Nuff Said
Speaker Mike Johnson delivered a presentation at a weekend GOP retreat that — although it was billed as a map to keeping the House majority — took on a surprisingly religious tone, according to two people in the room. Johnson’s private remarks to a small group of Republican lawmakers at Miami’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel over the weekend alarmed both people, who addressed the speech on condition of anonymity. Rather than outlining a specific plan to hold and grow the majority, these people said, Johnson effectively delivered a sermon.
Johnson, a devout Christian, attempted to rally the group by discussing moral decline in America — focusing on declining church membership and the nation’s shrinking religious identity, according to both people in the room. The speaker contended that when one doesn’t have God in their life, the government or “state” will become their guide, referring back to Bible verses, both people said. They added that the approach fell flat among some in the room.
“I’m not at church,” one of the people said, describing Johnson’s presentation as “horrible.” “I think what he was trying to do, but failed on the execution of it, was try to bring us together,” that person said. “The sermon was so long he couldn’t bring it back to make the point.”
Last December Johnson said God revealed to him that he would be a Moses-like figure leading the GOP and the country through a “Red Sea moment.”
Said “The separation of church and state is a misnomer.”
Said “The Bible is and should be an appropriate course of study in our public schools.”
Johnson is in fact a believer in scriptural originalism, the view that the Bible is the truth and the sole legitimate source for public policy. He was most candid about this in 2016, when he declared: “You know, we don’t live in a democracy” but a “biblical” republic.
Johnson’s inerrant biblical truth leads him to reject science. Johnson was a “young earth creationist”, holding that a literal reading of Genesis means that the earth is only a few thousand years old and humans walked alongside dinosaurs.
