Thursday Afternoon, October 26, 2023

NEW HOUSE SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON

IS CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST ON STEROIDS 

WHO HAS ALREADY SHOWN HIS

HATRED OF MRFF’S SUCCESS

By now most of you have probably read at least a bit about

newly-ordained Christian pastor … um, Speaker of the House … Mike Johnson’s long pedigree as a champion of Christian nationalism who spent his pre-Congress career working to turn our secular government institutions into bastions of biblical law.

As a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund (now Alliance Defending Freedom), along with several other erstwhile Christian nationalist legal organizations he created, he vociferously fought against LGBTQ rights, reproductive freedom, and for the infiltration of Christianity into public schools and other public institutions.

In May 2020, twenty members of Congress wrote a letter to the Secretary of Defense decrying several of the pandemic-era victories that MRFF had had in stopping certain chaplains and one field grade officer from taking advantage of the COVID crisis and lockdowns to aggressively promote their version of Christianity. One of the twenty Congress members who signed this anti-MRFF letter, which as I wrote at the time was far from factual, was none other than Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House!

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA)

MRFF OP-ED

ON DAILY KOS

Trending story on Daily Kos

New Speaker is a Christian nationalist on steroids who has already shown his hatred of MRFF

By: MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda

Thursday, October 26, 2023

By now most of you have probably read at least a bit about newly-ordained Christian pastor … um, Speaker of the House … Mike Johnson’s long pedigree as a champion of Christian nationalism who has spent his pre-Congress career working to turn our secular government institutions into bastions of biblical law.

As a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund (now Alliance Defending Freedom), along with several other erstwhile Christian nationalist legal organizations that he created, he has vociferously fought against LGBTQ rights and reproductive freedom and for the infiltration of Christianity into our public schools and other public institutions. But I need not go into detail here about Johnson’s record of Christian-nationalism-promoting activities because the marvelous Sarah Posner has already done that over at MSNBC.

What I do need to get into here about Jesus junkie Johnson is his proven hatred of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) and its success in stemming the tsunami of Christian nationalism in our military — especially now, when the fate of MRFF hangs in the balance because of Johnson’s fellow congressional Christian nationalist Mike Turner’s amendment to this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to shut MRFF down by making it illegal for members of the military to communicate with or respond to MRFF. 

Now that the House once again has a Speaker, the process of passing the final NDAA, which should have been done by September 30, will resume. It will now will be going to the conference committee to reconcile the House version of the bill with the Senate’s version, which does not contain anything to try to shut MRFF down. (So, If you haven't already, please take a minute to submit our petition letter opposing Turner's amendment to your representative and senators.)

In May 2020, twenty members of Congress wrote a letter to the Secretary of Defense decrying several of the pandemic-era victories that MRFF had had in stopping certain chaplains and one field grade officer from taking advantage of the COVID crisis and lockdowns to aggressively promote their version of the Christian religion. One of the twenty Congress members who signed this anti-MRFF letter, which as I wrote at the time was far from factual, was none other than Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House.

That 2020 letter was also signed by four of the House members appointed to the NDAA conference committee that will decide the fate of Rep. Turner’s MRFF-killer amendment, and thus the fate of MRFF — Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Doug Lamborn (R-CO), Austin Scott (R-GA), and Jim Banks (R-IN). (Johnson was also appointed to the NDAA conference committee, but in his new role as Speaker has given up his committee assignments, which will presumably include the conference committee.)

As MRFF Founder and President Mikey Weinstein writes of Mike Johnson’s contempt for MRFF:

“Being loathed by the fundamentalist Christian nationalist Mike Johnson and his equally religious extremist Congressional cohorts only buttresses my long-held belief that people and organizations are often better defined by who their enemies are than by who their friends are. Indeed, Mike Johnson and Company’s blistering hatred of me and MRFF has never better substantiated higher accolades for us and our nearly 20 years of aggressive civil rights advocacy for America’s armed forces!"

And as MRFF Advisory Board member Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.), former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, wrote in response at the time:

No fewer than twenty Members of Congress have just totally shamed themselves, proving why the U.S. Congress’s rating in poll after poll is now so consistently low it can be declared single-digit. Doug Collins, W. Gregory Steube, Doug Lamborn, Jim Banks, Ralph Norman, Mike Johnson, Louie Gohmert, Debbie Lesko, Steve King, Andy Harris, Kevin Brady, Brian Babin, Rick Allen, Tim Walberg, Glenn Grothman, Bill Flores, Andy Biggs, Austin Scott, Vicky Hartzler, and that gas-mask-wearing, certified lemon from the Sunshine State of Florida, Matt Gaetz, have penned a letter to Secretary of Defense Mark Esper worthy of being filed with the worst to ever pass from Congress to the Department of Defense. The letter illustrates each Member’s rank ignorance of the U.S. Constitution, of the responsibilities of U.S. military chaplains, of the criticality of good order and discipline in the ranks of the military, and of their own responsibility to the secular law before whatever allegiance they might feel to fundamentalist Christian or other biblical, religious, or spiritual law. If they believe the reverse — which clearly they must — they should resign immediately from Congress and join the ranks of those American taliban whom they obviously represent. In our country, that’s their right. There are probably civilian pulpits aplenty from which they can spew their invectives. But not while in the government and not while using their influence to compel others in that government to “defy the Constitution for Jesus or whatever other deity.” Next, these men will be demanding trials for the witches and devils that torment them.

There have been many other anti-MRFF letters written by Congress members over the years, such as one in 2021 to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs prompted by MRFF’s efforts on behalf of non-Christian veterans’ families to get Wreaths Across America, which carpet bombs every veterans cemetery in the country with Christmas wreaths every year, to stop putting their wreaths on the graves of Jewish, Muslim, and other non-Christian veterans, which was signed by other NDAA conference committee appointees, Ronny Jackson (R-TX), Pat Fallon (R-TX), Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Elise Stefanik (R-NY), of whom Sarah Posner wrote the following as the ending of her must-read MSNBC article, and I will quote here to end this post:

“In her nominating speech for Johnson, Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., invoked the biblical story of God commanding Samuel to anoint David king. Stefanik quoted from 1 Samuel 16:7, according to which God told Samuel that he looked not at appearances, but ‘at the heart.’ Johnson, who Stefanik said ‘epitomizes what it means to be a servant leader,’ was the choice, she implied, of Republicans who were following God’s direction in choosing him. Between the Bible talk and Johnson’s record, Republicans have made abundantly clear that they have emerged from the uncertainty and chaos of the last few weeks with one clear mission: to run a Christian nationalist House.”

If you haven't already, please take a minute to submit our petition letter opposing Turner's amendment to your representative and senators.

This form submits a letter to Congress on your behalf, which

will be sent to your U.S. Representative in the House and your

U.S. Senators urging removal of Christian Nationalist Rep. Turner's

blatantly unconstitutional NDAA amendment and, additionally,

sends a copy to the entire Senate Armed Services Committee.

Previous MRFF coverage of

Christian nationalist Rep. Turner's amendment

A handful of MRFF's numerous run-ins with

Christian nationalist GOP Congress members

and Senators over the years