Mike Johnson Lets His Christian Nationalist Flag Fly

Speaker Mike Johnson's ties to a radical Christian nationalist movement should concern all Americans.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) departs a House Republican Conference meeting on November 14, 2023 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Photo by Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images.

Last March, when I first wrote about the gathering threat of Christian nationalism for The Big Picture, it was evident that the Republican Party had been taken over by this movement, most prominently at the state and local level, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s radical Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade.

In the name of sending abortion rights “back to the states,” conservative legislators around the country were letting their Christian nationalist flags fly, emboldened by the vote of confidence from the highest court in the land as well as their own legislative supermajorities.

These legislators did not hide their Christian faith. They cited Bible verses in a legislative context, in the firm belief that their mandate as legislators was to impose their Biblical worldview on their entire district, state, and ultimately the nation. 

Because at its core, Christian nationalism is the belief that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and that our laws should reflect Biblical teachings. Oh, and that whole separation of church and state thing? Just a pesky “myth.”

Little did we know that mere months later, a tried and true Christian nationalist would rise to become second in line to the presidency through the recent election—by a unanimous vote of the Republican conference—of Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana to be Speaker of the House.

Don’t be fooled by his boyish looks or his benign demeanor. In this piece, I’ll expand on the dangerous ideology behind Christian nationalism, and why Mike Johnson is such a threat to our values and our nation.

Christian Nationalism Alive And Well In The Halls Of Congress

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision punted abortion regulations to the states to decide. So the first order of business for Christian nationalist Republicans around the country was to try to eradicate abortion through draconian bans in the reddest of red states. 

In the last year and a half, as Republican legislators have been hard at work attempting to do just that, they’ve also managed to ban books and pass anti-LGBTQ laws with a vengeance. Because if they believe it, then they’ve got to impose that belief on everyone else.

It’s just what Christian nationalists do.

But even as voting majorities in state after state have risen up against this theocratic vision of America, turning out to bolster abortion rights at the ballot time and time again—even in red states, still, a radical Christian nationalist theocrat has quietly ascended to one of the highest leadership posts in our nation. 

Rep. Mike Johnson is a Southern Baptist, a professor at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and a lawyer who cut his teeth serving as senior legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a socially conservative legal advocacy organization labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

In his role at ADF, Johnson fought in defense of sodomy laws criminalizing homosexuality, even writing an amicus brief opposing the Supreme Court’s ultimate decision in Lawrence v. Texas that found that laws imposing “criminal punishment for consensual, adult non-procreative sexual activity are unconstitutional.”

Johnson wrote in a 2004 OpEd that homosexuality was “inherently unnatural” and that legalizing same-sex marriage would “place our entire democratic system in jeopardy.” And in 2007 he wrote that "the Bible is and should be an appropriate course of study in our public schools.”

As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2017, Johnson famously prayed on the floor of the House back in January in hopes of resolving the Kevin McCarthy Speakership impasse, and now with his own rise to the post, used his first speech as Speaker to credit “God” for his rise:

“I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear: that God is the one who raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you. All of us.”

He made his views even clearer in an interview with Kayleigh McEnany shortly after becoming Speaker:

“I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media, they said, ‘… People are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it.”

But Johnson is hardly a lone radical Christian voice in the halls of Congress. In fact, he is just the latest in a line of young Republican members of Congress who espouse Christian nationalist views. 

And they’re not hiding it anymore.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia famously said the quiet part out loud last summer in an interview with Next News Network:

“We need to be the party of nationalism and I’m a Christian, and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”

She then doubled down on Twitter, now X, with this bonkers post:

Another young Christian firebrand of the House, Rep. Lauren Boebert, went a step further when she told her church:

“The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.”

She went on:

“I'm tired of this separation of church and state junk that's not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.”

You see, one sure sign of Christian nationalism is fierce opposition to the entire notion of the separation of Church and State, which was laid out by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association. 

In it, Jefferson expounded on the importance of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause: 

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”

But Christian nationalists reject the notion that there should be any separation at all, a position Johnson himself echoed in a recent interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box:

"The separation of church and state is a misnomer…

"People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite."

But as Steven K. Green, a professor at Willamette University and author of “Separating Church and State: A History” told The Post:

“While the phrase separation of church and state does not appear verbatim in the Constitution, neither do many accepted constitutional principles such as separation of powers, judicial review, executive privilege, or the right to marry and parental rights…”

He went on to say that the framers “saw religious disestablishment as working in both directions: 

“protecting the state from religion and vice versa.”

For Johnson and his fellow travelers though, there should be nothing that gets in the way of their brand of Christianity influencing government.

But as Rep. Ted Lieu put very plainly on X:

It’s not an accident, of course, that these three Christian nationalist legislators, and so many of their ilk, also consider themselves part of Trump’s MAGA base. They never were terribly good at history, nor do they ever let facts get in the way of their own beliefs. And they espouse a deeply anti-democratic view of our country: that somehow the tyranny of the religious minority should determine all aspects of society for the rest of us, our views be damned.

