Links between the new Republican House speaker, Mike Johnson, and key Christian nationalist leaders have sparked fears the devout Louisiana congressman might seek to erode elements of the first amendment, which protects key US civil liberties including freedom of religion and the separation of church and state.
Long before the evangelical conservative Johnson became speaker, he had forged close ties with Christian nationalists like David Barton, whose writings claiming the country’s founders intended to create a Christian nation have been widely debunked by religion scholars.
Although Barton, a self-styled historian, has been heavily criticized for distorting the first amendment by promoting the flawed idea there should be no separation between church and state, Johnson has hailed him as an important mentor and Barton has returned the praise.
Johnson lauded Barton effusively in 2021 at an event sponsored by the Texas-based Christian nationalist group WallBuilders which Barton founded 35 years ago to promote a conservative family values agenda, citing his “profound influence on me, and my work, and my life in everything I do”.
Little wonder that a day after Johnson became speaker in October Barton, who has worked closely with the rightwing GOP senator Ted Cruz and conservative legislators, boasted in a podcast that he had already talked with Johnson, about helping find staff for his office.
“We have some tools at our disposal now [that] we haven’t had in a long time,” allowed Barton who has dubbed Johnson a “God guy”.
A Johnson spokesman said neither “the speaker, nor his office, have had any subsequent conversations with Mr Barton about staff”.
Still, the ties and mutual admiration between Johnson and Barton suggest they are now poised to bolster one another politically and in Christian nationalist circles, spurring some scholars to stress they hold dangerous views about America’s founding principles and the first amendment.
“Johnson has bought into the malignant cancer about America being a Christian nation which Barton has propagated, ” said Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth historian of religion.
“For Barton and Johnson to subvert the first amendment is both dishonest and myopic. Dishonest because the founders were abundantly clear that they intended church and state to be separate entities. Myopic because the lack of a religious establishment – the separation of church and state – has been the best friend that religion ever had.”
Other scholars voice alarms at the deep ties between Johnson and Barton, one of whose books was withdrawn by its publisher due to errors.
“It is dangerous to the country that the speaker of the House is relying for his understanding of American history on a writer who has zero credibility in the history profession,” said David A Hollinger, an historian of religion at Berkeley and a former president of the Organization of American Historians.
Despite such stinging criticism, since Barton founded WallBuilders in 1988 he has helped build a strong Christian nationalist and political network with rightwing state legislators which seems poised to expand its influence with the rise of Johnson to speaker.
The wide-ranging missions of WallBuilders are palpable on its website.
“American liberty is being eroded, and our Biblical foundation is under attack. Here at WallBuilders, we provide education, training, and resources to equip people to know and defend the truth to protect our freedom.”
The group’s mission includes “providing information to federal, state, and local officials as they develop public policies which reflect Biblical values”.
WallBuilders expanded its ties with conservative state legislators by launching the “ProFamily Legislative Network” in 1998 to help push bills on abortion, LGBTQ+ rights and other hot button issues for the religious right, and host a yearly conference with legislators.
When Cruz sought the GOP nomination for president in 2016, Barton did a stint leading a Cruz Super Pac. Barton has also served as vice-chairman of the Texas Republican party, and been a consultant to the Republican National Committee.
To spur its growth, WallBuilders has lured some big checks from mega-donors including $3.2m from the Thirteen Foundation helmed by fracking billionaire and pastor Farris Wilks who has railed against homosexuality and equated the climate crisis with God’s will. Wilks, his brother Dan and their wives also donated $15m to a Cruz Super Pac during his run for president.
WallBuilders, which now boasts Barton’s son Tim as president, has been on a fundraising roll with its annual revenues reaching $5.9m in 2021 versus $1.9m in 2017.
Despite his powerful rightwing network, Barton’s career has been dogged by big headaches due to multiple inaccuracies in his book The Jefferson Lies.
The nation’s largest religious book publisher, Thomas Nelson, in 2012 pulled back Barton’s book due to mounting criticism of its errors.
Nonetheless, WallBuilders sells sizable quantities of Barton’s books and writings espousing his views. Barton’s messages have also been boosted in recent years via the rightwing Patriot Academy led by the evangelist and ex-Texas legislator Rick Green.
Barton has also been a star attraction on the American Restoration tour, a far-right project that espouses the Christian nationalist view there should be no separation between church and state, according to a book on American evangelicals by the journalist Tim Alberta entitled The Kingdom, the Power and the Glory.
However, Barton’s influence and brand of Christian nationalism has drawn fire from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has tracked his attacks on some minorities. The center has noted that “Barton has also demonized LGBTQ persons and communities, arguing that HIV and Aids are god-given consequences for living out one’s LGBTQ life”.
Balmer, an Episcopal priest, added: “Johnson’s and Barton’s brand of Christian nationalism tends to go hand in hand with calls for draconian Old Testament punishment for what he regards as deviant behavior.”
Barton did not respond to calls seeking an interview.
Barton is hardly alone among Christian nationalist leaders in banking on Johnson’s new clout in Washington and the ties he forged with the religious right before he was elected to Congress in 2016 and since then.
Before Congress, Johnson worked for about two decades as a lawyer for the Christian-right Alliance Defending Freedom, and Johnson also built close ties to the far-right Family Research Council and its leader, Tony Perkins.
Johnson has developed good ties too with other influential Christian bigshots including the Christian-right Pastor Jim Garlow, who hosts regular World Prayer Network live streams where Johnson has been a guest.
On an 9 August broadcast, Garlow said Johnson has “worked with us very closely”.
Johnson, in turn, praised Garlow. “I’m so grateful for the ministry and your faithfulness. It’s a great encouragement to me and others who are serving in these sometimes rocky corners of the Lord’s vineyard.”
Significantly, Johnson’s far-right Christian credentials are also proving helpful to Donald Trump. Soon after becoming speaker, Johnson endorsed Trump’s bid to be the Republican nominee for the presidency.
Johnson’s fast Trump endorsement fits with his role in 2020 when he helped enable Trump’s false claims that fraud cost him the election. Johnson took the lead in writing a brief for a lawsuit that sought to overturn Joe Biden’s win, and he rounded up fellow members to sign it too.
“I see Speaker Johnson and many others in the vanguard of the GOP aiding and abetting Trump, including his more increasingly authoritarian rhetoric and plans,” said Adam Russell Taylor, president of the Christian social justice group Sojourners.
Taylor stressed: “Many white Christian nationalists see the need to elect someone like Trump as president because he is willing to bend the rules or even break the rules in order to keep themselves in power and further their ideologies.”
Scholars say Johnson’s rise to House speaker is result of a decades-long drive for political clout by the religious right in which WallBuilders and other key Christian nationalist groups played important parts.
“Johnson’s ascent is a capstone victory for a culture-warring religious conservatism that has leveraged legal strategies meant to bolster white Christian hegemony,” said the Notre Dame university historian Darren Dochuk.
“With monies generated by Christian allies, fiercely ‘libertarian’ ones in business sectors ranging from oil and gas to the service industry, and an increasingly theocratic ambition to take over the Capitol for God, they built their alternative infrastructure.”
In Dochuk’s eyes, “Johnson is the product and culmination of a decades-long quest by rightwing religionists to assert themselves politically through backchannels not always visible to the uninitiated. Ronald Reagan’s evangelical allies could not have imagined such a swift, no-holds-barred rise to power.”
