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The man fighting Pres. Donald Trump’s tariff battle with Canada today attended, or planned to attend, the controversial right-wing White House Bible study last year, his calendar shows.
U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer had two sessions of the weekly Bible study on a calendar his office posted online in response to a freedom-of-information request.
In 2025, the Bible study included controversial lessons such as teaching, after the sessions on Greer’s calendar, that the Jews killed Jesus.
Capitol Ministries, the group that runs almost-entirely Republican Bible studies in the White House and Congress, also teaches that immigrants don’t have to welcomed the way other strangers should be, and that God wants the poor tended to by private charity, not by the government.
Capitol Ministries co-founder Ralph Drollinger, who led last year’s Bible studies, has referred to Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, and other religions as false. (Believing that one’s own faith is right and others wrong is a common feature of many religions; it helps denominations spread and survive, regardless of the strife it causes).
Capitol Ministries also has rejected Mormonism, Greer’s religion, as a Christian denomination. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the official name of the Mormon religion, maintains that it is a Christian denomination. Many non-Mormon Christians disagree.
Greer’s calendar shows he was scheduled to attend the following White House Bible studies:
April 16, 2025: “Does Real Change Begin with the Left or the Right?”
May 21, 2025: “Why Believers Should Be Involved in Politics.”
Both calendar entries were partially redacted under an exemption permitted by law, regarding invading another person’s privacy. Potential explanations include the possibilities that the location was the office of someone who was named, and that someone specific was named as inviting or attending with Greer.
One of the entries names Capitol Ministries explicitly. The timing also matches that week’s listing in the Capitol Ministries study pamphlet, “Why Believers Should Be Involved in Politics.”
The other session, on April 16, 2025, was about whether the political right or left create true cultural change. Drollinger concluded that real change begins with Jesus.
Those two meetings, however, are the only ones that appear on Greer’s calendar as it was posted by his office. The calendar covers the period from the day after he was sworn in in February 2025 through May 31, 2025. (His office did not respond to emailed questions, including whether he has attended other meetings.)
Drollinger revived the weekly Bible studies in March 2025, at the invitation of Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins.
They and cabinet-level sponsors of Drollinger’s Bible studies are listed in each week’s pamphlet. As I’ve reported, his sponsors include openly theocratic and Christian nationalist officials such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
Greer is something of an anomaly alongside Drollinger’s sponsors. Greer was raised Mormon and, reportedly, remains devout.
The New York Times reported earlier this year that Greer teaches Sunday school. As a young man, he traveled to Europe trying to convert people to Mormonism.
In pictures his office shared with the Times of his missionary work, Greer resembles the stereotypical image of a Mormon missionary; short hair, clean-cut, wearing office attire, and cheerful.
If Greer gave the White House Bible study a couple of tries and then stopped attending, it might not be surprising.
According to Capitol Ministries, Mormonism doesn’t count as a Christian denomination.
A 2016 post on the Capitol Ministries site denigrates the Book of Mormon as untrustworthy and welcomes a new Utah minister to Capitol Ministries, describing him as having “converted to Christianity” from Mormonism:
Former Mormon, Now Christian Takes The Gospel To Utah Lawmakers
Carl Wimmer, a former Utah State Representative and Mormon Church leader who four years ago converted to Christianity, is the man who is taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Legislators in the Utah State Capitol. For more than a year Pastor Wimmer has handed out weekly exegetical Bible studies to each of the 104 Legislators beginning with Why You Can Trust The Bible, a subtle nod, perhaps, to the fact that he had discovered that he could not trust the Book of Mormon.
Pastor Wimmer’s conversion to Christianity happened in 2013 when, as a lifelong member of the LDS Church and one of its local leaders, he was brought information that refuted parts of the Book of Mormon.
A lot of Christians don’t consider Mormonism a Christian denomination. That includes some Drollinger students.
Hegseth not only sponsors Drollinger’s Bible studies, the Pentagon told me he’s attended. Earlier this year, Hegseth offended Mormons with a list of Pentagon-recognized religions that did not designate Mormons as Christian.
Rather than revise the list to include Mormons as Christians, the Pentagon released a new list that simply didn’t specify any denominations as Christian.
Drollinger has a record of hostility toward other religions; not out of animus, he would argue, but stemming simply from the fact — in his mind — that all religions but his are wrong.
He has called Catholicism “one of the primary false religions of the world.” In 2008, he wrote that he was “disgusted” with ecumenical gatherings of Sacramento lawmakers. “I have visited with a Jewish legislator, a Catholic legislator and a liberal Protestant legislator — all of whom reject the Jesus of Scripture.”
Drollinger’s Bible study in June 2025, after Greer’s last scheduled attendance, taught that the Jews killed Jesus. (Evangelicals should still consider Israel under God’s protection, however, Drollinger argues.)
It’s also possible that Greer had ethical concerns about Drollinger’s White House Bible study. Greer was heading the White House Office of Government Ethics (OGE) at the time the Bible study appeared on his calendar.
As a previous White House ethics lawyer told me, the White House Bible study is on thin ethical ice.
Richard Painter, now a law professor at the University of Minnesota, was the top ethics lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office during the presidency of George W. Bush. When I asked about Greer, as the head of OGE, attending Bible studies intended to influence political policy, Painter told me several issues were relevant: Whether the meetings occur on government property, what they’re called, and whether they occur during work hours.
The White House enjoys some exemptions from ethical prohibitions against mixing the personal with the professional. It’s uniquely considered a 24-hour workplace, so employees have some leeway to do personal activities, both political and religious.
That said, Painter said it shouldn’t be referred to publicly as the White House Bible study.
And Painter said he’s “concerned” about Greer’s involvement while he was running OGE, “because of the endorsement rule.” The OGE is supposed to guard against even apparent endorsements, “whether it’s selling Teslas on the White House lawn” or “endorsing a specific religious faith,” Painter said.
Endorsing one denomination over others, Painter said, “brings up Establishment Clause issues.” That’s the clause in the First Amendment barring the government from respecting an establishment of religion.
The Bible study “really is a meeting that should happen off the premises,” Painter said. “They ought to keep this off the premises and then not use the name White House.”
It’s not clear that Capitol Ministries actually holds the advertised White House Bible studies in the White House, or what’s left of it. Greer’s listing has one of the sessions as “virtual,” with no location for the other.
During the first Trump administration, Drollinger got his study group kicked out of the White House after blaming America for COVID, arguing that America had let too many sinners — LGBTQ+ people and environmentalists — into power.
As I reported last week, Drollinger one year later also blamed America for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. It was led by white Christian nationalists, but Drollinger noted that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-MO) had invoked Brahma “and other false deities” three days prior to Jan. 6, in an opening prayer. Which Cleaver ended with “Amen, and a-women.”
This heresy, Drollinger wrote, removed God’s protection from the Capitol Building.
And there’s still another possible reason Greer may have ended his participation.
The mission of Capitol Ministries is to influence how politicians think and govern. But it turns that both Drollinger and the Bible have little to say about tariffs and international trade.
Maybe there simply wasn’t much in the Bible studies that was pertinent to Greer’s job.
Not that evangelical Christianity today has nothing to say on the issue. Some evangelicals believe The Antichrist (a figure who doesn’t actually appear as such in the Bible) will usher in a one-world government. Free trade, in other words.
But as Greer is demonstrating right now, he’s already a devout protectionist.
Capitol Ministries 2025 Annual Report list of Washington Bible-study sponsors:
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