Mike Johnson is the first person to become speaker of the House who can be fairly described as a Christian nationalist, a major development in American history in and of itself. Equally important, however, his ascension reflects the strength of white evangelical voters’ influence in the House Republican caucus, voters who are determined to use the power of government to roll back the civil rights, women’s rights and sexual revolutions.
“Johnson is a clear rebuttal to the overall liberal societal drift that’s happening in the United States,” Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, wrote by email in response to my query. “His views are far out of step with the average American and even with a significant number of Republicans.”
“Yet, he was chosen as speaker,” continued Burge, who is also a pastor in the American Baptist Church. “If anything, it shows us that white evangelicals still have a very strong hold on the modern Republican Party. They are losing overall market share in the larger culture, but they are certainly taking on an outsized role in Republican politics.”
Burge provided The Times with data on the changing religious composition of the Republican electorate. In the 1970s, mainline Protestants dominated at 46 percent, compared with evangelical Protestants at 24 percent and Catholics at 19 percent. By the decade of the 2010s, evangelical Protestants were a commanding 38 percent of Republicans, mainline Protestants had fallen to 17 percent, and Catholics had grown to 25 percent.
Robert Jones, the president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, described Johnson in an email as “the embodiment of white Christian nationalism in a tailored suit.”
What is Christian nationalism? Christianity Today described it as the “belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way. Popularly, Christian nationalists assert that America is and must remain a ‘Christian nation’ — not merely as an observation about American history, but as a prescriptive program for what America must continue to be in the future.”
Johnson’s election as speaker, Jones went on to say, “is one more confirmation that the Republican Party — a party that is 68 percent white and Christian in a country that is 42 percent white and Christian — has embraced its role as the party of white Christian nationalism.”
Jones argued that “while Johnson is more polished than other right-wing leaders of the G.O.P. who support this worldview, his record and previous public statements indicate that he’s a near textbook example of white Christian nationalism — the belief that God intended America to be a new promised land for European Christians.”
In a long and data-filled analysis posted on Substack on Oct. 29, “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Sources of MAGA Madness,” Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., argued that the election of Johnson reflects the success of the Christian right in a long-term struggle to wrest control from traditional Republican elites, in battles fought out in Republican primary elections.
Over the past two decades, Podhorzer wrote, “the political might of organized right-wing Christianity was successfully redeployed against establishment Republicans.”
The decimation of moderate and centrist members of the House was most striking over the election cycles from 2010 to the present, according to Podhorzer: “From 2010 through 2022, a historically high number of House Republicans were defeated in primaries, with the vast majority of successful challenges happening in the most evangelical districts.”
The result: When House districts are ranked by the percentage of voters who are white evangelicals, the top quintile is represented by 81 Republicans and 6 Democrats and the second quintile by 68 Republicans and 19 Democrats. The bottom three quintiles are represented by 188 Democrats and 73 Republicans.
Not only do Republicans overwhelmingly represent the districts with the most white evangelicals, but those Republicans are deeply entrenched, with little or no danger of losing the general election to a Democrat:
“Republicans represent 98 percent of the most evangelical safe districts and 82 percent of the remaining above-median evangelical safe districts,” Podhorzer wrote. “These two categories elected just shy of three-quarters of the Republican Caucus in safe districts.”
The MAGA movement, in Podhorzer’s view, was unleashed with the Tea Party movement in 2010, well before Donald Trump emerged as a dominant political figure, and the elevation of Johnson marks the most recent high point in the movement’s acquisition of power: “Mike Johnson becoming speaker is better understood in terms of the ongoing white Christian nationalist takeover of the American government through MAGA,” he writes.
White Christian nationalists, Podhorzer contended, “were once reliable votes and loyal foot soldiers for almost any Republican candidate since the 1970s,” but they “rebelled when John McCain and other establishment Republicans treated Obama’s win as legitimate.”
From 2010 forward, Podhorzer wrote, “the political muscle provided by white Christian nationalism’s extensive church-based infrastructure in congressional districts, and its national reach through Christian broadcasting and national organizations, has turned MAGA into a ruthlessly successful RINO-hunting machine.”
It should not be surprising, Podhorzer said, “to see an election-denying evangelical Christian who favors a national abortion ban, Bible courses in public schools, and ‘covenant marriage,’ and who believes that L.G.B.T.Q. people are living an ‘inherently unnatural’ and ‘dangerous lifestyle’ elevated to the speakership.”
