This article was originally published on Jonathan Larsen’s Substack. It is republished with permission.
Less than a month after the June 2025 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) in Johnson’s Capitol Hill office.
In their private meeting after the photo above was taken, Johnson gave Netanyahu a Bible study pamphlet that contains Jewish tropes and proclaims the foundational antisemitic blood libel of deicide: the claim not just that some Jews were involved in Jesus’s crucifixion, but that all Jews are culpable.
Although the pamphlet and accompanying videos are supportive of Israel, they repeat the antisemitic claim, long renounced by major world religions, that Israel, the Jews, killed Jesus.
The two-part Bible study was a treatise urging US politicians to take Israel’s side. The two lessons had been distributed to congressional and White House Bible-study groups starting the day after Israel launched a sustained attack on Iran last year, when the push was on for the US to join in.
The two-part lessons were posted online on June 13 and 14, 2025. It’s not that the two pamphlets were written that quickly; they were recycled.
Capitol Ministries — which runs Bible studies for the House, Senate, White House, and governors — often reuses previous lessons, or repurposes them in the context of current events. The Israel lessons were resurrected to make a Biblical case for the US to join Israel’s new offensive.
For instance, the June 13, 2025, study guide notes that, “Given ongoing attention to Israel and Gaza, I thought this would be a good time to provide a biblical primer as to why you and our nation should remain staunch allies of Israel.” That language has been in there since at least October 18, 2021.
And the same Bible study pamphlet has been warning about Iran’s “nearly-enriched nuclear threat” since 2011.
So, over the years, many influential leaders in the Trump administration and the Republican Congress may have seen the recycled Israel lessons.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) has been involved with Capitol Ministries and its leaders, Ralph and Danielle Drollinger, for more than ten years.
“Ralph and Danielle are there to instruct, admonish, encourage, exhort and inspire elected officials to lead their lives and conduct themselves in a way that brings glory to God,” Thune said in 2015, “to remind us of what is important, what our priorities should be.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth participates in the Capitol Ministries White House Bible studies, the Pentagon confirmed to me last year.
On June 21, 2025, about a week after the Bible studies, President Donald Trump launched three separate strikes against nuclear targets in Iran.
Then, the following month, Netanyahu came to Washington. His itinerary before meeting with Trump at the White House included a stop at Johnson’s office
Spectrum News reported that, after the meeting, Netanyahu said, “First comes strength, then comes the peace.”
Johnson issued a brief statement about the meeting, but neither man shared everything that transpired. Some details Johnson saved for the 2025 annual report of Capitol Ministries.
In a quotation accompanying the same picture from his office that he used for his social-media post, Johnson gave Capitol Ministries a more substantive account of what happened at the meeting.
This photo of Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to my office last summer was taken right before I shared with him a copy of Ralph’s two-part Bible study on “The Biblical Case for Defending Israel.” We discussed it at some length and Bibi left with a copy.
CapMin is an invaluable resource that I and countless other members greatly appreciate. The solid weekly Bible studies are always timely and applicable to our personal lives, as well as our vocational decisions.
The first of Drollinger’s two Israel study guides argues that the US should help Israel even though it’s in a time-out for killing Jesus:
“[T]he spiritual blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant accrue to the Church for a time (until God grafts Israel back in) due to the present apostasy of Israel, having executed the Messiah.”
In a video for Part 2, Drollinger argues that the Bible says Jews were only “sidetracked” by God. For crucifying Jesus.
“Israel has stumbled. They’re on the side track of God’s plan as He grafts in the gentiles into His kingdom. And they’ve been sidetracked because they crucified their messiah.”
The pamphlets for both parts of that lesson list Johnson, among many other Republicans1, as sponsors.
Neither Johnson’s office nor the Israeli embassy in Washington responded to emails requesting confirmation and comment.
You might think Capitol Hill media might have learned about and reported a lengthy discussion between the US House speaker and Israel’s prime minister about the biblical case for the US to side with Israel. Especially when that argument stipulates that the Jews killed Jesus.
And especially when Drollinger has made news before with derogatory statements about women, Catholics and LGBTQ+ people.
It wasn’t even the first evangelical shadow diplomacy Johnson has engaged in with huge stakes. His meetings with Ukraine’s Fellowship Foundation point man, unreported at the time, led to Johnson supporting Ukraine aid.
Nevertheless, for whatever reason, Johnson bringing Drollinger’s teachings into his Netanyahu meeting has not been previously reported. I only learned about it going through the annual report.
And it’s not the first time this issue has arisen on Capitol Hill in recent years. Johnson has a complicated history when it comes to references to deicide.
In 2024, Senaator Chuck Schumer (D-New York) was trying to pass the Antisemitism Awareness Act to enact legal definitions of antisemitism. Jewish Insider reported that Schumer, the majority leader at the time, believed an unnamed Republican senator would force a floor vote on an amendment to exempt deicide from the definitions.
Calling Jews Christ-killers, in other words, would not be considered antisemitism under the law.
So Schumer went to Johnson, who had already got the bill through the House, for help. He asked Johnson about attaching the bill to a much bigger one, military spending, to block the deicide amendment from getting a potentially divisive floor debate. Schumer feared such a debate could make things worse for American Jews.
But the bill’s inclusion of deicide had already prompted blowback from the Christian right. Charlie Kirk suggested, falsely, that the bill had outlawed parts of the Bible. Tucker Carlson responded: “Yes. The New Testament.”
Reportedly, Johnson told Schumer no, he wouldn’t add the antisemitism legislation to the military spending bill.
We still don’t know which senator was set to push a deicide amendment but, in April 2025, The Forward reported that Senator Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) was pushing one. Cassidy’s been a Drollinger sponsor since 2013.
Without the amendment, Representative Josh Brecheen (R-Oklahoma) voted against the bill because it defined blaming Jews for the crucifixion as antisemitism:
This statement is not antisemitic; it is a biblical and historical fact, as Jesus was a Jew.
I sincerely wish I could have supported this bill, as I have always opposed antisemitism, but I cannot approve of any measure that mischaracterizes what the Bible says as bigoted or hateful.
The bill died when a slew of bipartisan amendments cost it majority support.
As I reported last year, Johnson had only become a sponsor of Drollinger’s House Bible study in May 2025, the month before the Israel Bible lessons. Just a couple months before, Trump administration leaders had revived the weekly White House cabinet meetings of the Bible study.
One of those leaders was Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, now being sued for proselytizing to her staff. The other was Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.
During Vought’s 2017 confirmation hearing, he stood by a previous published statement that Muslims “stand condemned” for not accepting Jesus as their savior.
When Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont) asked whether Jews also stand condemned, Vought said he was writing about his school, Wheaton, which “has a statement of faith that speaks clearly with regard to the centrality of Jesus Christ in salvation.”
There’s no public indication of whether Johnson is being influenced by Drollinger’s teachings, or sponsors the Bible studies because those teachings reflect his own, previously held beliefs.
In 2024, for instance, Johnson was asked whether he believed in a biblical rationale for aiding Israel.
Q: Do you also think that there’s a moral or biblical rationale for the US to be supporting Israel at this time?
JOHNSON: Sure. It’s my personal belief it begins in the first book of the Bible, the Torah, and Genesis, where it says very clearly that God will bless the nation that blesses Israel and curse the nation that curses Israel. So, whether you look at this as a matter of faith, whether you look at it in purely pragmatic reasons, it’s very important, very important for us to support Israel as the only stable democracy in the Middle East. … For some of us it goes even deeper than that because it is a matter of faith.
That’s in line with Drollinger’s teachings. Here’s the short version of Drollinger’s biblical exegesis as outlined in the lessons that Johnson shared last year with Netanyahu:
- God made a promise to Israel — the Abrahamic Covenant — that applied to the whole world. Israel’s allies would be blessed, her enemies cursed.
- Some Christians argue that the crucifixion voided God’s promise, meaning nations didn’t have to worry about God anymore when they dealt with Israel. Drollinger attributes this belief, in part, to antisemitism: A rationale for hating Jews and acting against Israel.
