Before diving into the valid religion-angle hooks in the life and career of Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, please allow me to address that “election denier” thing, since I am a pedigreed (nod to Religion News Service editors) #NeverTrump, #NeverClintonBiden voter.
Yes, I have closely followed election-denial issues from 2016, when the deniers were elite Democrats haunted by Russia ghosts. Ditto for 2020, when the deniers were Republicans, who kept losing court cases — even when the judges were selected by Donald Trump. I do think Big Tech efforts to cancel hot news stories affected the election (but maybe not, since the nation seems frozen 50-50 in red/blue concrete).
Truth is, I am more interested in Johnson’s First Amendment activism than I am in Trump stuff. “First Amendment,” of course, means religious liberty, free speech and freedom of association. Is Johnson concerned about religious liberty for all or for some? His legal career should include on-paper info on that.
Meanwhile, the mainstream coverage of his surprise election stressed his “anti-gay” work and related religious convictions. On X, I tweeted a question: “Does anti-gay rights mean pro-First Amendment?”
Everything you need to know on press views of that can be found in this double-decker headline at the New York Times, serving as a kind of editorial memo to the news industry as a whole:
For Mike Johnson, Religion Is at the Forefront of Politics and Policy
The new House speaker has put his faith at the center of his political career, and aligned himself with a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that some describe as Christian nationalism.
Obviously, “Christian nationalism” is currently one of the hot terms in journalism. Also, it’s clear that many journalists are concerned about the success that Alliance Defending Freedom lawyers are having at the U.S. Supreme Court and elsewhere. Again, there is a crucial question there: Is this First Amendment group winning victories for a variety of religious minorities?
The Times editors simply went with this, stating that Johnson spent time as a “lawyer and spokesman for the anti-abortion and anti-gay rights group Alliance Defense Fund.” Of course, that puts him in interesting company — with Times columnist David French (whose First Amendment work I have admired for two decades).
It’s important to know that Johnson declined a Times interview request. I think that he should have done that interview, with an agreement that he could post a transcript online. Would the Times have agreed? The speaker should test that.
Without an interview, the Times team did a deep dive into Johnson’s work in social media and niche media, looking for material that fit the Christian nationalism template.
Let me stress: There’s plenty of material here worthy of hard questions and further research. Johnson needs a chance to respond. But here is a key block of Times material:
Mr. Johnson, 51, the son of a firefighter and the first in his family to attend college, has deep roots in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination. For years, Mr. Johnson and his wife, Kelly, a licensed pastoral counselor, belonged to First Bossier, whose pastor, Brad Jurkovich, is the spokesman for the Conservative Baptist Network, an organization working to move the denomination to the right.
Mr. Johnson also played a leading role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and has expressed skepticism about some definitions of the separation of church and state, placing himself in a newer cohort of conservative Christianity that aligns more closely with former President Donald J. Trump and that some describe as Christian nationalism. …
Over the arc of his career, Mr. Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Legislature before his election to Congress, has been driven by a belief that Christianity is under attack and that Christian faith needs to be elevated in the public discourse, according to a review of his appearances on talk shows and podcasts, as well as legislative speeches and writings over the past two decades.
Once again, it helps to look at a timeline. Johnson’s First Amendment views have nothing to do with life in the Orange Man Bad era.
There is a bit of tension in the following quote, since the Times is anxious to portray Johnson as a bit of a flame-thrower true believer:
His colleagues on Capitol Hill describe Mr. Johnson as not particularly verbose or flamboyant, someone who lacks a flashy social media presence and may get lost in a sea of attention seekers. But his more mellow style can mask the fact that he proselytizes extremely hard-line views and has been hitting the right-wing talk show circuit doing that for decades.
Then note this language:
In lectures to student groups he addresses across the country, Mr. Johnson has lamented: “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.”
My observation: It is often hard to pin simplistic labels on the political beliefs of old-school First Amendment liberals.
The big question here is whether that is, or is not, an accurate description of what fair-minded researchers will find in Johnson’s legal and now political career. How does he relate to questions about the rights of other minority religious groups (since I would note that, in polls, doctrinally conservative Christians are now a minority in American culture).
New consumers seeking additional business-as-usual coverage of Johnson’s victory can turn to the Associated Press — “New US House speaker tried to help overturn the 2020 election, raising concerns about the next one.”
