Congress Learns About Mike Johnson's White Christian Nationalism
Exclusive to SWAJ - the Freethought Caucus in the House of Representatives held a seminar on Mike Johnson's Christian nationalism. Rep. Jared Huffman chaired the panel and heard comments from Dr. Matthew Taylor, Rachel Laser, President of Americans United, and Darcy Hirsch of the Interfaith Alliance. We are the only media outlet to distribute a recording of the event.
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Freethought Caucus White Paper on Mike Johnson's Christian nationalism: https://huffman.house.gov/imo/media/doc/CFC%20White%20Paper%20--%20Speaker%20Johnson.pdf
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My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco.
Today we are bringing you something that I'm actually really excited to make public, and we are the only media outlet in the nation that is doing so, and that is a teach-in session that was held by the Free Thought Caucus in the U.S.
House of Representatives, chaired by Representative Jared Huffman.
About 10 days ago, the Free Thought Caucus and Representative Huffman hosted three folks who are working to combat Christian nationalism.
And they specifically wanted to discuss the ways that Mike Johnson has, in policy, in legal work, and in his remarks about the nation and about his understanding of his worldview, has outlined a vision that is somewhat scary, to say the least.
So what you're going to hear first is Representative Jared Huffman of California, who I've interviewed on this show, and some of you may remember that, introducing the panel.
He will be talking about the Freethought Caucus and the work they do.
There are about 20 members in the House of Representatives in the Freethought Caucus.
That includes Jamie Raskin.
Some of you, many of you will be familiar with Representative Raskin from the J6 Select Committee.
And the Free Thought Caucus is really those who want to bring policy and ideas to Congress and to the people they represent based on reason, based on science, based on data, and so on.
Some of you will remember that Representative Huffman is the only self-identified humanist in the Congress.
The Congress is overwhelmingly Christian, nearing 90%.
There are a few Jewish members, there are a few Buddhist members, Muslim members, but Representative Huffman is the only self-identified humanist.
So the folks who are involved here are Rachel Lazar, who is the leader of Americans United, Matthew Taylor, who is obviously a friend of the show and a colleague of mine and a scholar of the New Apostolic Reformation, and Darcy Hirsch, someone who works with the Interfaith Alliance.
All of them outline the ways that Mike Johnson is promoting Christian nationalism in a manner that is dangerous and is truly scary for the nation.
I wanted to bring this to you because I think it's important for us to realize in a time that often just feels truly pessimistic and difficult, That there are things happening in our government that give us a little bit ray of hope.
There are things that are gaining the attention of certain representatives and others, and this is one of them.
And I was glad to see that Representative Huffman and the Free Thought Caucus held this event, that they're trying to bring public awareness to Christian nationalism.
And that they truly understand what is at stake with this kind of worldview.
In addition to this teach-in, the Free Thought Caucus published a white paper, which I will link in the show notes, about white Christian nationalism and drew on scholarship and journalism.
That includes some things I've written.
It includes things from many friends of our show, Matt Taylor and others.
And again, I just appreciate that they've done this research and tried to bring awareness to it.
The recording is the best we could get.
It is not going to be up to the best standards, but we've cleaned it up.
We've done our best to present something that will be something you can listen to and not feel like you're straining.
But this was an open-air live session, and so we did our best to capture audio in ways we could.
It opens with Representative Huffman talking about the Free Thought Caucus, and then he introduces the speakers, and the session goes from there.
Our little caucus is now up to 20 members.
We're not so little anymore.
And if you are at Stanford and your boss is part of the caucus, please thank them.
If they are not, Please tell them to take a look.
We think they ought to consider joining the Free Thought Caucus.
And to give you one example of how this little caucus munches above its weight, we were the first ones to warn about the danger of Christian nationalism.
We started doing this before the 2020 election.
We held a panel here in the Capitol that included experts on Christian nationalism.
We talked about the violent, dangerous threats of democracy that this movement represents.
And then Congressman Raskin and I joined the Secular Democrats of America in sending a memo to the incoming Biden administration specifically warning about Christian nationalism as a national security threat and urging him to Take some, uh, make some changes to take it more seriously.
Unfortunately, January 6 rolled around before he could do that.
And that really put the true nature and the threat of Christian nationalism in the spotlight.
The whole world saw it.
And so our Pre-Thought Caucus quickly convened another event to really specifically draw that connection between the Christian nationalist movement Particularly the white Christian nationalist movement and this terrible insurrection that we had all just experienced.
And we learned from experts and going through all of the clear and overwhelming connections that Christian nationalism, certainly I don't want to absolve Donald Trump from his responsibility for that terrible day, but Christian nationalism was there in a big way.
It was the connective tissue that brought a whole bunch of Disparate groups together and then animated them and they're not done.
So the Trump presidency gave the Christian nationalists sort of rocket fuel.
They tasted power.
They want more of it and although Trump is gone, we hope permanently, as the Speaker of the House, second in line of the presidency.
So they're feeling pretty good about what they hope to continue to do.
This is an agenda that is violent.
It's an agenda that is about theocracy.
You're going to hear a lot more about that here in just a moment.
I want to really underscore violence.
No one should confuse the Christian Nationalist Movement, and we're going to talk about Mike Johnson specifically today, because he's deep, deep into this Christian Nationalist Movement, but no one should confuse this movement as just a bunch of people of faith who want to practice their faith.
It is the opposite of that.
These are people who want power and control over others.
They want to take over our government.
They want to eliminate the separation of church and state and impose a biblically sanctioned theocracy with a whole bunch of biblical moral codes and other things that just would never fly if we allowed democracy to continue to be our model of government.
That's why there's zeroed in On defeating democracy, violence is a feature, not a bug, of this movement and we need to take it very, very seriously.
So, I'll just wrap up with this.
We didn't want to have to have a public briefing like this and do a white paper laying out everything we've been able to find about Speaker Mike Johnson and his record and just how extreme it is.