There is a strong correlation between election from a district with a high share of white evangelical voters, Podhorzer found, and election denial: “More than three-quarters of those representing the most evangelical districts are election deniers, compared to just half of those in the remaining districts. Fully three-quarters of the deniers in the caucus hail from evangelical districts.”
The most recent P.R.R.I. American Values Survey, conducted in late August, “Threats to American Democracy Ahead of an Unprecedented Presidential Election,” further illuminated the priorities of the contemporary Republican electorate.
The survey asked respondents whether they would “prefer a presidential candidate who can best manage the economy” or a candidate who will “protect and preserve American culture and the American way of life.”
Democrats chose a candidate who can manage the economy 57 to 40, a view shared by independents by a smaller margin, 53 to 45. Republican voters, in contrast, preferred a candidate who will preserve American culture, by 58 to 40 percent.
A different P.R.R.I. survey, released on Feb. 8, “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” measured support for Christian nationalism based on responses to five statements:
The U.S. government should declare America a Christian nation.
U.S. laws should be based on Christian values.
If the U.S. moves away from our Christian foundations, we will not have a country anymore.
Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.
God has called Christians to exercise dominion over all areas of American society.
On the basis of the responses, P.R.R.I. created four categories:
Christian nationalism adherents: the 10 percent of Americans who overwhelmingly either agree or completely agree with the five statements above.
Christian nationalism sympathizers: the 19 percent of Americans who agree with these statements but are less likely to say they “completely agree.”
Christian nationalism skeptics: the 39 percent of Americans who disagree with the statements but are less likely to completely disagree.
Christian nationalism rejecters: the 29 percent of Americans who completely disagree with all five statements in the scale.
Among Democrats, the survey found that 15 percent were either adherents (5 percent) or sympathizers (10 percent). Among independents, 23 percent were adherents (6 percent) or sympathizers (17 percent).
Among Republican voters, 54 percent were either adherents (21 percent) or sympathizers (33 percent).
In a series of questions on racial issues and immigration, Christian nationalist adherents were well to the right of Americans as a whole.
Asked whether “discrimination against white Americans has become as big a problem as discrimination against Black Americans and other minorities,” 85 percent of Christian nationalist adherents agreed, compared with 41 percent of all those surveyed.
Asked whether they agree or disagree with the statement “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background,” 81 percent of Christian nationalist adherents agreed.
Philip Gorski, a sociologist at Yale who has written extensively about Christian nationalism, replied by email to my inquiry about Johnson’s election:
He says out loud what most others just feel: that America was founded as a Christian nation, that the founders were “evangelical” Christians, that the founding documents were based on “biblical principles,” that God has entrusted America with a divine mission, that he has blessed America with unique power and prosperity and that those blessings will be withdrawn if America strays off the straight and narrow path of Christian morality. And that it is every good Christian’s duty to make America Christian again.
Christian nationalism, in Gorski’s view,
is no longer operating beneath the surface or in the background. It’s now front and center at commanding heights of power. It will now be much harder for right-wing Christian activists to claim that Christian nationalism is a fringe phenomenon or a left-wing smear job. In 2021, it was still hard to find an avowed Christian nationalist in the top ranks of the G.O.P. Not anymore.
Gorski wrote that Johnson
likes to say that the United States is a “republic” and not a “democracy.” By this, he means that the majority does not and should not get its way. That would be democracy. A republic means rule by the virtuous, not the majority. And the virtuous are of course conservative Christians like him.
Eric Schickler, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, stressed in an email his view that Johnson’s election as speaker demonstrated once again the weakness of the centrist wing of the House Republican caucus, writing that the elevation of the Louisiana Republican
reinforces the message that the most conservative voices in the Republican Party have decisive influence on the party in the House of Representatives. Less conservative members from swing districts have repeatedly made noises, suggesting that they were willing to wield power to ensure that leaders would reflect their needs — but once again, when push came to shove, they gave in despite having the numbers to hold the balance of power in the House.
In addition, the “entire episode” — from the ousting of Kevin McCarthy on Oct. 3 to the election of Johnson on Oct. 25 — reflects the collapse of the unwritten rule that “majority party members would stick together on the floor in speakership contests.” There is no way, Schickler added, that “the Freedom Caucus would have voted for a member seen as distant from them on key issues.”
Does Johnson’s election as speaker improve Democrats’ chances to retake the House in 2024? I asked.
Schickler: “It is hard to know. Johnson starts with such a low profile, it is not clear whether Democrats will be able to make him a target.”
Johnson’s relative anonymity in the House served him well in his bid for the speakership, insulating him from acrimony. More recently, however, some of Johnson’s out-of-the-mainstream views and alliances have begun to surface.
