Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war

If Mike Johnson has his way, we may all be under the thumb of his religion

When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off.

• Stephen King, Storm of the Century

If there’s one thing we know about gay men, they’re not that interested in Pandora’s Box.

• Stephen Colbert

Yes, I know; I’m still having fun with Mike Johnson’s hyper-Christian hypocrisy…and I probably will be for the foreseeable future. He provides a rich vein of material that fairly demands to be mined, and his Christianity is a constant parade of “WTF??” 18th-century values. I’m surprised he hasn’t ordered stocks be set up in the Capitol Rotunda and that his least favorite Democrats be installed in them.

‘Course, he’s only been in the Speaker’s chair a few days, so that may be yet to come.

Of course, in politics, declaring oneself to be a Christian isn’t about faith. It’s really about virtue signaling and portraying oneself as holier-than-thou…behaviors Speaker Johnson appears to have already nailed.

It’s not a superficial question, for in this country, and especially in the South, declaring yourself Christian is essentially a prerequisite for holding public office, with only a sprinkling of exceptions, despite the principle of a separation between church and state. Ask an atheist, Muslim or Jew if you doubt me. We are about to enter a time of the year in which the U.S. economy, work and school schedules are gerrymandered around the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. No other deity gets that type of treatment in the United States. You’d be accused of conducting a “war on Christmas” if you don’t go along with the festivities or remain silent about your unease about that truth.

That’s why the question is so important. Yet, day by day, it feels more performative than substantive to declare one’s Christianity, like playing dress-up for Halloween.

Except with Johnson, he does want to turn back the clock, as well as turn AmeriKKKa into Margaret Atwood’s Gilead.

It’s not that Johnson is a morally Conservative Republican. What he believes on a personal level is his own business. It’s what he wants to force on the rest of us that should be cause for concern- and there’s plenty of reason for America to be concerned.

Having maintained a low profile since entering Congress in 2016 (a year after he became a state representative in Louisiana), his arrival on the national stage has led to widespread examination of his political record and views.

As well as his work in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, his work against abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights has been widely noted.

In the aftermath of the mass shooting in Maine on Wednesday night, in which 18 people were killed and 13 wounded, a clip circulated of Johnson blaming mass shootings on 20th-century American reforms. Listing “no fault divorce laws”, “the sexual revolution”, “radical feminism” and “government-sanctioned killing of the unborn”, he said had liberals had created “a completely amoral society” in which young Americans were “taught there is no right and wrong”.

Of course, the offensive nature of these comments can hardly be overstated, something lost on Johnson, but he’s deadly serious. Far be it from him to recognize that unfettered access to weapons of war might have something to do with the carnage facing America.

No rational person would agree that “the sexual revolution” or “radical feminism” is responsible for more than 30,000 gun deaths per year in America. Still, it beats taking action that might address the problem.

Then again, the National Rifle Association (NRA), which owns most of Congress, might have a problem with Congresscritters deciding to take action on common-sense gun control.

But, Johnson sees American governance through an almost entirely moral lens, warning that the Founding Fathers intended for there to be a wall separating Church from State. He contends, however, that they didn’t intend to separate the State from Church influence.

Huh? WTF?

What in the name of Margaret Atwood is going on here?

“… But the point is that the religion and morality had to be maintained and now we’re being led from the White House on down to reject and marginalise religious values … to just erase all of our moral codes and look down upon those who would try to stand up and say, ‘No, we have to maintain those.’”

Barack Obama was then president. To Johnson, America under Obama had become a “post-modern culture … defined by the absence of truth”.

“That makes the claims of the Bible inherently intolerant,” he said. “You know, truth has been replaced as the greatest virtue in society by tolerance. Well, we’re the inherently intolerant ones who say, ‘Wait a minute, life is sacred because we’re endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.’ We have to stand up for those.”

Sorry, but you don’t get to claim that America’s going to Hell in a handbasket because the President at that time was a Black Democrat…who also happened to be a committed Christian.

People like Mike Johnson hated Barack Obama for his skin color and his political party. The America they saw then wasn’t a “post-modern culture…defined by the absence of truth;” it was an America under the control and influence of a Black Democrat. Racists like Johnson couldn’t stomach that.

And, for a legislator who’s taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, Mike Johnson certainly has a selective understanding of it. Por ejemplo, the new Speaker used to conduct seminars in churches premised on the belief that America is a “Christian nation.”

Anyone who didn’t sleep through their high school Civics class knows that America is, in fact, NOT a “Christian nation,” but a nation under secular governance whose population happens to strongly self-identify as Christian.

That’s no small difference, but the Founding Fathers had the example of England to demonstrate what they didn’t want to see happen in their new country. So, they ensured that Church and State enjoyed prominence without being able to interfere in the affairs of the other.

This ministry, as he has referred to it, is yet more evidence that Johnson is committed to a hardcore Christian fundamentalism that shapes his views of politics and government.

The seminar, titled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity,” was organized by Onward Christian Education Services, Inc., a company owned by his wife, Kelly Johnson, a Christian counselor and anti-abortion activist who calls herself a “leader in the pro-family movement.” The website for her counseling service—which was taken down shortly after Johnson became speaker—described the seminar, which featured both her and Johnson, as exploring several questions, such as, “What is happening in America and how do we fix it?” The list includes this query: “Can our heritage as a Christian nation be preserved?” There were different versions of the seminar running from two-hour-long lectures to retreats lasting two days. 

You can’t preserve the heritage of something that doesn’t exist, and America isn’t a Christian nation. To believe otherwise is to insult Americans who happen not to accept Christianity. America was founded in part on the idea of religious freedom and that one didn’t have to profess a specific faith tradition to be considered “part of the club.”

1. What is happening in America, and how do we fix it? That presumes that you believe something is “wrong” in or with America that needs “fixing.” That most Americans don’t adhere to your Conservative Fundamentalist worldview doesn’t ipso facto translate to there being something “wrong” with America.

2. Can our heritage as a Christian nation be preserved? As I’ve mentioned, you can’t maintain the culture of something that doesn’t exist. If Mike Johnson is the Constitutional attorney he claims to be, he would understand this.

3. How should Christians respond to the changing culture? Culture is not a static entity. It does, and should, change with the times. One can either adapt or whine about it. Christians are not exempt from this rule. Either get on the bus…or get run over by it.

4. What does the Bible say about today’s problems and issues? Uh…what would you expect a 2000+-year-old book to say about today’s problems and issues? How could something written more than two millennia ago possibly anticipate today’s problems?

Mike and Kelly Johnson, each a fundamentalist Christian and culture war battler who advocates adhering to what they call a “biblical worldview,” launched this initiative in 2019. After one such presentation on February 24, 2019, at the First Baptist Church in Bossier City, Louisiana, where they are members—an event that also featured Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council—a local television news show reported that the seminar’s goal was to “keep God in Government.” Johnson posted the article on his congressional website.

The problem with this, of course, is that, according to the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment, God should not BE in government. That’s the whole point of the separation of Church and State. Yet here’s a Congressman and someone who claims to be a Constitutional attorney giving a seminar, the goal of which is to “keep God in Government.”

Either Mike Johnson doesn’t understand the Constitution…or he doesn’t care about the separation of Church and State and wants to turn America into a theocracy.

[T]he couple’s goal was “to equip churches to take a stand against the cultural attacks now being directed at people of faith, the traditional family and basic freedoms embedded in the U.S. Constitution.” It noted that Johnson said he was compelled to create this new ministry while serving in the US House because he was concerned “that too many believers today feel ill-informed to provide substantive answers to fake arguments.” It quoted Johnson: “Our nation is entering one of the most challenging seasons in its history and there is an urgent need for God’s people to be armed and ready with the Truth.” He was referring to what fundamentalists call “biblical truth.”

A promotion blurb for the seminar described it this way: “As polls show that Christianity is in rapid decline in America, and the culture is growing more secularized and more coarsened, many believers feel ill-informed and ill-prepared to do anything to reverse these trends. Scripture is clear that we have an obligation to provide substantive answers… But HOW?”

• Unlike what so many Christians would have us believe, there are no “cultural attacks now being directed at people of faith.”

• Nor are the “traditional family” or the “basic freedoms embedded in the US Constitution” under attack from those who hate Christians.

• Provide substantive answers to what fake arguments?