I don't know how they categorized George Santos, but he's gone now.
99 plus percent Christian.
I don't know how they categorized George Santos, but he's gone now.
In any event, 99% Christian.
The pre-thought thought it was like America, We have some Christians.
We have Muslims.
We have a Hindu Buddhist.
We have a bunch of Jews, including pretty secular Jews.
We have the token humanists in the Congress.
So, if you want to look at the demographics religiously of America, look at the Pre-Thought Caucus, because it's a pretty darn good match.
And I would think that Speaker Johnson, who says he cares a lot about religious freedom, would want to have a dialogue and a conversation with a caucus like ours.
Because we are America when it comes to these things.
He declined our invitation, and it was a good faith invitation to have that conversation.
He's declined it twice.
So, are we blindsiding him today?
We sent him this white paper that you're about to hear about before the holidays.
He's had it for a couple weeks now.
We wanted him to have one more chance.
If he wanted to meet with us before this, they continue to decline.
So, we're here today because it's all we can do to do our own investigation, to lay out what we have found about Speaker Johnson's record.
And look, if Speaker Johnson were just A lawyer like he was for part of his life, if he were just a state legislator like he was for part of his life, if he were just an individual member of Congress, maybe his extreme views and his deep ties to this violent white Christian national movement would be less problematic.
But he is now the Speaker of the House, second in line to the Presidents.
And so we've got to have a very clear-eyed His entire career, we need to be very vigilant about what happens while he is Speaker of the House.
That's what this is all about, and I'm so pleased that we have an outstanding panel to lead us through this conversation.
We're going to hear from Rachel Laser from Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Matthew Taylor, This is a great group to sharpen our conversation on these subjects.
And before I hand it over to them and wrap up, let me just acknowledge that one of our newest members of the Free Thought Caucus, Kevin Mullen, is here.
We're so glad, Kevin, to have you here.
Did you want to say anything before we get started?
Alright, I really appreciate you being here.
I'm going to hand it over to the panel and I'll hang around as long as I can.
Thanks, Tomala. - Thank you all so much for making the time to be here today.
Thank you so much to Representative Huffman and to the Congressional Free Thought Caucus for existing and for calling us together for this important conversation.
When news broke that Mike Johnson was likely to be the next speaker, a lot of Americans didn't know who he was.
But Americans United for Separation of Church and State knew all too well.
And that's because Mike Johnson has dedicated his career to fighting the separation of church and state.
He says it's a misnomer.
He thinks that church-state separation only goes one way.
That the state can't encroach on the church, but when it comes to the church and to the state, quote, it's exactly the opposite, says our speaker.
So I want to be crystal clear that the Speaker of the People's House, second in line to the President, rejects America's foundational promise of church-state separation.
For nearly two decades, Mike Johnson has been an MVP in the white Christian nationalist network.
He's worked for groups like Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty Institute, and he's been mentored by the movement's favorite elders, like David Barton and Tony Perkins.
He's worked and is still working to advance some of the white Christian nationalist movement's top goals, like banning abortion nationwide Rolling back LGBTQ equality and undermining public education.
Americans United hasn't just known about Mike Johnson for decades, we've been fighting him for decades.
So when Americans United sued to protect taxpayers from being forced to fund Kentucky's Art Park, Mike Johnson represented the organization that was behind the Art Park.
They're called Answers in Genesis.
Answers in Genesis wants creationism to be taught in every public school classroom.
Across this country.
And even now, Mike Johnson still has ties.
He's slated to speak at their conference on April 4th.
As a state legislator, Johnson introduced a bill, one of many such bills that Americans United opposed, that would have allowed anyone with a religious belief that marriage should be between one man and one woman a right to discriminate.
And when I was honored to testify before the House Education and Workforce Committee, In support of the need for the Do No Harm Act, Mike Johnson served as a witness on the opposite side, arguing that our nation's prized religious freedom law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, should be used to undermine civil rights laws and access to health care.
That was then, and now it's even worse.
As Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson is especially dangerous.
The past Speaker McCarthy tolerated Christian nationalism.
But Speaker Mike Johnson is pushing Christian nationalism into our laws.
Just days ago, in his dear colleague on the appropriations top line, he vowed to, quote, fight for the important policy riders.
So let's talk about these riders.
These riders, among other things, would restrict abortion, birth control, and gender-affirming care.
Use religion to discriminate against same-sex couples.
Require public universities to allow religious student groups to discriminate.
And expand D.C.' 's private school voucher program that primarily funds religious education.
But Johnson won't stop at pushing these policies and appropriations riders.
We all know that we're going to see the same harmful policies appear in amendments and bills that are debated in our committees and on the House floor.
And that's why we need your vigilance.
Christian nationalism in the halls of Congress cannot go unchecked.
We need to remind everyone that church-state separation is as American as an apple pie.
We invented it.
It's the cornerstone of religious freedom.
It's what makes each of us free to live as ourselves and believe as we choose.
It's fundamental to democracy and it's the antidote to Christian nationalism.
We look forward to working in continued partnership with you all in this high-stakes fight.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you to the Free Thought Caucus for having us here this afternoon.
I'm Matt Taylor, and I have a distinct perspective on Mike Johnson's attachments to Christian nations.
And for the last three years as a scholar, I've been working on a book about the Capitol riot and about tracking down who were the Christian leaders who mobilized Christians, who were the most effective mobilizers, who were the people who actually brought Christians to January 6th.
And what my research has found is that there's a particular network, a neo-charismatic network, of Christian leaders called the New Apostolic Reformation that have been very deeply involved in politics, very deeply involved in the Trump administration.
These same leaders who carry very extreme Christian theologies about taking over whole societies, about God mandating Christians to take control of society through spiritual warfare.
These are folks who believe in prophecy and believed in prophecies about Donald Trump To lead the country.
These were what I call in my forthcoming book, the principal theological architects of the Capitol riot.
