At a Baptist church in Mike Johnson’s home state of Louisiana in 2019, the then-relatively unknown House member preached on his beliefs on the relationship between the Christian God and the government. In an unearthed video recording, highlighted by Accountable.US in research provided exclusively to Truthout, Johnson hailed his conviction that God, and no one else, gives presidents and the government authority.
“Donald Trump was allowed to become the president by God,” Johnson said in his April 28, 2019 address to the First Baptist Church Haughton. “So was Barack Obama. So was every previous President. This is real clear right here, if you believe the Bible as I do, it says God allows this. He chooses and creates and lifts up some and allows others. But He’s sovereign and He’s in control.”
“Sometimes we get the government we deserve,” he added.
The address was part of a seminar given by Johnson and his extremist anti-LGBTQ wife, Kelly Johnson, titled “Answers for Our Times: Government, Culture, and Christianity.” It was organized by a company owned by Johnson’s wife, known as Onward Christian Education Services, Inc., a Christian counseling company which espouses the hateful belief that homosexuality is akin bestiality or incest.
In other parts of the address, the now-speaker of the House warns that widening welfare programs means that “Government is becoming God,” as Mother Jones reported recently. He suggests that democracy and majority rule are a form of tyranny, and that the U.S. was founded as a Christian nation — a notion that historians have said is untrue, with the founders repeatedly espousing the importance of religious freedom.
Recent reporting has uncovered Mike Johnson’s extremely deep ties to Christian extremists and their virulently anti-LGBTQ networks. The former top counsel for anti-LGBTQ hate group the Alliance Defending Freedom, Mike Johnson’s political background has been highly influenced by figures in the Christian far right.
While saying that the presidents were given authority by God, Johnson was preaching on what he said was the importance of “submit[ting] himself to” God, quoting a passage from the New Testament.
“Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God,” he said, before adding that Obama and Trump were given presidential authority by God. “Anyway, consequently, he who rebels against the authorities is rebelling against what God has instituted and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”
The statements speak to Johnson’s embrace of Christian nationalism, and the once fringe ideology increasingly adopted by Republicans that there should be no separation between church and state. The idea that God gives authority to elected officials is unpopular among the American public — but now, it’s embraced and espoused by the speaker of the House, one of the most powerful figures in the U.S.
They also speak to an inherent hypocrisy, as Accountable.US argues, in what Johnson says he believes about the power given to presidents — evident in his role as a key architect of former President Donald Trump’s attempted coup over the 2020 election. Though Johnson preached the importance of supposedly submitting to authorities, when Trump lost the 2020 election, Johnson orchestrated an amicus brief signed by over 100 House Republicans in a Texas lawsuit to invalidate the election results.
“Speaker Johnson’s past comments are especially damning given that he himself led radical attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and undermine the will of voters. His extremism knows no bounds,” Accountable.US president Caroline Ciccone said. “Speaker Johnson is a champion for the fringe right-wing faction of his MAGA majority — and his leadership only means more desperate attempts to force his far-right agenda on everyday Americans.”
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy