In The New York Times Magazine, Mattathias Schwartz has written an amazing 7,600-word feature story on Ralph Drollinger, who leads weekly Bible studies among members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. “How the Trump Cabinet’s Bible Teacher Became a Shadow Diplomat” shows what excellent work can emerge when a writer emphasizes reporting over opinion and when the subject of a story responds to a trustworthy reporter with transparency.
Schwartz refers to this dynamic about a third of the way in: “Part of Drollinger’s charm is rooted in his straightforwardness. For years, he has been publishing his weekly Bible studies online to help the public understand his agenda. ‘It gives guys like you the confidence of what it is I’m talking about,” he told me. “That’s good transparency.’”
Drollinger’s work is volatile. People for the American Way filed a lawsuit [PDF] in August 2018 demanding documents related to the Bible studies and charging the Department of Agriculture with disregarding Freedom of Information Act requirements. “The facts of this case are simple: Cabinet officials have every right to participate in Bible study, and the American people have every right to know who is influencing public officials and how,” said Elliot Mincberg, senior counsel and fellow at People for the American Way.
The website for Americans United lists only four items about Drollinger, and two of them date to his time of working in California, before he moved to Washington, D.C.
Schwartz’s feature is neither puffery nor a screed. A skepticism is implicit at various points, and for a feature published by the Times, the implicit tone is remarkably restrained.
Consider this paragraph listing some of Drollinger’s ideas that would be most bothersome to editors and readers of the Times:
The Drollingers are careful to distinguish between their teachings and their politics, but one often bears on the other, on issues like marriage (men lead, women submit), homosexuality (“an abomination” and “illegitimate in God’s eyes”), abortion (a slippery slope to infanticide), climate change (a radical belief promoted by “secular fad theorists”) and family separation at the Southern border (an appropriate punishment for “illegal immigrants”). To Drollinger, the Bible is more than the literal word of God. It is the only defensible basis for any rational thought. The text, under the doctrine of inerrancy, is factually perfect and not open to multiple interpretations. It has one definite meaning that will offer itself up to diligent students.
Drollinger works to export his model of Bible studies with national leaders by visiting other nations. Schwartz illustrates Drollinger’s style by accompanying him on a visit to Nicaragua, as requested by that nation’s president, Daniel Ortega.
During Ortega’s first round as president, beginning in 1979, the Sandinistas tried to shout down Pope John Paul II as he celebrated a Mass. They were sufficiently leftist to inspire Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn to sing two paeans to the revolution: “Nicaragua” and “Dust and Diesel.”
Today, though, the Ortega administration presents itself as defending some of the same perspectives championed by St. Pope John Paul II. Schwartz paraphrases Murillo, Nicaragua’s vice president and Ortega’s wife:
She and Ortega went on about the forces that had allied against them — international NGOs, gay rights activists, abortion rights activists, Catholics who had turned away from God. Their voices rose as they vented, not altogether factually, about the conspiracy they faced. Their impassioned sense of victimhood did reveal a delicate truth, one that the rally had been designed to conceal: Nicaragua’s leaders were not secure. They felt vulnerable. They needed a patron.
Schwartz turns to the inevitable comparison of Drollinger and the late Douglas Coe, and Drollinger offers a pointed criticism of Coe’s approach:
Drollinger is aware of the perception that he is operating in Coe’s shadow and is quick to distinguish his own approach. He calls the Fellowship “cotton-candy Christianity,” diluted by an all-embracing “universalism.” And despite his own forays into Washington’s deal-making scene, Drollinger believes that Coe went too far. He has written in favor in what he calls the “institutional” separation of church and state, a separation that he views as consistent with the Constitution but one that originates in the orders given by God, through the Bible, that define the state as an independent institution. The key passage is in Romans 13: “There is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”
The biblical separation of church and state, however, on Drollinger’s reading, leaves a window open for instructing politicians on God’s expectations and demands. “Institutional separation does not imply influential separation,” is how he puts it. Nor does it keep Drollinger himself from occasionally weighing in directly on political questions, as he did in a 2014 study that used Proverbs as the foundation to claim, in proto-Trumpian caps: “IT IS SHEER LUNACY FOR AMERICA TO PERMIT IRAN TO GO AS FAR AS THEY HAVE IN THEIR NUCLEAR PROGRAM!”
Schwartz is especially good at capturing the back and forth as Oscar Obidio Cubas Castro, Nicaragua’s ambassador to Israel, seeks a meeting between Ortega and Trump:
“When people talk to Ortega face to face, they tell him bad things about Trump,” Cubas said. “If they can talk face to face, it will be something positive. Like Kim Jong-un. Do you agree?”
“There will have to be a lot of reforms for that to happen,” Drollinger replied. He’d heard as much from [ambassador] Kevin Sullivan and Michael McKinley [since resigned from the State Department].
“That didn’t happen with the North Koreans. What was the difference?”
“They had a nuclear bomb.”
“Is it necessary that we have a bomb, to talk?”
It wasn’t hard to see Cubas’s point. Ortega’s crimes were no worse than those of the rulers of North Korea, not to mention Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Why couldn’t Nicaragua ask for Trump’s good will, which all the others enjoyed?
“Those aren’t my decisions,” Drollinger replied, gently touching the table. “Ortega needs to talk to Kevin. Kevin and the U.S. State Department have open arms.”
Drollinger’s joke about coffee beans comes at the end of a meeting with Gustavo Porras Cortés, president the National Assembly. It suggests that Drollinger knows the transactional quality of his visits to foreign countries, and that he will draw certain boundaries on those transactions:
As the meeting drew to a close, a man with a video camera entered. Porras stood up, with six Nicaraguan flags behind him, with the clear expectation of an official handshake. Drollinger did not hesitate to oblige, though he improvised a bit of patter, words that would make it difficult to read the moment as a wholehearted endorsement of the Ortega regime. “All my little Nicaraguan friends,” he said, addressing the camera, “I just want you to know, I’m really in this for the coffee beans.”
Photo by Ralph Drollinger with Dr. James Dobson, as posted on the website of Capitol Ministries
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