Also (#ShockedShocked) ditto for this report at Religion News Service (or this version at Christianity Today) — “Mike Johnson, pedigreed evangelical, suggests his election as House speaker ordained by God.” I appreciated the candid note at the end of that RNS piece stating: “This story was was reported with support from the Stiefel Freethought Foundation.”
However, readers tempted to write off journalistic concerns about conservative rhetoric can note this summary of Johnson’s work at World magazine:
The congressman will be the most socially conservative speaker in decades.
Johnson is a Southern Baptist who spent time in the Louisiana House of Representatives before heading to Washington in January 2017. His father was a firefighter who had been critically burned in the line of duty. The family relied heavily on their faith during that time. Johnson grew up and went to LSU and its law school.
After law school, Johnson became a pro-life warrior. He served as a national spokesman and senior lawyer for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the organization that represents a lot of Christians in the Supreme Court, including Colorado baker Jack Phillips. Johnson and his wife led pro-life marches in North Louisiana. For eight years, Johnson served as a trustee for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
In the state legislature, Johnson fought aggressively for religious liberty, life, and traditional marriage. He authored religious liberty legislation, even as it failed to pass the state legislature. Gov. Bobby Jindal used Johnson’s legislation as the framework for executive orders protecting faith-based small businesses from persecution by gay rights activists.
Let me note two other angles worthy of additional reporting by news organizations who actually care about why the new speaker believes what he believes.
When asked about events that have shaped his life, Johnson frequently notes that his birth was the result of teen-aged parents facing a crisis pregnancy.
This seems rather relevant to me — worthy of a sentence or two in biographical material in elite media reports, including short-form television. So far, I haven’t found this information in any major-news stories. Did I miss something in my online searches?
Meanwhile, here is a Christian-market news reference noting that the new speaker never hides this fact:
As Johnson alluded to in his speech before the House chamber … the road to Congress was paved by his God-fearing parents. “I was blessed,” he emphasized to Tony. “I was raised in a Christian household, and my parents — I was actually the conception of a teenage pregnancy my parents’ junior year in high school. And they dropped out, decided to have me, and keep me. And that’s why I’m so pro-life today. I’m a living example of faithfulness. … They just trusted God.”
Here is another interesting and valid topic — which I will note, with appreciation, that the New York Times covered in a follow-up report with this headline: “On Race, Mike Johnson Says His Views Were Shaped by Raising a Black Child — The new House speaker has kept his oldest son out of the public eye — except when the Republican talks about race.”
Here is an important chunk of that report:
When Mr. Johnson was named House speaker this week, his relationship with his son, like much of Mr. Johnson’s personal and political life, faced new scrutiny. There is no mention of the man, who is now an adult, raising his own family in California, in Mr. Johnson’s official biography. And he does not appear in the family photos posted on the congressman’s website. Mr. Johnson has four biological children: two daughters and two sons.
On Friday, Mr. Johnson sought to explain the absence, saying it was in deference to his son Michael’s request for privacy.
“At the time of the speaker’s election to Congress, Michael was an adult with a family of his own,” Corinne Day, the speaker’s communications director, said in a statement first reported by Newsweek. “He asked not to be involved in their new public life. The speaker has respected that sentiment throughout his career and maintains a close relationship with Michael to this day.”
This is a topic that draws interesting commentary from voices on the left and right. The Times story did note:
Mr. Johnson’s remarks on race have … drawn criticism from the right. In a 2020 interview on PBS, he spoke with the journalist Walter Isaacson about racial tensions in America in the immediate aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer. Mr. Johnson described the killing of Mr. Floyd as “an act of murder,” and said he had learned about racial disparities in America firsthand from raising a Black son.
At the time, Mr. Johnson noted that his oldest biological son, Jack, was now the same age as Michael was when he came into the house. “And I’ve thought often through all these ordeals over the last couple of weeks about the difference in the experiences between my two 14-year-old sons,” he said in the PBS interview. “Michael being a Black American and Jack being white Caucasian. They have different challenges. My son Jack has an easier path. He just does.”
Let me repeat my primary point: The views of old-school First Amendment liberals are often hard to summarize in a few niche-news paragraphs. The question is whether Johnson has been consistent on First Amendment issues.
So, please, test the simplistic labels. Also, we can hope that Johnson sits down and does an in-depth interview with a mainstream news source — with the transcript available. Maybe a Times podcast with French? Or a feature at The Free Press?
Stay tuned.
FIRST IMAGE: The gavel of the U.S. Speaker of the House, in a screen shot from a Scripps News post on YouTube.