Saturday, November 4, 2023:  The Christian Nazis Are At Our Doorstep
My narrative below contains numerous excerpts from an October 27, 2023 article in the New York Times By Annie Karni, Ruth Graham and Steve Eder titled "For Mike Johnson, Religion Is at the Forefront of Politics and Policy."

It has been a long and surreptitious route, but the Christian Nazis have finally managed to place a key acolyte in a position of power. Third in line for the president, Mike Johnson, the latest Speaker of the House, is now the most powerful Republican in Washington. His colleagues celebrated his candidacy by circulating an image of him on bended knee on the House floor with other lawmakers praying for divine guidance. I am sure they wanted to ask God what she wanted so they could ignore it.

Johnson is the poster boy for what some describe as Christian nationalism. Given his leading role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, it is clear that he, like many of the others on the evangelical right, is willing to violate any ethical or moral principle to achieve his ends.

Mr. Johnson has expressed skepticism about some definitions of the separation of church and state. He refers to the Declaration of Independence as a "creed" and describes it as a "religious statement of faith." He believes that his generation has been wrongly convinced that a separation of church and state was outlined in the Constitution. He believes "the founders wanted to protect the church from an encroaching state, not the other way around."

Over the arc of his career, Mr. Johnson, a lawyer and a member of the Louisiana Legislature before his election to Congress, has been driven by a belief that Christianity is under attack and that Christian faith needs to be elevated in the public discourse.

He has described himself as "a Bible-believing Christian" and said that to understand his politics, one only need "pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it". He has railed against "the earnest advocates of atheism" and has written that "This sprawling alliance of anti-God enthusiasts has proven frighteningly efficient at remaking America in their own brutal, dehumanizing image", adding that "In the space of a few decades, they have managed to entrench abortion and homosexual behavior, objectify children into sexual objects, criminalise Christianity in the popular culture, and promote guilt and self-doubt as the foremost qualities of our national character."

He is not shy about framing his political career as a divinely driven battle to put religion (in this case only his evangelical Christian religion) at the center of American policy and lawmaking. From gun violence to abortion to immigration, Mr. Johnson's policy views are shaped by his belief that too many Americans are "denying existence of God himself."

Mr. Johnson linked school shootings to no-fault divorce laws, "radical feminism" and legal abortion. He explained how his religion drives his hard line immigration stance, arguing that while the Bible teaches Christians to practice "personal charity," that commandment was "never directed to the government."

He has recorded over a thousand interviews on talk radio and television — much of it from his time at the Alliance Defense Fund, now called the Alliance Defending Freedom — leaving a long trail of words that help paint a picture of an arch-conservative who promotes a literal reading of the Bible. In 2015, he provided legal services to Answers in Genesis, a fundamentalist Christian group founded by Ken Ham that rejects scientific findings about evolution and the early history of the cosmos. The organization cites "the Word of God" in saying that the universe is 6,000 years old and suggests that "we simply have been indoctrinated to believe it looks old." The universe is in fact about 13.8 billion years old, astronomers generally agree.

Here is what I believe is the most disturbing aspect of his ascent to the third most powerful political office in America. Mr. Johnson's has never had to run a competitive race. When he took office in the Louisiana House of Representatives in 2015, he ran unopposed for a seat that had been vacated. In his first run for Congress in 2016, he handily defeated his Democratic opponent, Marshall Jones, and last year he ran unopposed for his seat.

Clearly in Mr. Johnson's mind, if you are not on board with Christian nationalism, you are deemed to be part of the Untermenschen (subhumans) out to destroy evangelical Christianity. This is what blind faith gets you, an arrogance that can only be described as evil incarnate.