Christian conservatives cheer one of their own as Mike Johnson assumes Congress’ most powerful seat Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., takes the oath to be the new House speaker from the Dean of the House Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) By PETER SMITH October 28, 2023 https://apnews.com/article/house-sp...ht-louisiana-9407f1e4b4c588f27f9510dd47c94fe8 Evangelical Christian conservatives have long had allies in top Republican leadership in Congress. But never before have they had one so thoroughly embedded in their movement as new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a longtime culture warrior in the courthouse, in the classroom and in Congress. Religious conservatives cheered Johnson’s election Wednesday, after which he brought his Bible to the rostrum before taking the oath of office. “The Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority ... each of you, all of us,” he said. “Someone asked me today in the media, ‘People are curious, what does Mike Johnson think about any issue?’” Johnson said Thursday in a Fox News interview. “I said, ’Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.’” But progressive faith leaders are sounding the alarm about Johnson’s opposition to LGBTQ rights and his rallying of Republicans around former President Donald Trump’s legal effort to overturn the 2020 election results. And, more broadly, they are concerned about Johnson’s “desire to impose his narrow religious vision upon the rest of us,” in the words of Paul Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance, a broad coalition of progressive religious groups. To be sure, Christian conservatives have held the House speakership with Republican majorities in the past, from Catholics such as Paul Ryan and John Boehner to Newt Gingrich, who was Southern Baptist when he was speaker in the 1990s and later converted to Catholicism. In fact, the 2023 House speaker drama has been in some ways an intra-church affair starring Southern Baptists — including Johnson himself, short-term speaker Kevin McCarthy and the representative who led the revolt to oust McCarthy, Matt Gaetz. But Johnson is a bona fide culture warrior, with a resume reading like a roadmap of powerful institutions of the religious right. He has served as professor at the government school of Liberty University in Virginia, a Christian school and conservative bastion. From 2004 to 2012, Johnson served on board of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose 13 million members comprise the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. During his tenure with the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, it rallied members to place strong emphasis on “values voting.” Such activism helped reinforce Republicans’ opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights. Brent Leatherwood, the commission’s current president, said he met with Johnson in the early days of his own tenure. “It was clear to me he carries an abiding devotion to our convention of churches, subscribes to the principles that are dear to so many Southern Baptists, and has a deep pride in our nation,” Leatherwood said. Johnson served as an attorney with what’s now known as Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the foremost legal advocates of causes valued by many on the religious right. With the ADF, Johnson championed a 2004 Louisiana ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, writing in the Shreveport Times that “homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural” and that society should not approve “such a dangerous lifestyle.” In 2003, after the U.S. Supreme Court nullified state laws banning same-sex sexual relations — which the ADF had urged it to retain — Johnson lamented the decision, writing that by “closing these bedroom doors, they (the justices) have opened a Pandora’s box.” Johnson’s own public interest law firm, called Freedom Guard, helped win a legal battle regaining tax incentives on behalf of a Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky, overcoming state concerns that the project’s mission had shifted from tourism to ministry. Johnson recently led a congressional hearing on transgender issues, saying in a statement, ”Gender affirming care’ is anything but ‘affirming’ and ‘caring.’ It is adults deciding to permanently alter the bodies of children who do NOT have the capacity to make life altering decisions on their own.” Religious conservatives embraced Johnson as one of their own as they cheered his election as speaker. “His commitment to unity and passion for protecting freedom will benefit all Americans,” ADF president Kristen Waggoner said on X (formerly Twitter). The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, welcomed Johnson’s speakership not only because of his conservative political record, but also because he is a “a self-consciously committed evangelical Christian.” “He has somehow pulled off the task of being very convictional and I believe right on most of these issues, and at the same time considered to be respectful and gracious even well-liked by members of his own party, and presumably by members of the other party as well,” Mohler said on his podcast. Johnson