“The House speaker’s worldview is dictated by the Bible,” read the New York Times headline after the elevation of Louisiana’s Mike Johnson to the Speaker of the House of Representatives.
Johnson may claim his worldview is “dictated” by the Bible, but it isn’t.
I am loath to criticize fellow Christians, but we must speak up when Christianity is weaponized in the name of faith.
Nothing in Johnson’s public life is remotely Christian. Christians need to hold him accountable and help non-Christians understand that Johnson and his bigotry have nothing to do with the teachings of Christ.
Here are five examples of why Johnson isn’t a Christian.
1) Johnson is a Modern Pharisee.
Johnson is well-versed in scripture, but so were the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders who cared more about following the letter of the law than the well-being of people. Pharisees were more concerned about appearing righteous than they were doing the right thing. Repeatedly the Old Testament and the New Testament offers instructions to care for widows, orphans, children, and foreigners.
Jesus constantly railed against the Pharisees for ignoring the message of scripture and Johnson is the doctrinal heir of the Pharisees, dedicating his career to marginalizing others in the name of God.
Johnson represents everything Jesus opposed. Johnson isn’t a Christian. He’s a Pharisee.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” Jesus says. “You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.”
Like the Pharisees, Johnson makes public proclamations of faith while neglecting justice for the marginalized, mercy for others, and faithful adherence to God’s call to help strangers. His worldview is dictated by bias, bigotry, and discrimination on the basis of sexuality, gender and nationality. These are the vulnerable of the world that God, and Christ, call on us to help and protect. Not criminalize.
2) Johnson believes God put him in his position.
“I don’t believe there are any coincidences in a matter like this,” Johnson said upon his ascension to the speaker’s chair. “I believe that scripture and the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us. And I believe God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment and this time. This is my belief.”
God didn’t make Mike Johnson the Speaker of the House, House Republicans did.
Johnson sees the Speakership as his God-given mandate to fully prosecute his agenda of persecution.
The Bible tells us that humans are made in the image of God, made by God’s love and made to love like God.
This is the message of God as communicated to humanity through Jesus Christ when he was asked what was the greatest command: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Mike Johnson interprets that as a command to deny equal rights to gay people, deny women body autonomy, oppose freedom and democracy and give tax breaks to rich people.
If Jesus wanted us to focus on judgment, sin, sexuality, or anything else that isn’t love, then Jesus would have said so, but he didn’t. The message of Jesus is love.
Love God, love others, Jesus said.
Everything else is “Yes, but…” Christianity. These Christians might acknowledge God’s love and then add, “yes, but…” and then go on to focus on judgment, sin, and punishment.
Johnson is a “Yes, but…” Christian. If he’s a Christian at all.
3) Johnson worships the Bible and does not follow Jesus.
Christians like Johnson can’t understand the possibility of Biblical interpretations different from theirs because they believe they are doing God’s will.
As Anne Lamott wrote, “you can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
Reporters covering Congress, like the vast majority of Americans, are generally ignorant of scriptures so they accept Johnson at face value when he claims that the Bible “dictates” his worldview.
The Bible isn’t the “word of God,” as some claim. The Bible is a collection of documents from the early history of Judaism and Christianity. Jesus is the Word of God, as explained in chapter one of the Gospel According to John. It’s a common misunderstanding.
Christians like Johnson follow a history book, stripping the words of their historical and cultural context and removing the spirituality to focus on the letter of the law, just as any Pharisee would.
Some of us follow the teaching of Jesus. Jesus tells us how to live our lives, he didn’t tell us to tell other people how to live theirs. Repeatedly Jesus tells us to look at ourselves, before we start looking at how other people live.
Johnson hurts people when he uses the Bible to justify his bias rather than allow the Bible to really influence his opinions. His entire life has been dedicated to discriminating against people because of their sexuality. He opposes abortion AND birth control.
Johnson believes that life begins at conception and that the government should force 10 year-old rape victims to carry and deliver their rapist’s offspring.
Since the beginning of our faith, many Christians have believed that life begins at viability, when God breathes life into us as life was breathed into Adam. For nearly as long, law and theology called the time of viability “the quickening.” Christian Evangelicals first supported abortion rights as a God-given freedom. Conservative Christian leaders only changed their views on abortion after they recognized the political expediency of opposing abortion.
4) Johnson Unquestioningly Supports Trump.
Conservative Evangelical Christians like Johnson, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress, and others who support former President Donald Trump are not Christians following the teaching of Jesus. They simply aren’t.
Trump is an anti-Christian devoid of love, compassion, empathy or sympathy. Trump couldn’t name a single scripture when asked and makes fun of Christians in private.
Trump is everything Conservative Evangelical Christians have warned against for the past 30 years. Instead of rejecting him and his evil past of abusing women, stealing from employees and contractors, breaking tax laws and even stealing from charity, they continue to support him.
Johnson has dedicated his life and career to marginalizing gays and lesbians, based on a handful of Jewish scriptures, a few sentences from the letters of Paul, and exactly zero sentences of Jesus.
Johnson is a Christian Nationalist, not a follower of the way of the Prince of Peace.
5) Johnson Is Undemocratic.
Trump is under indictment for attempting to overthrow the election he lost by millions of votes and enthusiastically supports authoritarian despots, but Johnson continues to voice support for Trump.
By opposing assistance to the democracy of Ukraine, Johnson sides with the authoritarianism of Russia.
According to CNN, Johnson has claimed, “the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around.”
Johnson is absolutely 100% wrong. And the fact that this fringe-based falsehood has reached the mainstream, let alone be repeated at all, is an appalling indictment of education in the United States.
There is little Biblical basis for Johnson’s theology and little fact behind his understanding of American history.
The founding fathers were intentional in protecting the public and the government from the encroachment of religion and ideologues like Johnson. (I’ve read the writings of the founding framers while researching my history book, American Revolutionaries and Founders of the Nation.) There are countless examples of the founders going out of their way to avoid an endorsement of religion.
In the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by Thomas Jefferson and passed by the Virginia General Assembly on Jan. 16, 1786, the General Assembly enacted that: “that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.”
Jefferson was clearly intending to protect people, and by extension the government of, by and for the people, from being influenced by religion. In fact, Jefferson named the “wall of separation between church and state.”
Protecting the people from a state-sanctioned establishment of religion was so important to the founders that it’s literally the first clause of the First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Johnson’s first bill as speaker? He proposed funding Israel’s war with Hamas and de-funding the IRS to protect wealthy tax cheats, add to the deficit and further bankrupt the country.
Johnson represents House Republicans. He also represents a segment of U.S. Christians; Christians like Johnson who have abandoned the teaching of Jesus.
Late Night host Stephen Colbert recently offered his take on Johnson’s claim to base his views on the Bible.
“If the Bible is his worldview on any issue, I don’t know why progressives are nervous,” said Colbert, a devout Catholic. “He’s clearly gonna ask the rich to sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor.”
Follow the link to see more of Colbert’s comments.
Colbert has previously summed up Christians like Johnson: “If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.”
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