• Johnson claims there’s an urgent need for “God’s people” to be “armed and ready with the Truth.” How does he propose to demonstrate this truth? And who, pray tell, are “God’s people?”

• Christianity is in decline in America in large part because they see Fundamentalist Christians focusing on narrow lifestyle and morality issues that have nothing to do with religion. It’s become about social control.

From a sheer arrogance standpoint, with 3000+ religions in the world, the idea of standing up and with no sense of irony declaring your faith tradition to be the ONE, TRUE, and ONLY faith is astonishing.

For Mike Johnson or anyone else to do that on behalf of their American Taliban Christianity will come as quite a shock to fundamentalist Muslims or Hasidic Jews or…well, you get the point.

At a “Answers for Our Times” seminar held at the First Baptist Church of Haughton, Louisiana, in April 2019, Kelly Johnson proclaimed that “biblical Christianity” is the only “valid worldview.” Nothing else, she said, “makes sense.” She contended that guidance to the problems of today can be found in the “simple answers in the Bible.” Mike Johnson referred to the Bible as the “owner’s manual” for “how things are supposed to operate” and called for “biblically sanctioned government.” Johnson complained that there is now “total chaos on the street… God’s not at the top anymore.” He added, “The problem is most people” want “the government to take care of us now, we want the government to provide us everything… It will not work because it defies the created order of the Creator… The government has replaced the Creator. Government is becoming God.”

No, it’s ONE “valid worldview,” not the ONLY one. Nothing else may “make sense” to Kelly Johnson in Haughton, Louisiana, and that’s fine. But what about a clay pot maker in Damascus, Syria, or a cricket player in Mumbai, India? Does no one think that they might have religious beliefs that “make sense” to them that have nothing to do with Christianity?

The problem with the American Taliban is that they operate from a place of smug arrogance and intolerance. THEIR beliefs and ONLY their beliefs are the correct and proper ones. It doesn’t matter that there are more than 3,000 other religions in the world- they’re all WRONG- save for American Taliban Christianity, and their adherents are all HEATHENS who are destined for Hell. They just don’t know it.

In a world many of his ilk see as fraught with danger and uncertainty, Mike Johnson believes that only he and people who believe like him have the answers for what “ails” America.

And that answer doesn’t entail more democracy. It means heading in a very different direction.

Greetings from Gilead, eh?

Mike Johnson sees himself as part of small band of righteous officials who take on the hard task of governing strictly according to the tenets of Christian fundamentalism. He and Kelly are true believers. He has long associated with Christian nationalism; crusaded against gay rights and same-sex marriage; decried no-fault divorce; and pushed for a total ban on abortion. Her Christian counseling practice has compared homosexuality to bestiality and incest. They share a dark view of the modern world. In a sermon he preached in 2016, Johnson declared, “We’re living in a completely amoral society.” And during a podcast last year with Jordan Peterson, the Canadian conservative provocateur, he said that “sinister” elites were responsible for orchestrating climate change as an issue to achieve global “control.”

The telling part is that Johnson “sees himself as part of [a] small band of righteous officials who take on the hard task of governing strictly according to the tenets of Christian fundamentalism.”

This is something straight out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a dystopian story of a cabal of corrupt tyrants who ruthlessly use their brand of American Taliban Christianity to take over part of the country. That new country, Gilead, becomes a pariah nation, but the Commanders in charge don’t care because they have everything they want precisely as they want it.

Thinks Margaret Atwood is a prophet.

Except for the one little detail of the Commanders’ wives being unable to get pregnant, which is an integral part of the story.

Mike and Kelly Johnson appear to be sociopaths incapable of understanding that there are people outside their American Taliban bubble who don’t share their beliefs and don’t feel as if they’re missing out.

The arrogance and insensitivity required to believe as the Johnsons do is stunning beyond anything I can imagine. That said, I can imagine a situation where, if circumstances come together, Mike Johnson could become a Supreme Commander straight out of The Handmaid’s Tale.

I hope that time will prove me an alarmist; I’d love nothing more than to be proven wrong- WAY wrong. Still, I can’t shake the fear that something terrible lurks out there, just over the horizon. It may mean an America we can’t begin to imagine- an America where writing something like this might be a perilous, perhaps even life-threatening endeavor.

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