Evangelical Christian conservatives have long had allies in top Republican leadership in Congress.
But never before have they had one so thoroughly embedded in their movement as new House Speaker Mike Johnson, a longtime culture warrior in the courthouse, in the classroom and in Congress.
To be sure, Christian conservatives have held the House speakership with Republican majorities in the past, from Catholics such as Paul Ryan and John Boehner to Newt Gingrich, who was Southern Baptist when he was speaker in the 1990s and later converted to Catholicism. From 2004 to 2012, Johnson served on board of the policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, whose 13 million members comprise the nation's largest Protestant denomination. During his tenure with the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, it rallied members to place strong emphasis on"values voting." Such activism helped reinforce Republicans' opposition to abortion and LGBTQ rights.
Johnson's own public interest law firm, called Freedom Guard, helped win a legal battle regaining tax incentives on behalf of a Noah’s Ark theme park in Kentucky, overcoming state concerns that the project’s mission had shifted from tourism to ministry. The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, welcomed Johnson’s speakership not only because of his conservative political record, but also because he is a “a self-consciously committed evangelical Christian.”
“We should not be fooled by his aw-shucks style,” Fea added in Current, an online journal. “He is a culture warrior with deep connections to the Christian Right. One might call him a happy warrior.”
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