Graeme Sloan/Sipa through AP
Mike Johnson, the brand new Republican speaker of the Home, has a really darkish view of America. He believes that the US is “a very amoral society” and that world “sinister” forces have a maintain on a few of its governmental insurance policies.
Instantly after Johnson—somewhat identified congressman from Louisiana whose most notable act thus far has been main the effort to dam the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory—was elevated by the Home GOP to be speaker, folks began digging into his background and found that he was a far-right Christian fundamentalist who seeks to ban all abortions, who has referred to as for eliminating no-fault divorce, who has decried same-sex marriage, and who has in contrast homosexuality to pedophilia. He’s a tradition battle extremist.
He additionally appears to hate America—not less than, modern-day America.
In a 2016 sermon he preached on the Christian Heart of Shreveport—whereas he was working for Congress—Johnson summed up his tackle the US. Standing earlier than an American flag and an Israeli flag, Johnson delivered a 90-minute-long presentation during which he traced all current ills to the countercultural upheaval of the Nineteen Sixties and Nineteen Seventies that undermined “the foundations of faith and morality.” He ticked off the culprits: no-fault divorce, the sexual revolution, radical feminism, and legalized abortion. “Collectively as Individuals,” he declared, “we started to get collectively in rising quantity and thumb our noses on the Creator and say we don’t imagine that anymore.” The nation, he bemoaned, selected a path of “ethical relativism.” He pronounced a harsh verdict: “We’re residing in a very amoral society.”
That was fairly an indictment: the US as a godless nation and an ethical wreck. However Johnson meant it. He continued: “We’ve taught a complete era, a few generations now, that there isn’t any proper or unsuitable, that it’s concerning the survival of the fittest, and also you developed from the primordial slime.” One outcome, he claimed, was faculty shootings. Sure, the instructing of evolution has led to those bloody massacres.
Johnson’s schtick, earnestly and passionately delivered, was Christian Fundamentalism 101. If the nation doesn’t abide by the Christian Bible—because the fundamentalists learn it—all is misplaced. That’s why he has lengthy been a crusader in opposition to homosexual rights. In 2003, he denounced the Supreme Courtroom for overturning a Texas sodomy legislation, insisting the state had the appropriate “to discriminate between heterosexual and gay conduct.” He primarily based his stance on “millennia of ethical instructing.” Elsewhere, he has cited the Bible for his opposition to same-sex marriage and has urged the criminalization of homosexuality.
Together with his spouse, Kelly Johnson, as a co-host, Johnson has produced a podcast for the previous two years. On the inaugural broadcast in March 2022, Kelly reported what for her was a disturbing ballot: “Simply 4 p.c of Individuals nonetheless adhere to a biblical world view.” Mike Johnson referred to as that “an actual surprising pattern.” He remarked, “Even when you’re not a Christian, why do you have to care a couple of biblical worldview slipping away from us? As a result of it occurs to be the foundational precept, the premise of the nation.” In essence, the US wants to stay to that “biblical worldview”—or else.
In that very same podcast, Kelly warned of socialism inside the US. “Socialism all the time turns into communism sooner or later,” she declared. Her husband famous that what was essentially unsuitable with socialism is that it “begins with the concept there isn’t any God.” Such statements present that the Johnsons maintain a relatively slender perspective on these issues. There are many Western democracies the place residents assist socialist applications and imagine in Christianity, together with the US. (Is the UK’s Nationwide Well being Service anti-God? Is Medicare or Social Safety?)
However for Mike Johnson, the world is filled with devilish and anti-Christian forces. On a podcast that featured him and Jordan Peterson, the Canadian conservative provocateur, the pair turned towards the subject of local weather change. Johnson demeaned local weather activists as irrational, and he contended that they “regarded the local weather agenda as a part of their faith.” He continued: “They’re not serving the folks. They’re serving the planet…They’ve successfully changed Father God with Mom Earth…They imagine we owe fealty to Mom Earth. We’re created by the Earth, they imagine. So we should owe every part to the Earth itself.” He was saying local weather advocates had been anti-God.
Johnson took it additional. Peterson, who depicted local weather change as a hoax, recommended that there was “one thing extra nefarious happening…even than we owe fealty to the planet. It’s one thing like we have now to destroy capitalism in any respect value.” Johnson agreed: “I feel that’s proper. They’re persistently irrational. At an area or regional stage right here within the US, for instance, I feel the non secular zeal argument makes some sense. However I do assume on the worldwide stage, the individuals who’re finally liable for this, those that are pushing the agenda, the elites on the prime of the meals chain, so to talk, there’s a extra sinister agenda. In the end, you and I, I feel, agree that is about authorities management. They’ll pursue that with non secular fervor, in fact, as properly. They usually appear to have gotten the whole civilized world purchased in on this, not less than the leaders of many of those nations purchased in on this concept that we have now to pursue this agenda at any value.”
When Peterson mentioned that he discovered it “too handy” that the answer to local weather change is to grant energy to governments to make use of “compulsion” to implement “their desired insurance policies,” Johnson replied, “That’s precisely proper.” The congressman famous that going together with “this agenda” required folks to sacrifice “their freedom.”
This was Alex Jones terrain. Johnson was agreeing with Peterson that local weather change was a diabolical scheme cooked up by a cabal of world elites as nothing aside from an influence seize.
The above is only a dip within the pool of Johnson’s extremist stances. However taken collectively, this reveals that Johnson, whose public demeanor is mild and well mannered, is propelled by a relatively grim and Manichean perspective towards the world. The US is an ethical hellhole. Those that embrace a biblical perspective, like he and Kelly do, are a small and lowering minority—backs in opposition to the wall—combating for the sunshine in a time of darkness. And “sinister” conspirators on the world stage are plotting in opposition to them.
But Johnson nonetheless has religion. Within the podcasts along with his spouse, the pair always affirm that their fact is the one fact and that the struggle for his or her fact will finally be victorious. In his first speech after changing into speaker, Johnson proclaimed, “I imagine that scripture, the Bible may be very clear. That God is the one which raises up these in authority.” He should be decoding his unbelievable rise to speakership as an act of God—and a step towards the “biblical” United States for which he has lengthy yearned.