And these same leaders, at least four of the major anti-harm leaders were present around the Capitol on January 6th, Another of these leaders called in by speakerphone to help encourage and prophesy over the Capitol during the Capitol riot.
And these folks have been incredibly effective.
They have massive influence online.
They have huge following.
And I'll confess that I was one of those people who never heard of Mike Johnson.
He was elevated to Speaker.
And yet, as soon as he was elevated to speaker, I went and looked him up, and he has very deep personal connections to the NAR.
Let me just give a few There's a new Apostolic Reformation leader named Jim Garlow, who was a Trump advisor.
He's a pastor originally from Southern California.
And Jim Garlow has helped organize a series of calls that were a key vector for gathering Christian leaders around Donald Trump's election lies and then guiding them towards January 6th.
These calls included people like Doug Mastrinato, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Steve Bannon called in to talk with Christian leaders on some of these calls to Since January 6th, Mike Johnson has continued participating in a number of these calls.
He's been almost a congressional correspondent for them.
Calling him multiple times, he has said that Jim Darno has exercised a great influence on his life.
There's a pastor in Mike Johnson's district in Street Fort named Timothy Karskaden, who is also an apostle.
Most of the leaders in the New York Socrates call themselves these apostles or prophets.
Timothy Karskaden is an apostle carrying this very extreme theology, and he and Mike Johnson are close friends.
He's even, Mike Johnson has even invited Timothy Karskaden to Washington, D.C. to hang out with him, spend time with him here.
About a year ago, there was a new organization that was formed as an alternative to the prayer breakfast.
This was held at the Museum of the Bible, and if you go and watch the video of what occurred in this event, they recreate in a liturgical way what happened on January 6th, including how many of the leaders who were present on January 6th speak and present at this gathering at the Museum of the Bible.
This was about a year ago.
They're gonna do another one in a few weeks.
Mike Johnson was the one who helped organize and orchestrate that event.
But here's the kicker.
One of the leaders in New York School of Performation is a man named Dutch Sheets.
I argue in my book that he was the most effective President on January 6th, through all of his social media and all of his mobilization.
In 2013, Dutch Sheets found an American flag, a flag from American history.
It's a white flag with a pine tree in the center of it and the phrase, Appeal to Heaven, across the top of the flag.
This is a Revolutionary War flag.
It was commissioned by George Washington to fly over the Massachusetts Navy.
In 2013, Dutch Sheets, the New York Stock Reformation leader, receives one of these flags and decides that this flag is a prophecy about the spiritual destiny of America.
This flag, over the last decade, has become one of the most important Christian nationalist symbols.
If you go and look at the footage on January 6th, these flags are everywhere.
And as I said, Dutch Sheets was one of the most effective organizers for January 6th.
In fact, he was the one who called in on the conference line to prophesy Mike Johnson flies an appeal to have you flag outside of his office.
He received from the NAR leader, and when my colleague Bradley Onishi and I published the story about this in November, we reached out to him through Rolling Stone to ask why he flies that flag.
This flag has become this coded symbol because it is a piece of American history.
But in the last decade, it has taken on all of these connotations of this prophecy and spiritual warfare-driven Christian nationalism.
And it is not coincidental that Mike Johnson is not only flying the flag, but deeply tied into the networks that have embraced this flag as that symbol.
We can't not know what it means.
thank you maybe bring it a little closer yes i'm darcy ursh i'm senior director of policy and advocacy at the interfaith alliance
a national organization committed to building a welcoming and inclusive democracy failing american finance of true religious freedom and equal civil rights for all it was When I say true religious freedom, I mean religious freedom in a country where no singular faith is forced upon us by government and multiple and diverse faiths can flourish, or no faith at all.
Representative Huffman, I think it was so important that you mentioned that this is not a concern about Religion, this is the term of one religion, being forced to come along by one.
And as people of faith gathering in diverse faiths around the country, we're deeply concerned about Speaker Mark Johnson losing his congressional leadership role to advance the Christian nationalist views that he says called him to this post and eliminate the separation of religion and government.
And as my colleagues on this panel have spoken about, and it's deeply detailed in this excellent white paper, which I urge everyone to read, His Christian nationalist values and views are not a thing of the past.
He continues to use religious rhetoric and principles in his current role as Speaker, namely on the day of his swearing in on October 25th, saying that the Bible was very clear that God raises up those in authority.
In December, he was called to address the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, which, by the way, is an organization whose mission is to dismantle the separation of religion and government, to perpetuate anti-LGBTQ legislation throughout the country.
And at this event, he claimed that God called upon him to be the next Moses.
And most recently, in December, he sent out a fundraising email on behalf of the National Republican Congressional Committee, saying that America may be beyond redemption.
There was a heading that said, Does America Need More God?
and alluded to the frightening drop in church attendance over the past several decades, and describing that one in four high school students identifies as something other than straight, and saying, were they being taught in school?
So the fact that the Speaker of the House of Representatives is conflating the Republican Party with the notion that we need more God in our religion is deeply, deeply concerning.
If you take a quick look at his representative website, he has a description of the seven poor principles of conservatism, which alludes to God multiple times.
So in his current role, he is consistently conflating his faith with his policy priorities.
And I want to also mention that as an organization that brings together people of faith, we're very concerned about his hijacking of the notion of faith.
To catch away one narrow religious view, whether it's LGBTQ equality or whether it's abortion bans.
He went so far as to call abortion a holocaust and all that.
In 2005, he continues to put forward anti-LGBTQ legislation and rhetoric.
And as Rachel just mentioned, In his letter around the appropriations process, saying that the top priority of this Congress is to put forward the policy riders in the fiscal year 2024 appropriations bills, is further evidence that he will be continuing to use his prose to perpetuate machine adoption.
And we as the Interfaith Alliance are very pleased to be partnering with the folks on this panel, all those of you in the room, and the Free Thought Office to help engage faith leaders around the country.
We'll lift up our voices to say that this is not a faith that we want to see in our country.
Fantastic.
I'm showing you guys up here because I'm folding.
There are some questions, and we can have a bit of a dialogue, but I just want to add one other thing, if I could, that's occurred to me.
You know, Mike Johnson claims to have had a conversation with God where he, and when people start telling you God's talking to them, Look, a psychologist, a psychiatrist would call that schizophrenia.
But God makes things happen, and very early.
He said that this Red Sea analogy in Moses is what God told him to get ready for.
Let's not forget that that was my line.
That God parted the Red Sea, and then when the Israelites came through, all the, I think it was the Farewell in his arms that were destroyed and every single one of them killed.
They always say, and I said this at the top, violence is a feature.
It is always violent because this is a power-focused movement.
When they talk about Jericho and Joshua and the Jericho March, where they had people run around the Supreme Court of the Capitol saying that this is going to be like the walls of Jericho are coming down.
Well, you know, people learn in Sunday school this cool miracle that God did for Joshua and brought the wolves down.
The part they don't talk about is that Joshua then proceeded to kill every man, woman, and child in that city.
I believe he showed mercy to a single prostitute, if I've got my memory of the Bible correct.
Everyone else, Andy, Pat, Fabies, was slaughtered.
And invariably, Christian nationalists come back to these biblical metaphors and stories about divinely sanctioned violence or about divinely mandated violence.
That's the faith holy one.
They talk about it all on his own. - Yeah, I'll just respond to that for a moment and say, you're talking about them using these metaphors and references to the Bible.
And also, when you think about what the motivation is of Christian nationalists, it's to accrue favor and privilege for white Christians in this country over everyone else.
And then when you think about the goal of our democracy, It's equality for all.
So the end goal of white Christian nationalism is incongruous with democracy.
Which means that the only option it has, ultimately, is to take democracy down.
And that's what we saw at the Capitol on January 6th. - On this question violence, I think it's so important, The title of my book is The Violent Ticket by Force, which is actually words from the mouth of Jesus that were widely cited for the Capitol riot.
And I think we always have to pay attention to the ways that Christian nationalist rhetoric often frames the violence in spiritual terms.
So there's spiritual violence, especially for the Pentecostal and Charismatic folks, But many evangelicals also will talk about spiritual warfare.
And if you go back and look at what happened around Cabo Verde, so many manifestations of Christianity in the ground, including the blowing of shofars, including the Jericho marches, which January 6th itself was talked about as a Jericho march.
They were all framed around this idea of spiritual warfare, combating demons, defeating demons.
I'll just say, and because the leaders will often be slippery in the way they talk about this, that spiritual violence tipped over into real-world violence before our very eyes on January 6th.
Because when we point at a group of people, be they Democrats, disloyal Republicans, opposition through the people, and say those people are filled with demons and we must defeat the demons, the logical next step is the people attack those people.
And that is what happened on January 6th.
The NAR leaders who were here around the Capitol believed that the demons had taken over the Capitol, and that they needed to exorcise those demons to see God's will fulfilled and Donald Trump reinstated.
And so this logic of spiritual violence then cascades into real-world violence.
And people aren't often wanting to draw a divide between those two things, but it actually Matthew, one of the N.A.R.
prophets, I think, is the founder of this Patriot Church movement.
I think his name's Tim, or something like that.
He's not, he's not really getting our leadership, he's a church manager.
Yeah, yeah.
He is like many of them.
You don't have to look far to find stuff like this.
But he has said repeatedly, in preaching the big lie, and saying that God considers Trump still president, by the way, and that God wants us to do whatever it takes to get him back in power, he has said that civil war would be necessary.
- That rhetoric is all over the place. - And it's a lot of civil stuff. - They're not talking about spiritual civil war.
They're talking about...
I'm just going to add something.
I just want to talk about church-state separation for another minute.
You know, it's funny.
It's almost easier to talk about Christian nationalism than church-state separation.
We were just talking earlier about the reticence that so many folks have to talk about religion or worry about conveying that what they're saying about religion is at all critical.
But church-state separation is actually pro-religion.
And since we're sort of in a place where people care about values and care about public opinion, I just wanted to say that you are on very safe ground when you talk about church-state separation, that the super majority of Americans support it, and across parties too.
Now I know that we're seeing on the extreme This is how.
blatant rejection of church including unbelievably like it's out of the onion by the speaker of the people's house but what i want you to know is you are on safe ground the super majority of americans supported and and that it really is the antidote to christian nationalism and this is how christian nationalism is seeking to inject religion into the law
it's justifying what it's doing based on the bible right which is basically the first interview that mike johnson gave on tv when he became the speaker and And what church-state separation does is prevents religion from coming into policy.
Right?
So it stops Christian nationalism in its tracks.
So since this event is about Mike Johnson, and Mike Johnson is pushing Christian nationalism into the law, we need to be vigilant and we need to be willing to call out the importance of church-state separation, to prioritize it, and to understand fundamentally that it's popular.
Because it's as American as an apple pie, and Americans get it.
See, I'm never going to get to your questions.
I have too much to say.
This, though, is something that they have hated for decades, if not all the way back to the original founding of our country.
I mean, hardcore religionists did not want church-state separation.
They did not want a constitution that had zero references to God.
They were just for it.
Absolutely.
And so there has been this long-standing effort to build myths and narratives that they now use in the Christian nationalist movement to suggest we've always been a Christian nation, right?
Your colleague Andrew Seidel wrote an awesome definitive book on this.
But starting in the 1950s, in God We Trust, amending the Pledge of Allegiance to put God explicitly into it, the Congressional Prayer Breakfast, all of this stuff started happening.
And frankly, it's one of the reasons that I founded the Freethought Caucus.
Because when I got here, I was encroachments of religion into our government were happening around here, and had just come to be accepted as the way it's always been.
It hasn't always been that way.
It's a relatively recent phenomenon in the 1950s, and every time they succeed in one of these things, in having a congregational prayer breakfast under the aegis of the United States Congress, or in getting it on our currency, or in getting it into the pledge, They say, see, we've always been a Christian nation, now let's do this other stuff.
And the separation of church and state disintegrates eventually under that strategy.
But don't get me started.
You guys probably have some questions.
Thank you, Kevin.
Do you know what the prayer breakfast is supposed It's a little off topic, but is it still to start a small, understated event like it was last year?
That's a good question.
Anyone who has the latest on this, please let me know.
My understanding is it will be a lot smaller because they have kind of tried to disentangle themselves from some of the controversial funders in the past.
But it's not a transparent process by any stretch.
There's a controversy about whether they can continue to use congressional resources and iconography and symbols and things like that.
I believe it was Senator Goins got an ethics opinion that suggested they've got to stop doing this, and they tried to clean it up, but I think he's been overridden.
My understanding is, so what happened last year was there was the Family Foundation, Fellowship Foundation that organized the original bread and breakfast.
It was taken away by a bipartisan committee that organized a separate one, but the family still had theirs.
And then Mike Johnson and Jim Garlow organized this alternative event They didn't call it the Prayer Breakfast because they didn't serve food.
It was at the same time at the Museum of the Bible.
And my understanding is all three of those are going to happen again this year.
So there can be a triple event in DC, one organized by the family that was always organizing the Prayer Breakfast, one with Mike Johnson and Jim Garlow, and then the Bible is up here.
Hello, David Smith of The Guardian.
You mentioned President Trump.
There's obviously a really hot question of why the Christian humanitarians support Donald Trump so strongly, a man who for many, many odd years wasn't.
Well, un-Christianist behaviour and vulgar and all the rest of it.
And we'll probably see it again in Iowa soon.
I just wondered your reflection on that generally, but also specifically, obviously, Mike Johnson has endorsed Donald Trump for President.
How does he justify this in his mind?
I'd like to speak to Mike Johnson's mind.
There was a New York Times article that came out a couple of days ago interviewing evangelical voters in the UK.
And one of those voters named Karen Johnson gave the best summary I've seen of why Christians do support Trump.
What she said was, Trump is our David and our Goliath.
So is that that mixture of sacred and profaned, right?
And when you quote or point to David in the Christian tradition, that is a messianic move.
David is the regender of the Messiah idea.
And so saying that he is David and Goliath.
So he's both the pagan bully who will beat up on our enemies and threaten their enslavement.
And the anointed one that is sacralized and is made sacred.
Right, that is the paradox that they live with.
One of the other major issues that was actually very popularized by the New Yorker reformation, starting in the fall of 2015, especially by one of the NAR leaders who advanced wall now, is that they call Trump a Cyrus.
If you go back in your...
In the Hebrew Bible, Cyrus is the king of the Persian Empire.
The Jewish people were taken in exile to Babylon by the Babylonian Empire.
The Persians conquer the Babylonians, and Cyrus sends the Jewish people back from exile to rebuild Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple.
And this image of Trump as Cyrus implicitly acknowledges that he is not a good Christian, but he is our enemy.
He's our bully.
He is the pagan emperor who will protect I mean, that's excellent.
And I think that's the story that these religious extremists have told.
But what's underlying that?
Why have they found that story?
Because of the transactional relationship they have with Donald Trump.
Remember when he had that dinner for Evangelical Christians when he was still president and he said something like, I've given you everything that you've asked for and more.
And that's true.
That is what he did for that community.
He had an Evangelical only faith advisory committee.
Obama had one, and it had all different religious points of view on it.
And maybe even some non-religious points of view, if I'm remembering properly.
Yeah, but not Donald Trump, right?
So I think at core, Donald Trump is a businessman.
He's good at getting support, and he has a transactional relationship with evangelical Christians that they've told themselves these stories around.
And bent over backwards at Dunkerque Wilson Gymnastics in order to be able to validate.
You can also imagine his ego kind of enjoying the fact that they've built in this apotheosis that they've created.
He's now sort of a demigod, hollow, what's-her-name, just trembling, laying on of hands, gaudy, exercises with him, and God is annoying.
I mean, he's eaten this up.
He just loves it.
What?
Part of what fueled January 6th was that there were Charismatic and Pentecostal prophecies.
There were hundreds of Charismatic prophets who said that each individually claimed that God had revealed to them that Donald Trump was destined to win the 2020 election.
So there is, I think especially at the organizational, institutional level, this transactional element.
We can't miss the theological and prophetic propaganda is also speaking to huge crowds, huge swaths of Christians.
And the spirituality of January 6th was driven by these prophecies and this belief that God wills for Donald Trump to be president, and we as Christians must intervene to bring those prophecies to fulfillment.
And a lot of this was, again, coming through the NAR and other what we would call independent or non-denominational charismatic circles.
Did I answer your question?
Yes, I think.
Can I just say, I think one of the biggest challenges we have in waking folks up to this threat and confronting it in the way it needs to be confronted, we talked a little bit about this before the panel began, is this natural deference that we all have to anything that's religious.
And, you know, there are some good reasons for that.
We value religious freedom very highly in this country.
Free exercise is right there in the First Amendment.
But we also know that sometimes things masquerade as religion, hijack religion.
A lot of very good Christian theologists would argue Christian nationalism is a fake religion, an imposter religion.
And yet there is still a deference and a skittish We've made a lot of contributions to this, but one of the greatest is we've begun to make it okay for the media, for other members of Congress and brothers to call it out.
I was the first one to go on the floor of the House and actually make a speech calling out Christian nationalism is a threat and I'm now starting to hear a lot of other people do it and the media is less nervous about it.
So I hope the panel would agree that we got to get over that.
I agree, and this is why it's so important for people of faith to speak out.
