This story is from Pat Robertson’s CBNNews, “Bible Studies at the White House: Who’s Inside This Spiritual Awakening?” It’s plenty creepy enough on its face, but its even worse if you’ve read Jeff Sharlet’s important book on The Family and you understand the warped, power-worshipping theology driving groups like this.
Stories like this show that John Fea’s terminology of “Court Evangelicals” is spot on. The reference there is an allusion to the court prophets described in 2 Kings 22 — the fawning suck-ups who curried favor with the wicked King Ahab by telling him whatever they thought he wanted to hear.
The Zedekiah prancing about in iron horns at the Trump White House is a man named Ralph Drollinger who:
Leads about a dozen members of President Trump’s Cabinet in weekly studies of the scriptures.
Health Secretary Tom Price, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Agriculture Secretary Sunny Perdue, and CIA Director Mike Pompeo are just a few of the regulars.
“It’s the best Bible study that I’ve ever taught in my life. They are so teachable; they’re so noble; they’re so learned,” Drollinger said. …
America’s top cop, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, also attends the study.
“He’ll [Jeff Sessions] go out the same day I teach him something and I’ll see him do it on camera and I just think, ‘Wow, these guys are faithful, available and teachable and they’re at Bible study every week they’re in town,'” Drollinger said.
Take a second to absorb everything that’s going on here in the minds of CBN’s Jennifer Wishon and her readers. This litany of names of Trump officials — Price, Perry, DeVos, Perdue, Pompeo — is regarded as self-evident proof of “spiritual awakening.”
Drollinger refers to this pantheon of saints as “teachable … noble … learned.” He enthuses about how he’ll “teach … something” in a Bible study to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and then “see him do it on camera.” This is as puzzling grammatically as it is theologically. I can’t begin to imagine what Drollinger is talking about. Is this Bible study dedicated to asset-seizure? To mandatory minimums for marijuana possession? To disenfranchising black voters?
Drollinger’s own understanding of the Bible seems unburdened by his having spent any time actually reading that book. He seems, instead, to have skimmed a bunch of children’s picture Bible stories from Arch Books. Thus he compares Vice President Mike Pence “to biblical figures like Joseph, Mordecai and Daniel.”
“Mike Pence … dresses right,” Drollinger says, “like it says Joseph cleaned himself up before he went to stand before the Pharaoh.” Because that’s what the story of Joseph is all about — the proper haircut and tie selection. God wants us to look our best when we’re serving Pharaoh and enabling him to confiscate all property and enslave his people.
As for Pharaoh/Nebuchadnezzar himself, Donald Trump apparently doesn’t attend Drollinger’s Bible studies, but he has a standing invitation and every week receives “a copy of Drollinger’s teaching.” The idea that Trump reads this weekly Bible study seems as implausible as the idea that Rick Perry is “learned” or that Betsey DeVos and Jeff Sessions are the embodiment of a “spiritual awakening.”
“Like others, Drollinger often compares President Trump to biblical strongman Samson,” Wishon writes, but does not elaborate.
This is even more baffling than the Joseph business. Samson is not a Good Guy. Not even a little bit. He is famously strong, and devious, but he’s also unfaithful, intemperate, vain, foolish, and cruel. [Insert “jawbone of an ass” joke here.]
Samson is also, explicitly, a terrorist — fighting his enemies by burning their crops and, ultimately, becoming the first suicide bomber. If you want to understand what the story of Samson means, you need to see how it ends. And it does not end well: “those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life.”
This is in the middle of the book of Judges. In that context, the story of Samson has another clear meaning: A wicked, faithless, disobedient people are likely to wind up relying on wicked, faithless, disobedient leaders.
Ralph Drollinger and Pat Robertson and Jennifer Wishon and the audience for CBNNews are eager to play the role of Zedekiah in the court of Donald Trump. They will preen and toady for their king, prophesying that he will “Go up to Ramoth-gilead and triumph” — triumph so much that everyone will get tired of all the triumphing.
That Bible story didn’t end well for Ahab — who lost the battle and was killed. And it didn’t end well for Zedekiah, either, who would meet some similar fate when he went to hide in an inner chamber (whatever that means). But that’s not the sort of ending that worries me most when I think about Drollinger’s impression of Zedekiah and CBN’s imitation of all the other court prophets.
I’m more worried that the sad saga of Trump and his obsequious followers will end more like the other Bible story about a man named Zedekiah.
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