- Drollinger teaches an alternate view. Yes, he says, the Jews killed Jesus. In his words, “Israel … executed their messiah.” (Most major religions have renounced this view.) But …
- … God’s not done with Israel, Drollinger argues. God has merely put Israel in time out until the end of the story, when Jews are prophesied to play a part again (by converting to Christianity or being damned for eternity). So the Abrahamic Covenant, with blessings for Israel’s allies and curses for her enemies, remains in effect.
In other words, Drollinger perpetuates the claim of deicide. He just argues that it shouldn’t be held against Israel.
Drollinger shared his thoughts about Israel killing Jesus in the course of his two videos about his Israel Bible studies.
Drollinger’s Bible study includes other tropes about Israel that are also considered antisemitic, even though they’re superficially complimentary. Israel’s smart, Drollinger says. And good with money.
Drollinger has even written that he was in the gallery when Netanyahu urged a 2015 joint session of Congress to kill the Iran nuclear deal. Drollinger wrote that he “enthusiastically joined in the thundering applause.”
Ironically, the year before Netanyahu’s congressional speech that Drollinger attended, Netanyahu addressed the United Nations, touching on antisemitism.
As Netanyahu explained, “For centuries the Jewish people have been demonized with blood libels and charges of deicide.”
The Anti-Defamation League agrees, calling it a “myth” to blame Jews for Jesus’s crucifixion:
The myth that Jews collectively murdered Jesus, also referred to as “deicide,” has been used to justify violence against Jews for centuries. Historians as well as Christian leaders have agreed that the claim is baseless.
A range of Jewish and secular groups and leaders last year condemned the Bible study for repeating the deicide slur.
Still, Israeli officials have understood for years that evangelical Christian support in the US is based in some measure on the wish to fulfill biblical prophecy. Johnson’s presentation to Netanyahu is only the latest confirmation of how important the Bible is to US foreign policy.
US evangelical Christian politicians may have nothing against Jews personally and may love Netanyahu’s policies. Or they may be fervidly antisemitic, harboring poisonous views of Jewish people. Either way, Drollinger’s theology perpetuates the charge of deicide, antisemitism’s original sin, but it also requires Israel to be intact for Jesus to return.
These kinds of belief are wildly underappreciated throughout American culture and government.
After the US joined Israel’s attack on Iran last year, for instance, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation received reports from service members about commanders celebrating the arrival of the End Times:
[T]he commander and his wife spent most of the Bible study yesterday in excessive and extreme glorification and overall celebration of the sudden attack on Iran by American forces and all of the other matters connected to the Israeli attacks on Iran…. They had big fat grins on their faces as they assured us that the “End Times” were now here just as heralded and predicted in the New Testament Book of Revelation.
According to Drollinger, his students in Congress and the cabinet are already predisposed toward Israel, often as part of their culturally Christian backgrounds. His lessons just provide a biblical basis, he says.
[W]e need to buoy the convictions of our members based upon Scriptural truths … so that, when push comes to shove, they know why they believe they’re pro-Israel: from what the Bible says.”
Recently, congressional Democrats have proved much more willing to buck Israel’s interests, voting in growing numbers against US arms for Israel.
Republicans, Drollinger says, base their support for Israel on the Bible. Democrats tempt their own ruin abandoning Israel:
[W]e see one political party for the most part basing their policies on the Mosaic law, the Ten Commandments, Exodus 20, and we see another one, increasingly — no matter what the matter is — it’s contrary to the Ten Commandments in their basis for reasoning, which is really shaky ground and it could demolish a political party that continues to do that …. The views that they hold are not tied to Mosaic law.
Of course, representatives in both parties swear to uphold the Constitution, not Mosaic law.
And Drollinger insists he’s not a Christian nationalist, not a Dominionist. He opposes both, and opposes theocracy, because, he says, the Bible does, too. He just wants as many elected officials as possible to base their votes and policies on God’s will.
Independent journalist Jonathan Larsen formerly was an executive producer at MSNBC, where he helped create Up w/ Chris Hayes, and previously was a senior producer on Countdown w/ Keith Olbermann. This and other articles can be read at Jonathan Larsen’s Substack.