This isn't anti-religion, this is anti-one form of hijacking religion in our government.
We need to empower faith voices to identify Christian nationalism.
Identify what it means, how it plays out in the policy arena, and how to talk about it.
We've all said people are afraid to talk about it.
I think people think that Christians is not Christianity, and it's different, and people around the country need to speak out, and we need to be working with congregations around the country to educate them and mobilize them both to vote and to talk about this.
Absolutely, and I spoke about our polling earlier and the safety of talking about church-state separation because it's so supported.
Another question or statement in the poll that had the support of 80% of the population was, the law should not allow anyone to use their religious beliefs to harm others.
And so I think you're on really safe ground when you talk about that aspect of religion.
Do no harm.
You know, I mean, for one, it certainly ruins the sanctity of religion, and truly religious people are upset—we were speaking about this earlier—about religion being co-opted and used as an excuse to harm other people.
But I think it's important that we call out the harm, that when religion and religious freedom is used by this government to harm other people, That is what true religious freedom is about.
Religious freedom is meant to be a shield to protect all of us, not a sword to harm people.
Yeah.
Yeah, David Smith.
So, just on Speaker Johnson, I wonder, and this might be in public already, but other ways in which you're seeing his Christian naturalism manifest itself in his political views and policy views, just to take two examples, reproductive freedom or lack of and gay reproductive freedom or lack of and gay rights.
I can start.
Did you want to start, Jesus?
Okay.
So there's so much to talk about.
And I just want to say, there's so much to talk about that it was actually striking to me that the three of us did not coordinate our remarks today to educate folks about Mike Johnson, and we almost had no overlap in what we said.
That's how much there is to choose from.
Mike Johnson introduced a federal don't-say-gay bill that is basically modeled on the Florida don't-say-gay bill.
I mean, how outrageous and what it does for families and students and schools, you know, basically interfering with the right to read and to learn, very fundamental freedoms in this country, right?
He introduced that federal bill and he supports the federal Bill that is pushing for an abortion ban.
So, I mean, right there, I mean, I talked about the appropriations top line and the rioters and how they include abortion and birth control and gender-affirming care, you know, attacks on those things.
But he, he has gone all the way.
I mean, things that were out of the, you know, mainstream wasn't not that long ago.
And now, you know, because of Christian nationalism and how abundant it is from Trump, has sort of come Into the future Mike Johnson's the speaker.
I mean, I kind of liked my colleague Robbie Jones's line that Mike Johnson is Christian nationalism in a tailored suit.
But yes, I mean, he is, he is an extremist when it comes to what he wants to do for LGBTQ equality.
He wants to turn back the clock on marriage equality, just like Justice Clarence Thomas.
And he wants to ban abortion nationwide.
Make no mistake, right?
and it's up to all of us to call it out.
- What do you want to add? - Just to add, you summarized it.
Well, one might say that, well, these are conservative views.
No, these aren't.
These are Christian national views.
There are faiths around the nation that don't believe that life begins at conception, that don't believe that LGBTQ identity is an abomination.
Where we convene the National Faith for Equality Coalition, we actually just had a meeting this morning about how do we have the United States' voices in opposition to the anti-abortion riders and the anti-LGBTQ riders in the appropriations process.
So, being made very clear, I think we normalize this as kind of a conservative view.
It means we need to educate them in the opposite direction.
His position is so extreme.
By the way, starting on page 5 of the White Paper, we take it through chapter and verse of what he has done as a lawyer, as a state legislator, and during his several years in Congress.
I don't think you will find anyone in the United States Congress that is more extreme than Mike Johnson on both of these issues.
He obsesses about homosexuality.
He must think about it literally all the time.
He has for decades.
He thinks it is going to bring God's wrath down on the country, and he talks about that with trembling emotion.
And the same thing about abortions.
This is really extreme stuff, and it's all about religion.
So talk about church-state separation when you are pushing this radical agenda entirely because of your extreme religious views.
We have a problem.
Yeah, and I'll just say here that abortion bans violate church-state separation very clearly.
They impose one religious view, like Darcy was saying, on all of us, taking away our right to make our own decisions about our own bodies based on our own religious beliefs.
And I come from the Jewish faith, and in my faith, we are required to have an abortion if a pregnancy puts our life or health at risk, right?
And that's why Americans United a lawsuit challenging Missouri's abortion bans on behalf of 14 clergy from seven different religious denominations who all stood up and said, these bans violate my religious beliefs from my denomination and church-state separation. these bans violate my religious beliefs from my denomination and
So to Darcy's point, I mean, I think I would urge the Congressional Freethought Caucus to form partnerships with the Faith Caucus to the extent that that's possible.
We find that there's tremendous power in bringing together church-state separation advocates, the non-religious, and people of devout faith.
When I started this job almost six years ago and I started traveling the country, I was struck.
I thought maybe the primary advocates for this cause would be religious minorities.
community or abortion rights advocates.
But actually, the most devout advocates for church-state separation were the deeply non-religious and the deeply religious folks.
And we build power when we bring those folks together.
Yes?
Hi, I'm a convention stalker, and Thank you for being here.
Thank you.
So from my understanding, earlier this year, so at the beginning of every session, every time I was in the speaker, everybody was so staffers on Capitol Hill tend to go to the speaker and ask if they could use their conference room to write the prayers. everybody was so staffers on Capitol Hill tend to go And apparently this is the tradition that as the first term of the speaker, it's been around three more times.
Then the practice basically ended this year or what was it saying?
Regarding the 18th office, it was like, you know, basically, no, you can't use it, or non-response.
I'm not sure which one it was.
And so, some staffers kind of scrambled to try and find space, and they were almost barred from even using, like, the basement room.
And then, they got to, like, disconnect with some former Recollegiate staffer who had connections, Basically, where it was able to, like, at least secure the basement.
So that's where I would prefer to go.
Are other faiths getting access to rooms?