invoked images cherished by Christian conservatives as he ascended to the speakership, pledging “servant leadership,” leading fellow Republicans in a prayer, touting the national motto, “In God We Trust” and highlighting the Declaration of Independence’s statement that humans “are endowed by their Creator” with rights. John Fea, who studies religious conservatives and is a professor of history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania, said Johnson is a Christian nationalist, part of a movement that fuses Christian and American values, symbols and identity and sees the United States as having a divine destiny similar to the biblical Israel. Johnson has paid tribute to the “profound influence” of Wallbuilders, an organization promoting the view that America was created as a Christian nation, on his own career. “We should not be fooled by his aw-shucks style,” Fea added in Current, an online journal. “He is a culture warrior with deep connections to the Christian Right. One might call him a happy warrior.” Progressive faith leaders expressed alarm at Johnson‘s election, and his remarks on Wednesday evoking the Bible as saying authorities are chosen by God. “He must remember that he was elected by the people, not by God,” Raushenbush said. Similar concerns were expressed by the Rev. Nathan Empsall, executive director of Faithful America, an online Christian community advocating for social justice. Empsall, in a statement, depicted Johnson as “an insurrection-supporting politician who will do anything to grab power, no matter who it hurts, simply to enforce his brand of right-wing Christianity on the rest of us.” After the 2020 election, Johnson organized more than 100 House Republicans to file a brief supporting Trump’s challenge to President Joe Biden’s election — a challenge that appalled many legal observers and that the Supreme Court rejected. On Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress prepared to certify Biden’s win and just before Trump’s supporters overran the Capitol, Johnson tweeted: “We MUST fight for election integrity, the Constitution, and the preservation of our republic! It will be my honor to help lead that fight in the Congress today.” He later tweeted a condemnation of the rioters who beat police and broke into the Capitol. He still voted with most House Republicans to overturn Biden’s victories in two states. Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, said via email that Johnson “has an obligation to serve all Americans,” those of all faiths and none. “Johnson’s brand of Christian nationalism is bad American history and a betrayal of the historic Baptist commitment to religious freedom,” Tyler added. AP journalists David Crary and Holly Meyer contributed to this report.
Let's make a prediction (prophesy), this guy will turn out as a fiasco in this role. Peace? What peace? Grab yur popcorn for the upcoming ringside seat fight match. BOOKMARK this!
I can't understand how an alleged Christian can be a Republican. "Throw away your Money and serve your fellow Man" and all that Jesus said. Republicans generally serve "The Big End of Town", not the Sick, the Weak, the Impoverished etc. Don't swear at me @FortuneTeller your time is better spent Praying for Mickey to "see the Light" and all that!
The Senate is getting a basket of budget cuts. Christian vow of poverty from big Mike Johnson. Lobbyist bribing and backstabbing caused Republicans to recoil from the savages.
Opinion The People’s House is back in business — and crazier than ever By Dana Milbank Columnist| November 3, 2023 So you thought the election of a new speaker might calm the chaos and fratricide among House Republicans? Oh, my sweet summer child. This week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) forced a vote in the House on censuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on accusations of being antisemitic. It was funny enough that Congresswoman Jewish Space Lasers herself was accusing somebody else of being antisemitic. But her censure resolution was so over the top — it accused Tlaib of “leading an insurrection” — that 23 Republicans joined all Democrats in tabling it. After the vote, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) said via X, formerly Twitter, that the censure resolution “was deeply flawed and made legally and factually unverified claims, including the claim of leading an ‘insurrection’.” Greene shot back on social media: “You voted to kick me out of the freedom caucus, but keep CNN wannabe Ken Buck and vaping groping Lauren Boebert and you voted with the Democrats to protect Terrorist Tlaib.” To unpack this Greene crazy: Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) has criticized fellow Republicans’ plan to impeach President Biden without any evidence, and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) was kicked out of a Denver performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” with her date after causing a disturbance that involved both vaping and groping. Asked about this accusation from Greene, Roy told the Hill’s Mychael Schnell: “Tell her to go chase so-called Jewish space lasers if she wants to spend time on that sort of thing.” To this, Greene replied with a