At the Museum of the Bible on Tuesday night, just a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol, House Speaker Mike Johnson evaded scrutiny by reporters. He was there to receive the American Patriot Award for Christian Honor and Courage at a gala hosted by the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a small Christian nationalist nonprofit group based in Conway, Arkansas. While reporters were allowed to watch other portions of the gala, they were not permitted to watch Johnson’s keynote.
Or so Johnson thought. According to Rolling Stone magazine, the speaker was “perhaps unaware that the event was being recorded for the NACL Facebook page.” The video is no longer available, but Rolling Stone reports that Johnson thanked the organization for not letting journalists in. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he said, “since media is not here.” God had spoken to him throughout Republicans’ weekslong effort to find a new Speaker, Johnson said. Eventually, God revealed to Johnson that he would be a Moses-like figure leading the GOP and the country through a “Red Sea moment.”
Johnson is clearly telling Americans that he and his extremist friends want to carry out their assault on our constitution in secret and without accountability.
Not everything in Johnson’s speech was a divine revelation. “What we’re engaged in right now is a battle between worldviews,” he declared in a short clip an attendee posted on Facebook. “It’s a great struggle for the future of the Republic.” That’s standard Christian nationalist fare, and yet another sign that Johnson believes himself to be at war with the majority of Americans.
The attempt to hide these remarks from the public came the same week that Johnson announced that, in releasing security footage of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Republicans would blur out the faces of rioters “because we don’t want them to be retaliated against and to be charged by the DOJ.” He is clearly telling Americans that he and his extremist friends want to carry out their assault on our Constitution in secret and without accountability.
At the NACL, Johnson knew he had a receptive audience. The group’s founder and president, Jason Rapert, a former Arkansas state senator, recently fretted to a reporter that “with all the troubles facing our country, with Democrats and leftists that are advocating cutting penises off of little boys and breasts off of little girls, we have reached a level of debauchery and immorality that is at biblical proportions.” He has called LGBTQ people a “cult” that promotes “unholiness, unrighteousness and immorality in our nation.” He has expressed hope that in 2024, Americans “will re-elect Jesus to be on the throne here again in our country.” Rapert believes fetuses have constitutional rights, and that abortion is worse than slavery and the Holocaust. As a state senator, he sought to amend the U.S. Constitution to obliterate the rights of LGBTQ people through a statement that marriage “is between a man and a woman.”
To most Americans, these views are extreme. In Johnson’s world, they are unremarkable. They are at the core of the “biblical worldview” that he and Rapert share as the singular lodestar of American government.
A keynote speech by the speaker of the House is a huge get for the NACL. Relative to other Christian nationalist organizations, the NACL, founded in 2019, is new and small potatoes. One might think that the speaker, who is trying to keep the truculent GOP caucus together as they resist even basic functions of governing, might have more pressing matters on his plate. But Johnson’s top priority, above all else, is holding the sprawling army of Christian nationalist agitators — from his friends inside the Beltway to every corner of red America — in a tight embrace. And the NACL will exponentially increase its exposure through Johnson, who in his short time as speaker has done much to raise public awareness about the wide-ranging network of Christian nationalist organizations, radio programs, books and conferences that most people outside of his insular evangelical world have never heard of.
By elevating yet another relatively obscure Christian nationalist group, Johnson can also notch a victory for himself.
What’s good for the NACL is also good for Rapert. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently nominated him to the state library board, just as Arkansas is embroiled in litigation over a book-banning law passed earlier this year. In an interview with an Arkansas television station, Rapert, who supports the law, repeated far-right tropes that books contained “truly pornographic depictions” and that libraries should “not be a place for woke, ideological indoctrination." But even Republicans in the Arkansas state Senate, which must confirm the appointment, have expressed reservations. One Republican senator who opposes his confirmation called him an “attention grabber” and “divisive.”
By elevating yet another relatively obscure Christian nationalist group, Johnson can also notch a victory for himself. He’s taken another step in normalizing an extremist organization whose member pledge reads, in part, that “atheists and anti-Christian groups have recently been more strategic in pursing their godless worldview through the courts and legislation than Christians” and that these groups “are becoming more aggressive and are trampling on the Christian liberty we have enjoyed in this country for centuries.”
The Museum of the Bible was a fitting host for this event, as a building where powerful people complain that secularists have oppressed them and ruined the Christian America they say God intended. Founded by the billionaire Green family, which owns the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain, the museum bought the building located just steps from the National Mall in 2012 for $50 million. The location was strategically chosen to provide a gathering place for activists like Rapert and lawmakers like Johnson, to foster a seamless connection between the Bible (or, more accurately, Christian nationalists’ version of the Bible) and the centers of power a few blocks away.
Despite claims of persecution at the hands of nefarious secularists, these Christian nationalists have the ultimate access. They hosted a gala event, keynoted by the man second in line to the presidency, just blocks from the highest echelons of power. This is dominionism— the evangelical idea that Christians must take control of the institutions of government — in action.
Don’t mistake the ban on media at Johnson’s speech as a sign of weakness or fear of being seen. It was a power play that differs little from Trumpian attacks on a free press as liars and promoters of “fake news.” It’s Johnson’s way of keeping his own animating lie going: that Christians are under attack, and must seize power to save America.