I don't know, necessarily, yet.
Basically, it's, like, an obligation for us to have the agreements.
And so, every Friday, you know, that's just, like, the space that we usually have, whether it was a local or a democratic speaker.
So this is the first time that has changed.
So my question to you, I guess, is, do you see this attitude of, you know, kind of like, you know, it's not separating and kind of like being Not necessarily, I guess I'm not necessarily restricting freedom of religion, but kind of making it a little bit harder.
Do you see this attitude changing any time soon?
Or do you think of a different speaker around in the future that is kind of like, not like, you know, really wants to help you guys out?
Attitude would change, which I haven't been this way before.
Or do you think that it's something that's those who are responsible for the ship. - I'll just take a stab at this and I welcome others.
I don't think the attitude is to change.
I think this is who they are.
The reason I asked you that the others are getting access is what they can't do, because they can't favor one religion over another.
And some tell me they probably are, because that's who they are too.
So I think we need to dig into this a little bit.
I'm glad you're raising it.
It's the first I've heard about it.
I would love to see if we can get that fixed.
Yeah, I can add to that.
I don't know if you know the group PRRI.
They do a lot of great polling in this space, and I think they're worth following, by the way.
And a recent poll that they did on Christian nationalism did show that over 50% of the Republican Party are Christian nationalist adherents or sympathizers.
So let's talk about what Christian nationalism is, right?
Because let's just pause on that, right?
So Christian nationalism, you could define in many ways, but I'll just define it as the belief that America was made for Christians, and our laws and policies should codify Christian privilege.
And so, if you put that definition together with where the majority of the Republican Party is today, your story, unfortunately, enrages me, but it doesn't surprise me.
And I say that from sitting as the head of a nonpartisan group, right?
Because really, all of us should be for separation of church and state because it protects every single one of us equally, you know, in the end.
So, over 50% is bad.
But, you know, I believe that the same poll showed that over 70% of evangelical Christians are Christian nationalist adherents or sympathizers.
So that's even more challenging.
So I think we have work to do.
But the more we take back church-state separation and talk about true religious freedom, the better we'll do.
Go ahead.
I just want to say that this needs looking into, and I'm wondering whether there will be advocacy or organizing around it.
But speaking more broadly about sort of public or state, it just reminds me of something that happened to the Texas State House last year, where there's a state representative, my name corrects me if I'm mispronouncing, state representative,
In Texas, and when he was sworn in, there were only Bibles in the House of Representatives library in the state capitol, and he put a Koran in the library, and actually someone stole it.
But they were able to figure out who stole it, and through a series of dialogues and conversations and an educational campaign, now they have He supported Trump's Muslim ban.
They have a variety of other big books.
And that change was really made from dialogue and education.
So not to say that it's going to be easy, but it might be possible to implement some change throughout the city dialogue.
I don't know what chances are used.
It's not a message.
But I will say...
He supported Trump's Muslim ban.
It's like on page something in the white hand.
In these NAR circles, and these are friends of his, people that he hangs out with, and they will frequently speak about the demon of Islam, casting out the demon of Islam.
And so those sentiments really do circulate in these Christian nationalist circles.
And I think part of the challenge in Christian nationalism is Christians should have the same rights as everyone else in America.
And so it's a perfect reason for Christians to ask for the same rights, the same freedoms as everyone else.
But I think it's worth querying the speaker's office.
If there were a group of Christian staffers who asked to have space set aside so they could pray in the capital.
Do you really think he would deny them or ignore them?
And so that is where you cross over from Christian equality to Christian privilege and down that road is also Christian supremacy where Christianity becomes ensconced as the de facto religion that's privileged above all others on a policy level.
level and it sounds like it's moving that direction so i think that would be where i would when we chose that and that includes the trans and LGBTQ community the religion the races
but i think that's a really important part of this in terms of the blackness and You mean like the fake war on Christmas?
Dr. Fauci was trying to close the churches and all of that nonsense, yeah.
So I think maybe to think conceptually, Christian nationalism is the umbrella camp.
So, there is Christian nationalism that exhibits in countries that do not have white populations.
In the U.S., race and religion have become embedded together in very complicated ways.
The movement that I study, the New York Tiger Formation, is pretty multiethnic.
Okay, so I think we need to keep our categories.
If Christian nationalism is a broader category, why don't Christian nationalism is a type of Christian nationalism?
It might be interesting.
Are they working with some of these African dictators that are trying to put Christo-fascist states together?
Yes, in Rwanda they're also- Homophobia is like the common thread.
And many of the Latinx or the Hispanic NAR leaders are very closely tied into networks in South America.
in AR-style networks that helped instigate and fuel the capital riot that happened a year ago yesterday in Brazilian.
So there's a transnational dimension to this that goes beyond just American Christian nationalism.
Within the U.S., Christian nationalism is predominantly but exclusively white, and when you talk about persecution, this has been a long-standing thing within conservative Christian circles.
exclusively white.
And when you talk about persecution, this has been a long-standing thing within conservative Christian circles, this belief that they are persecuted.
This believes that they are persecuted.
I will just say, evangelical Christians make up 20 to 25 percent of the U.S. population, if anybody has asked the question.
They hold sway over one of our two major political parties.
They have elected the majority of the Supreme Court.
They have won a number of presidential elections.
There is no systematic persecution of Christians that occurs in the United States.
And yet, the feeling of embattledness and the rhetoric of embattledness then fuels, right, where David was, right, where David We're persecuted, so we need Goliath to protect us, right?
And that is the rhetorical shift over from Christians are persecuted to Christians must reign supreme.
And I can add just one.
I'll go real quick.
I'm going to hand off Sean and then after you.
I'll go real quick.
And it's just that the white supremacy that is driving the Christian nationalist movement, whether it's only white people who are always leading the efforts, usually, but not always, But there's no doubt that there's white supremacy that's driving the movement.