new post: “Oh shut up Colonel Sanders, you’re not even from Texas, more like the DMV.” Roy, who grew up in Northern Virginia, has a white goatee not unlike the whiskers on the chin of the late founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Ladies and gentlemen, the People’s House is back in business. In the nine days since Republicans pulled Mike Johnson from the back benches, the new speaker has presided over a second failed attempt to expel indicted Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.), the introduction of not one but two resolutions to censure Tlaib, and a resolution to censure Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) for pulling a fire alarm during a vote. Johnson managed to turn an area of near-unanimous support into a partisan brouhaha by making funds to help Israel defend itself against Hamas contingent on a provision making it easier for the wealthy to cheat on their taxes. With just two weeks to go until the federal government runs out of funding, Johnson is floating a cockamamie “laddered” approach that would replace the looming shutdown threat with 12 new shutdown threats. End of carousel If this is the new speaker’s idea of a functioning House, maybe having the House speakerless and inoperative for 22 days wasn’t so bad after all. The internecine feuding in the GOP resumed immediately after Johnson’s elevation. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason T. Smith (Mo.) publicly blasted Rep. Matt Gaetz (Fla.) for causing the crisis by filing the motion to oust Speaker Kevin McCarthy (Calif.). Gaetz responded — by, some speculated, insinuating on social media that Smith is gay. Smith “called me a liar,” Gaetz wrote. “It’s a somewhat predictable projection. Because he lives a lie every day.” Gaetz declined to elaborate. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) stepped up his efforts to impeach Biden with the panel’s announcement that “Joe Biden received $40,000 in laundered China money.” Bank records indicate it was actually repayment of a loan Biden made to his brother when the current president was a private citizen. Comer’s wild allegations keep crumbling upon scrutiny, which might explain why he said of his impeachment inquiry: “I don’t know that I want to hold any more hearings, to be honest with you.” He prefers closed-door depositions, which he can selectively leak to create false impressions. Buck pointed to his colleagues’ allergy to facts when he announced this week that he was retiring from Congress. “Too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, describing January 6 as an unguided tour of the Capitol and asserting that the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponization of our justice system,” Buck said in a video explaining why he was quitting. Of these “self-serving lies,” he continued: “These insidious narratives breed widespread cynicism and erode Americans’ confidence in the rule of law. It is impossible for the Republican Party to confront our problems and offer a course correction for the future while being obsessively fixated on retribution and vengeance for contrived injustices of the past.” Johnson’s response to all this: more self-serving lies. In his first interview as speaker, he told Fox News’s Sean Hannity that “it looks and smells a lot like” Biden received bribes. He also said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had “committed impeachable offenses” and agreed with Hannity that Biden has experienced “cognitive decline.” (At a subsequent news conference, Johnson maintained that the impeachment inquiry, which Comer and others are using as a fundraising tool, is “outside the scope of politics.”) “People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?” Johnson said to Hannity. “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview.” What about the bit about bearing false witness, Mr. Speaker? Johnson was caught in another whopper by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this week. Republicans claimed that their bill offering $14.5 billion in aid to Israel was “offset” by cutting the same amount from the IRS. But the CBO forecast that the cuts to the IRS would actually cost the federal government an additional $12.5 billion — as reduced enforcement makes it easier for people to cheat on their taxes. “Only in Washington when you cut spending do they call it an increase in the deficit,” Johnson responded to the CBO. Only in Louisiana, apparently, do they think that if you stop collecting taxes, your tax receipts will increase. Johnson has continued moving spending bills through the House along party lines, at levels that violate the bipartisan budget deal enacted this year. In the Senate, by contrast, a package of spending bills passed this week on a broadly bipartisan vote of 82-15. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, admonished her House counterparts “to get serious about governing, get back to the spending agreement they negotiated, and work with us to finalize bipartisan bills.” But that isn’t going to happen. The House “chaos caucus,” which ousted McCarthy and turned the lights out in the chamber for 22 days, has found its man. Johnson is well on his way to being a chaos speaker.