Ralph Drollinger, the head of the Bible study group in the White House, leaves a lot of room for speculation in a newsletter as to who is to blame for “God's current judgment.”
Since 1517, when Martin Luther published his theses and thus initiated the (unintentional) separation from the Roman Catholic Church, many different churches have been formed. One of these movements are the so-called Evangelicals, to which Ralph Drollinger also belongs .
For them, the Bible is truly God's Word, which always applies to the world at all times. Especially in times like these, evangelicals are quick to understand and proclaim the occurrence of viruses, natural disasters, etc. as God's punishment for people's sinful lives.
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Drollinger
It is therefore not surprising that Ralph Drollinger, the head of the Bible study group in the White House, is concerned with this question. His organization Capitol Ministries has set itself the goal of making people in political responsibility followers of Jesus ( compare ), and because Donald Trump's government relies particularly on evangelicals, there is a Bible study at the highest level once a week.
A newsletter from Drollinger has now come under criticism, which leaves room for speculation. Does he blame the coronavirus on “infidels?”, atheists or even homosexuals? To do this, we take a look at the newsletter in question ( here ) and also look at evangelical theology.
Romans
One theory, for example, would be that Drollinger sees homosexuality as to blame. This is quite obvious if you know evangelical positions. A look at the newsletter shows:
On page 4 in area C, Ralph Drollinger presents his comments on Romans 1:18-32. This passage from Paul's letter to the Romans is one of the clearest proofs for evangelicals that God rejects homosexuality. For example, verses 26 and 27 say:
“Therefore God gave her up to shameful passions; for among them women have exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural intercourse; In the same way, men have also abandoned natural intercourse with women and have become inflamed with lust for one another, and men have brought shame upon themselves with men, and have received the reward for their error, as it must have been."
After Drollinger then interprets further Bible passages in an evangelical (i.e. literal) way and deals with the question of God's punishment, he comes to the conclusion on page 7 under point VII:
“America is not comparable to Sodom and Gomorrah because there were no believers to be found there (Genesis 18:22-33). On the contrary, America is now inhabited by tens of millions of faithful Christ-followers. […] In fact, today's America is not a country whose majority of residents disbelieve in God's commandments. Conversely, it is only a small minority of people who are grossly negligent in disobeying God, people to whom the five references from Romans 1 apply. Unfortunately for the vast majority of believers in America, too many of the unbelievers have been allowed by the believers to hold high positions of influence over our culture; high positions in government, our education system, our media and our entertainment industry. This is tragic, unfortunate and costly.” [Translated]
This is where it gets exciting: Drollinger does not name any group of people explicitly, but leaves room for interpretation in which one can ask the question of who this “small minority” actually is that behaves in a grossly negligent manner towards God’s commandments.
Drollinger offers room for interpretation
According to evangelical understanding, this can mean many groups: homosexuals, atheists, communists, even Catholics. The evangelical spectrum is broad on this question, and Ralph Drollinger also leaves this question open.
Something else is also noticeable: the word “Corona” or “Covid 19” does not appear directly once in the entire text of the newsletter, and even the word “virus” cannot be discovered by the search function. Only in the first sentence on the first page does Ralph Drollinger give another indirect reference (“Some leading evangelicals believe and teach that America is currently experiencing God's judgment.” is translated).
Drollinger leaves a lot of room for interpretation in his newsletter, which can be interpreted in many different ways. It also remains unclear how much influence his Bible group has on leading US politicians.
A notice!
At this point we would also like to point out our category: CORONAVIRUS 2019 nCoV ( here ), in which we list all relevant fact checks on the topic of coronavirus.
Author: Mathäus Monz
Article image “Drollinger” from worradirek / Shutterstock.com
Notes:
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