And you can just look back to, you know, what was driving white evangelical Christians before they turned to abortion.
You know, which was the effort to desegregate public schools, which they were resisting, resisting, resisting, right?
And so what's striking for those of us who only think of the Southern Baptist Convention as being against abortion is to learn that they actually celebrated the decision as one that advanced religious freedom.
And that movement to be against abortion from being explicit about resisting desegregation efforts was an effort to hide what was at the core of the movement.
And then a visual of how alive it still is in the white Christian nation, how alive white supremacy still is as part of the Christian nationalist movement was the protests when George Floyd was murdered outside of the White House.
And there were people who were anguished and who took to the streets to protest.
And what did Donald Trump do in conjunction with his allies in the white Christian nationalist world?
He tear gassed them all.
And then he walked over to the local church where he held up an upside down Bible to justify what he did.
All right, folks, we have reached the end.
Before we wrap it up, though, I've got a great colleague, Sean Gaster from Illinois, who's one of our most active and inspired members of the Freethought Caucus.
You missed a great discussion, but you've got the wingpaper, and we are going to be shoulder-to-shoulder on this.
Thank you.
I appreciate all the praise for the guy who shouldn't party.
I guess I just, you know, I don't want to presume that you haven't talked to him before, I want to just pick on this persecution thing.
Number one, there's that great Chris Rock joke, if you're losing to the Nails, win.
but i wonder if you could comment that the there's all the there's all the very tangible violence that's scary everything that i'm sure you covered i get scared because you know the constitution is a living document not just because we amend it but because our understanding of it changes over time even if it doesn't change right you know the second amendment hasn't changed but somehow we've decided the first 13 words don't matter but that's that's insane right
and that's just now how how we collectively understand that part of the constitution how concerned should we be you know especially when we have the supreme court ruling that it's It's a violation of your religious freedom if you have to bake a cake for an imaginary person who doesn't exist.
Like, how concerned should we be about the way that the public is understanding freedom of religion as guaranteed in our religion?
Is that understanding morphing in ways that we need to be concerned about in the public square?
and if so, what might we do to correct that? - And we should be very concerned and we should work to educate the public to connect the dots
And I think that's one of the things that women and I don't understand, is connecting the dots between Christian nationalism, church-state separation, LGBTQ discrimination, abortion access, school prayer, chaplains in schools, all of these issues that make a difference in our day-to-day lives, and how elections impact the Supreme Court, right?
The Masterpiece Cake Shop, the website, the website, now there's a Catholic, there may be a Catholic Charter School in Oklahoma, which Americans United is leading on, and then maybe the Supreme Court.
And all of these things are connected They're connected to funders.
They're connected to Christian nationals, advocacy organizations, Alliance Defendable Freedom.
This is all part of a coordinated, calculated plan to move our jurisprudence in a certain way and change American values and understanding of the separation of church and state and paid labor rights.
Hi Representative Kasten, thanks for being here and thanks for the work that you do on behalf of the caucus and on behalf of my parents' district.
My mom is Joan Lazar and she was so excited when you sent out an email about the speaker using like church-state separation in the headline.
She sent it to me immediately.
We had a great conversation about you.
She loves you.
I'll never get a job offer like last year.
Awesome.
But I would just say we absolutely need to reclaim religious freedom.
And, you know, we were talking about this don't-touch-this attitude towards religion.
I think there's a lot of trauma related to religion for a lot of people who are progressive in this country.
I think there's scarrow and wounds and mistrust.
But the truth is, you know, America is still a predominantly religious country.
We're no longer majority white Christian, but we're definitely majority Christian and majority religious.
Probably because we separate church and state, by the way.
But I think it's really important that we not run away from the term religious freedom because it's been so co-opted by those who want to turn it into religious privilege and a license to harm people, but instead reclaim it.
And I want to invite everyone to our—if you both want to come and speak, we'd love you—to our Summit for Religious Freedom in April that we're having here in Washington, D.C., where we bring together Religious and non-religious people in fight for church-state separation.
Just a brief answer to your question.
So I grew up evangelical.
I grew up in Christian schools being taught what today we would call Christian missions.
And what I would say about the way the rhetoric of persecution operated 10, 15, 20 years ago was Christians are persecuted, so we need to channel our energy into democratic mobilization.
We need to vote.
We need to elect our kind of people.
We need to get our people in Washington.
It was moving into democracy.
The shift that has occurred in the last decade that I've seen is that now that same rhetoric of persecution is used to justify being anti-democratic.
And now it is, we are persecuted and therefore we need to take control from the top.
We are persecuted and therefore we need a protector like Donald Trump.
Who cares what he does about democracy?
He'll protect us.
And so it's this shift from, we are a persecuted minority, which we're not, and we need to mobilize.
Now it's, we're a persecuted minority and we need to I mean, I just saw some footage from some of Trump's recent rallies in Iowa.
He begins every rally with a hate preacher, spouting the big lie of the 2020 election, reminding everyone that God has chosen Donald Trump and promising retribution when he gets back to power against their enemies.
I mean, this is, again, I keep bringing it back to violence, but I don't know how you avoid that conclusion. - Yeah, and I was just gonna say, let's not forget that Speaker Johnson also rejects the Johnson Amendment.
Kind of ironic.
But, you know, that amendment's been around for almost 70 years and protects the integrity of elections.
It stops houses of worship from being able to be partisan.
And yet, he just ignores it, you know, and has events in churches all the time.
And it's really important that the IRS start implementing the law, you know, and enforcing it in that space.
We've made all the time we said we would.
This white paper is your friend.
Use it.
It's a fairly complete, I think, catalog of most of the things we've discussed here today, but there's probably more, and there are probably new things that we need to talk about.
So thank you all.
Again, tell your boss to join the Freethought Caucus if she or he is not already a member, and we will see you at the next event.
Thanks to everyone who helped make this one possible.
Thanks for listening today, y'all.
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