legislative scorekeeper.”
It turns out that this provision was the result of the evangelism efforts carried out by right-wing pastor Ralph Drollinger, who leads Bible studies for members of Congress and the Trump administration via his Capitol Ministries organization.
The purpose of Capitol Ministries is to transform public officials in “disciples” who will turn founder Drollinger’s very conservative interpretation of scripture into public policy, such as his belief that the Bible mandates support for right-wing economic, social, environmental, immigration, and criminal justice policies. Drollinger 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” and believes that elections are “first and foremost a spiritual battle.”
Drollinger explained during a recent episode of his “Capitol Ministries Weekend” podcast 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 bragged. “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.”
Drollinger then crowed that Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is also “in our Cabinet member Bible study and she’s drinking from the same well of biblical content.”
“She’s the head of a Department of Agriculture, and she says that there’s 35 million Americans that get [Medicaid] benefits that are not in the workforce whatsoever,” he said. “If you don’t work, you don’t eat; you shouldn’t get government handouts if you’re not willing to work. And so she’s basically saying we need to have policy that motivates people to work versus not work in order to get a government handout. I’m thinking, well, that’s applaudable because here’s this quiet rudder called biblical explication underneath the ship of the state, and when you don’t have that quiet rudder underneath the ship of the state, it’s just a matter of time until it’s going to run into some rocks. And so we applaud the fact that we have so many godly members in DC now that are thinking more biblically about policy.”
This article was first published by Right Wing Watch.