The Christianist zealots have gotten further in the administration than any other. You can thank Mike Pence in no small part for allowing these utterly insane religious nutjobs (or as Pence would call them "my people!") to actually have access to the levers of government power. Every time you scratch the Republican Party a little more you reveal another freak show. And, as we all know, it's aaaaaallll about sex. The hangups they've bred into themselves are downright scary.
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Recently, a congressional staffer going about his business on the Hill encountered a couple of people who handed him a pamphlet with the scintillating title “Sexual Sin and the Aphrodisiac of Power.” Sadly, this was not a post-#MeToo effort to discourage sexual harassment in the halls of Congress. Instead, the document implored “legislators, staff and lobbyists” to adopt a strict fundamentalist view of sexuality, which holds that there is no legitimate expression of sex — including masturbation — outside “the confines and commitment of a husband and a wife (a male and a female) in the bonds of matrimony.”
Most urban dwellers, in Washington or elsewhere, have had these chance encounters with religious proselytizers trying to lure om the lost, lonely and emotionally vulnerable. But this was no random encounter with some true believer or doorbell-ringer. These folks were working for Capitol Ministries, a powerful right-wing group that is laser-focused on founder Ralph Drollinger’s goal of recruiting public leaders and leaning on them to impose the group’s far-right views on a public that overwhelmingly rejects them.
Furthermore, the group has been quite successful so far. As the pamphlet indicated, sponsors of the Capitol Ministries Bible Studies includes seven members of President Trump’s Cabinet, the head of NASA, and Vice President Mike Pence. According to Peter Montgomery of People for the American Way, who has been monitoring Capitol Ministries for years now, the group has weekly Bible studies for House members and senators, as well as one for Cabinet officials.
“[Drollinger] uses this really rare and privileged access he has by doing things like a Bible study with members of the Cabinet to tell these powerful public officials that the Bible mandates right-wing economic, social and environmental policies,” Montgomery told Salon.
This is evidence, he continued, “that the Trump administration is the culmination of the religious right’s takeover of the Republican Party over the last few decades.”
Drollinger is sensitive to claims that, by wielding this influence, he is violating the separation of church and state. Instead, the line at Capitol Ministries is that they “believe in an institutional separation” but also that they “believe in influence.” Which is to say they aren’t trying to forcibly convert all Americans to Christianity, but they are most definitely interested in forcing an extreme interpretation of Christian dogma on all American citizens, whether they agree with it or not.
For instance, in a 2018 class, Drollinger taught his acolytes that “Government is meant by God to quell evil” adding, “Governments and their leaders must send a constant message that sin will be punished.” So the policy upshot of that message would be that Americans can believe whatever they want in private, but if they commit what Drollinger teaches is “sin,” they should face governmental punishment.
“Sexual Sin and the Aphrodisiac of Power,” which is available at the Capitol Ministries website, is a good example of what Drollinger is teaching the people who run the country. Members are asked to refer to Galatians 5:16, the verse that instructs, “you will not gratify the desires of the flesh,” because the “the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit.”
The Bible defines “the desires of the flesh” pretty broadly and without much consistency. They seem to include “idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy.” This Bible study, however, is focused entirely on the issue of sexual expression outside a heterosexual marriage, including those expressions that might happen when “the privacy of a hotel room is combined with the promotion of the internet or pay-per-view television.”
“Since most everyone possesses sexual desire, get married!” the pamphlet cheerily recommends, as if making a life-changing legal and emotional commitment was about the same level of decision as grabbing a sandwich because you’re hungry.
But despite the breeziness of the “just get married” message early on, things turn more serious later the document: “Once married, one’s body becomes the property of his or her spouse.”
Specifically, the pamphlet explains that spouses need “to be unselfish when it comes to meeting the physical needs of their mates” so “as to remove the temptation of sexual fulfillment outside of wedlock.”
Read on about some of their "successes."
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