Letting His Christian Nationalist Flag Fly

This ideology of Johnson and his ties to radical Trumpism came into stark focus recently with the revelation of a flag Johnson hangs outside his office.

A recent exposé by Rolling Stone confirmed that outside of his Congressional office in Washington, D.C., Rep. Mike Johnson displays not just the U.S. flag and that of his home state of Louisiana, but also the “Appeal To Heaven” flag:

While this flag has its origins with George Washington, the manifestation of the flag over the past decade has been as a symbol of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) sect of Christianity.

According to The New Republic:

A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.

Or as Rolling Stone bluntly put it, they are

Hell-bent on turning America into a religious state.

While the flag was initially a symbol of “the right of armed revolution in the face of tyranny” during the Revolutionary War, according to Columbia’s Tow Center, in 2013 the flag was co-opted by Pastor Dutch Sheets of South Carolina to serve as an emblem of his

Christian initiative aimed at “gathering a network of fellow believers serving Christ in public office” across the U.S. 

Sheets called that initiative Appeal To Heaven. One of this movement’s central tenets is Christian nationalism, which Baylor University communications professor Leslie Hahner defines as:

“a set of ideological beliefs expressed by [some] white, evangelical Christians. Their beliefs champion the U.S. as a Christian nation, as one that is ordained by God. It’s often connected to, if not an outright embodiment of, ideologies of white supremacy.”

So it should come as little surprise that this flag can be linked to former President Trump and his supporters.

As early as 2017, Sheets himself celebrated the fact that the flag was displayed behind Trump during his CPAC speech:

Trump even tweeted out a video of Pastor Marc Goulet unveiling the flag during a pro-Trump speech in 2020. 

But it would be the Capitol riots on January 6, 2021, when the Appeal to Heaven flag would come into even wider consciousness, as it was a fixture among the rioters.

According to Matthew D. Taylor, senior scholar at The Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, "Dutch Sheets did more, in my estimation, than any Christian leader to organize Christians for January 6th.” 

As NPR explains, Sheets’ movement advocates “to end or weaken the separation of church and state, and for Christianity to play a more dominant role governing society.”

And, importantly: 

Taken to its extreme — as it was by some adherents on Jan. 6 — it embraces anti-democratic means to achieve their end.

What is that end?

NAR apostles and prophets, as NAR leaders often refer to themselves, ultimately want to end or weaken the separation of church and state. Many embrace a concept known as "the Seven Mountains mandate" which says Christians have a duty to God to take control of the seven pillars of society: business, education, entertainment, family, government, media and religion.

Which brings us back to Mike Johnson, our nation’s new Speaker of the House, just second in line to the presidency.

Johnson authored House Republicans’ supporting brief urging the Supreme Court to block the Electoral College certification in states that Biden won. Johnson also voted against certifying the 2020 election result when it came to a vote in the House. 

No wonder Matt Gaetz famously touted Johnson’s ‘MAGA’ credentials on a recent episode of Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast:

“If you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement and where the power of the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.”

We are paying attention, Congressman, and that’s precisely what we’re afraid of.

It’s clear that our new Speaker is an anti-democratic insurrectionist sympathizer who believes our government should be taken over by a theocratic Christian movement.

Noted.

What Does This Mean For U.S. Governance?

A recent New York Times essay by Thomas Edsall rightly refers to Johnson in its title as 

“The Embodiment of White Christian Nationalism In A Tailored Suit.”

The line comes from Robert Jones, president and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), who explained how a paragon of such a fringe religious movement has ascended to such a prominent position in our government.

For Jones, Johnson’s elevation to Speaker

“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.”

As Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, said, it should come as no surprise

“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.”

This is just the logical next step in the decade-plus-long project of right-wing Evangelicals to take over the Republican Party. As I cited back in March, a poll from PRRI found that 54% of Republican voters are either adherents or sympathizers of Christian nationalism.

As the views of Johnson and his fellow Christian nationalists are ever more marginalized in the larger American culture, they are making their last stand within one of our two major political parties. And having just won the Speakership of the U.S. House of Representatives, their next mission is to re-elect the closest thing they’ve had to a president who espouses their views: Donald J. Trump.

When confronted with Edsall’s essay on Fox News, Johnson downplayed any concern anyone might have.

“Look, there are entire industries built on taking down, tearing down people like me. I understand that comes with the territory, and we’re not fazed by it. But listen, what I believe in are the founding principles of the country: individual freedom, limited government, the rule of law, peace through strength, fiscal responsibility, free markets, human dignity. Those are essential American principles.”

But we mustn’t be fooled. As Edsall rightly points out, Johnson’s 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.

If Republican voters won’t marginalize this ideology, we must marginalize Republican voters and the radical leaders they continue to elevate.