On October 25th, 2023, Representative Mike Johnson became Speaker of the House. His sudden rise to power came as a shock to most; Johnson is relatively unknown and currently only serving his fourth House term, making him the most junior Speaker since 1883. The circumstances leading up to his appointment are no doubt indicative of the turmoil eroding the security of a Republican Party caught between extremism and more extreme extremism; Kevin McCarthy’s speakership played out like an unfunny episode of Veep and his removal from office says a lot about who holds power in the Party. It’s easy to focus on that story, but more insidious and important is the bigger picture that Mike Johnson’s speakership represents. His anonymity, inexperience and the toppling of McCarthy are only small parts of a wider issue. It’s time to recognize just how far Christian extremism has penetrated into the heart of the United States political system.
Mike Johnson is both a religious bigot and a Christian nationalist. His Christian nationalism is no secret; he blatantly believes that the country was founded on Christian values and should be run according to them. He ran a seminar entitled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity” that was explicitly premised on the idea of the U.S. as a Christian nation. He has frequently lamented the destructive force of atheism, railed against homosexuality and queer identities, and fought against abortion. Many of these views are par for the course for the Republican Party, but Johnson spews everything with an extra bit of religious fervor.
Johnson’s ascension is a reminder that the U.S. is not the secular nation many maintain it is. Johnson, second in line to the President, has said outright that the idea of separation of church and state is a misunderstanding because it is not enshrined in the Constitution, but rather only mentioned in a letter by Thomas Jefferson. This is incredibly misleading; though the words “separation of church and state” are not written in the Constitution, the establishment and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment explicitly say that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It’s clear that the Founding Fathers did not believe in a connection between state and religion from both the letters and founding documents they wrote, despite how much Mike Johnson may want to infuse his politics with conservative Christian values.
Unfortunately, this view is not unique to Johnson; his background highlights the influence of Christianity on the United States political system as a whole. Before venturing into politics, Johnson was an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom (f.k.a. Alliance Defense Fund), a conservative Christian legal interest hate group that has connections to many Republicans throughout American politics. The ADF seeks to expand Christian values and influence in government institutions and schools. They use those “Christian values” to fight against queer people and abortion, to name a few of their most pressing concerns. Some other prominent people associated with the ADF include Amy Coney Barrett, Mike Pence, Josh Hawley, and Jeff Sessions, who while serving as attorney general in 2017, attended an ADF summit and thanked them for their work. The ADF is a concerning presence on its own, but it is only one piece (albeit a large one) of the wider quilt of the Christian Right made up of extremist Christian politicians, lawyers, judges, and advocacy groups. The Christian Right has substantial power in our government, and Mike Johnson is just the latest to emerge from its depths.
Religious influence in government by individuals and organizations is not a new phenomenon. The modern Christian Right mainly developed almost 50 years ago as a response to the counterculture and secularism of the 1960s and the presidency of Jimmy Carter, led by televangelist Reverend Jerry Falwell and his political organization Moral Majority. In the mid-1970s, Falwell embarked on a series of rallies to gain recognition and garner support for this new organization that would usher in a new era of Evangelism and Christian influence in conservative politics. Moral Majority quickly became heavily involved and influential in national and local politics. In the 1980 presidential election, mainly because of many Evangelicals’ disappointment with President Carter’s refusal to blend religion with statecraft, Moral Majority spent millions of dollars supporting Ronald Raegan and running smear campaigns against Carter. They played a key role in shifting Evangelical voters towards Raegan and the Republican Party, and went on to heavily influence the Republican platform during his time in office. While Moral Majority lost a lot of its power in the following years, this was largely because their influence had already drastically shifted the conservative vision of America; their purpose was fulfilled rather than abandoned. The post-Moral Majority Republican Party has been consistently filled with the name of the Christian Right game: moral panic. From Moral Majority to the ADF and other comparable organizations, rhetoric of the Christian Right has always centered on ideas of cultural decency, protecting the family, and Christian morality. Proponents use fear of the other, the unknown, or God himself to spread hate and advocate against values they find sinful and by extent, anti-American. This has taken shape in everything from using fear around sexual deviancy and protecting children to fight against queer rights to the idea of the “God-given right” to own assault weapons.
In recent history, the Christian Right’s influence has reached a fever pitch. The Evangelical makeup of the Republican constituency has only grown since the 70s; 38 percent of Republicans were evangelical in the 2010s, and 99% of Republicans in Congress are Christian. While that in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, it highlights the way that Christianity has and still does play a large part in conservative messaging and policy. Politicians on the Right carry on the rhetoric and tactics of the Christian Right from the 1970s; even though the wider American populace may be shifting away from religion, Evangelicals and their associated religious rhetoric are still ingrained in the Republican Party. The Christian Right has more power and influence than ever; over the last decade and a half, they have steadily replaced more moderate and centrist Republicans, with Evangelical districts replacing a historical number of House Republicans in primary elections since 2010. Republicans disproportionately represent Evangelical districts by a wide margin, and are also comparably more safely entrenched. Aside from individual politicians, the idea of Christian nationalism has become increasingly popular with Republican voters, with 54% agreeing or overwhelmingly agreeing with statements including “The U.S. government should declare America a Christian Nation”, “U.S. laws should be based on Christian values” and “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American” in a poll conducted by Public Religion Research Institute.
It’s impossible not to mention the influence that Donald Trump has had in this extreme shift. Christian nationalists, with their wide reach through extensive church networks, Christian broadcasting channels, and Evangelical organizations, have been able to co-opt MAGA and spread their extreme messaging through the increasingly far-right Republican Party. Despite the seemingly incongruous conflicts between Donald Trump’s history and conservative “Christian values”, the two have increasingly gone hand and hand; it’s no surprise nor coincidence that Mike Johnson was a prominent 2020 election denier. This brings up another important point: these politicians use religion as a backdrop to hide behind and garner support from, but their actions are often incompatible with what they say they believe in. In the end, it’s all about power; Trump and Evangelical leaders were able to use each other to ascend to new heights, and “men of God” like Mike Johnson chose to look past the antithesis of the Christian ethos that Trump’s behavior represented to take advantage of the situation.
While the Christian Right’s influence has been around for a while, its direct presence in government and extreme nature is clearer than ever. Rather than seeing Johnson’s rise to power as a strange anomaly or an extreme case, it’s essential to recognize that he is largely representative of the reality of the Republican Party and constituency today. The Party is inseparable from the Christian Right; in 2023, Christian nationalism is a core American conservative value rather than a peripheral fringe ideology. Although secular ideals are written into this country’s founding documents, if people in power and those supporting them don’t conform and instead turn to religious nationalism, it’s hard to pretend those words mean much.