In a July 20, 2005, opinion essay for The Shreveport Times, Johnson argued:
All of us should acknowledge the real emotion and strife of the homosexual lifestyle and should certainly treat all people with dignity, love and respect. But our government can never provide its stamp of approval or special legal sanction for behavior patterns that are proven to be destructive to individuals, to families and to society at large. Your race, creed and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do.
“We must always remember,” Johnson concluded, “that it is not bigotry to make moral distinctions.”
A year earlier, Johnson wrote, in another opinion essay:
The state and its citizens have a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of the marital union by making opposite sex marriage the exclusive form of family relationship endorsed by government. Loss of this status will de-emphasize the importance of traditional marriage to society, weaken it, and place our entire democratic system in jeopardy by eroding its foundation.
It would be difficult to overestimate the dangers Johnson foresaw. “Society,” he wrote,
cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet. If everyone does what is right in his own eyes, chaos and sexual anarchy will result. And make no mistake, the extremists who seek to redefine marriage also want to deny you the right to object to immoral behavior. Our precious religious freedom hangs in the balance.
In an Oct. 26 interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News after he was elected to the leadership post, Johnson described his faith in the Bible as his exclusive guide in life:
What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun? Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview. That’s what I believe.
On Oct. 27, my Times colleagues Annie Karni, Ruth Graham and Steve Eder reported on a 2006 essay that Johnson posted on Townhall, a right-wing website.
In it, they wrote, “Johnson railed against ‘the earnest advocates of atheism and sexual perversion’. He also decried ‘This sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts’ that ‘has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image.’”
“In the space of a few decades,” Johnson added, “they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalize Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character.”
In lectures, Karni, Graham and Eder wrote, “Johnson has lamented that ‘There’s no transcendent principles anymore. There’s no eternal judge. There’s no absolute standards of right and wrong. All this is exactly the opposite of the way we were founded as a country.’”
David Corn, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones, reported in an Oct. 28 article that in a series of seminars Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a Christian counselor, conducted — “Answers for Our Times” — the couple addressed such questions as:
What is happening in America and how do we fix it? Can our heritage as a Christian Nation be preserved? How should Christians respond to the changing culture? What does the Bible say about today’s problems and issues?
In May 2019, Johnson described the goal of the seminars to the Louisiana Baptist Message: “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.”
For Johnson, the obligation “to be armed and ready with the truth” led him to become a leader of the election denial movement. In December 2020 he recruited 125 fellow House Republicans to sign on to his lawsuit seeking to persuade the Supreme Court to overturn the election results.
He told his colleagues that “the initiative had been personally blessed by Mr. Trump, and that the former president was ‘anxiously awaiting’ to see who in Congress would defend him,” The Times reported.
In the Supreme Court brief that Johnson filed on Dec. 10, 2020, he argued that the election had
been riddled with an unprecedented number of serious allegations of fraud and irregularities. National polls indicate a large percentage of Americans now have serious doubts about not just the outcome of the presidential contest, but also the future reliability of our election system itself. Amici respectfully aver it is the solemn duty of this Court to provide an objective review of these anomalies and to determine for the people if indeed the Constitution has been followed and the rule of law maintained.
On Dec. 11, in a brief unsigned order, the Supreme Court dismissed the suit, but Johnson won recognition from his fellow Republicans in the House for his fealty to Trump.
Asked shortly after he was elected speaker whether he continued to believe that the 2020 election was stolen, Johnson told a Washington Post reporter: “We’re not talking about any issues today,” adding only, “My position is very well known.”
In theory, at least, it is difficult to understand how Johnson can justify his support for Trump, whom Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and a contributing writer for Times Opinion, described this way in The Atlantic in 2020:
A man whose lifestyle is more closely aligned with hedonism than with Christianity, Trump clearly sees white evangelicals as a means to an end, people to be used, suckers to be played. He had absolutely no interest in evangelicals before his entry into politics and he will have absolutely no interest in them after his exit. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a person who has less affinity for authentic Christianity — for the teachings of Jesus, from the Sermon on the Mount to the parable of the good Samaritan — than Donald Trump.
Johnson’s ascent to the top job in the House also raises a larger, more encompassing question: Will voters care in 2024 (and beyond) that one of America’s two major political parties has been taken over by an alliance of MAGA forces and their white evangelical allies, who have clearly indicated their willingness to abandon democratic norms — that is, democracy itself — in the pursuit of power?
Polling suggests that this is a far from settled question.
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