What's Mike Johnson hiding?
The Christian Fundamentalist agenda beneath the shiny happy veneer
If your gut is telling you something is off about Mike Johnson, trust it. You’re right.
A lot is off about the man second in line for the presidency, actually. “On” being a character in alignment with his wholesome image, elocution, intelligence, likeability, and Jesus-loving faith tradition. My gut told me his character and image were out of alignment. Experience suggested how. Research (difficult but ultimately successful) confirmed it: Johnson is the opposite of On. He’s way, way off.
Make no mistake about it, researching Mike Johnson is difficult. I’m sure every writer, journalist, investigator, and curious googler has run into the same dilemma this week: Mike Johnson’s digital footprint is more thoroughly scrubbed than a grandmother’s lemon disinfectant sink. Spotless is an understatement.
There’s almost no personal record and remarkably few casual and candid shots, especially with known associates. Virtually, it’s as if he didn’t exist before his hair began to gray at the temples. He has an adopted-ish Black son who is no longer listed in his lineup of children and isn’t photographed with him. We can’t even confirm if this Black son shares the Johnson name, although he’s been used as an example in interviews. His professional search results mostly center on responses to other research inquiries more than actual records—such as his two years spent as Dean at the Judge Paul Pressler School of Law––a school that never opened to students. His social media is carefully curated and scripted. When Johnson shares stories of his background, it’s the same repeated litany over and over and over.
He wanted to be a fireman.
His dad was severely injured.
This changed his life.
His parents got divorced.
He no longer wanted to be a fireman and he and Kelly have a Covenant Marriage, a contract that makes it almost impossible to get a divorce.
When it comes to Mike Johnson it’s more helpful to look between the lines than actually at them. He has a record and a footprint every bit as much as he has an agenda and strategy.
Johnson defends an authoritarian theocracy.
When I first heard Mike Johnson’s acceptance speech after the congressional vote, my body flooded with the sensations that accompany panic. But his soothing and articulate intelligence probably came off to most listeners as a calm and refreshing antidote to other members of his bombastic MAGA party. To me, it came off like an evangelical sermon I’ve heard a million times before by pastors like Adrian Rogers, Paige Patterson, Jerry Vines, Charles Stanley, John MacArthur….but his verbiage smacked of Bill Gothard, David Barton, and Tony Perkins. These days, the overlap of these names is thorough, they might as well be One.
“I don’t believe there are any coincidences in a matter like this. I believe scripture is very clear. That God is the one who raises up those in authority.” — Mike Johnson, in his acceptance speech.
Johnson’s speech was peppered with IBLP-speak from Gothard’s vast fundamentalist movement that dovetailed with the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, a model of minority rule now being replicated in Congress. Little dog whistles rang like:
“the Bible is very clear”
we have a responsibility to “use the gifts that God has given us”
our Republic remains standing as “the great beacon of light”
“in a world that desperately needs it”
G.K Chesterton quotes
“not born equal, created equal”
Sunday morning or congressional election speech? If I closed my eyes, I wouldn’t know the difference. When the body keeps the score on religious trauma and fundamentalist abuse, it remembers the verbal tells and dog whistle signals of insider speak. So, while I was very sure I wouldn’t find a photo of Mike Johnson standing next to Bill Gothard, I was positive I’d find a trail of crumbs.
Mike Johnson votes along a Christian Fundamentalist line.
In the absence of a historical reputation, a lot of the recent news focused on Johnson’s known voting behavior. It’s relevant but also just fruit from his tree: the fundamentalist strategy that got him this far, to a unanimous vote in the MAGA House.
election results denier
consistently votes with his MAGA cohorts, including for guns and against women
opposition to LGBTQ rights and abortion (more on that below, because that’s an astringent understatement too)
Trump loves him––Johnson defended 45 at both impeachment hearings
But before being elected representative, Johnson was the attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a known hate-group headed by former Homeschool Legal Defence Association and Gothard-fundamentalist-friend Michael Farris. While there, Johnson drafted and defended arguments that brought down Roe v. Wade. He’s also been involved with bans against the “morning after” pill and gay marriage and suggested that homosexual marriage leads to bestiality.
I’m less interested in his voting behavior because I expect it. Johnson’s behavior matches the decades-long strategy of Christian Fundamentalists to turn our democracy into an authoritarian theocracy according to their interpretation of the Bible. I’d honestly expect nothing less from him, which is exactly why his unanimous election is worrisome. What used to sit in the fringe and backrooms is now on the rostrum of Congress, a mere whisper from the Oval Office. Democracy IS in jeopardy.
To learn what Mike Johnson is about, widen the lens.
Remember the old Kevin Bacon game of 6 Degrees of Separation? That’s how to research Mike Johnson. What they’ve erased and deleted in straight lines is still evident in the space of association, region, affiliation, and common sense relationships.
Mike and Kelly Johnson have a Covenant Marriage, which is one of the repeated talking points served on their limited menu. Most people don’t even know what that is, let alone hawk it. When I made a video about it last year, it was a brand-new concept to most viewers. Mike and Kelly were married in 1999. It was known even less back then, except in certain circles. They’re evangelists.
Bill Gothard’s Oakbrook School of Law is one of those circles. Oakbrook crafted legislation to propose Covenant Marriage in state governments. In the late 90’s Gothard’s teaching spread from conventions to churches through network evangelism within congregations. Who you knew at church or in seminary formed your ideas. Because of Johnson’s Southern Baptist background in Louisianna and his fundamentalist marriage contract, it’s likely these are related.
Covenant Marriage is harrowing to an abuse survivor who’s only here because it was possible to get a divorce. In Covenant Marriage, divorce is pretty much out of reach. Even more harrowing is that Johnson voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.
Another of those circles is Tony Perkins, co-founder of the Family Research Council (see also James Dobson, the Duggars, Falwell, Pat Robertson for affiliation.) In 1999, Tony Perkins wrote about Covenant Marriage. He was also a state representative in the same state as Johnson: Louisiana. He sponsored the Covenant Marriage bill that became law in Louisiana in 1997.
Speaking of Perkins…he and Johnson are close friends. Perkins also serves on the steering committee for the Conservative Baptist Network, along with Voddie Bauchaum, Mike Huckabee, and several others, including Johnson’s pastor, Brad Jurkovich.
Jurkovich was accused of diverting mission funds from their church to CBN, so he’s networked pretty deeply, but that’s not his only gig. Jurkovich overlaps with Paige Patterson’s network, the Sandy Creek Foundation, a dominionist organization hellbent on making America a Biblical nation.
And here’s where the lines start cris-crossing.
Paige Patterson and Judge Paul Pressler, a former Texas Court of Appeals judge, led the Conservative Resurgence fundamentalist takeover of the SBC. Together with W.A Criswell and Adrian Rodgers, the four planned a political strategy resulting in a conservative takeover centered on fundamentalism. It was a model of minority rule that used the SBC as the model to eventually apply to the nation.
You might recognize Pressler’s name. He’s been convicted of raping boys in a series of ongoing cases in which Patterson and SBC are named as co-defendants. Patterson has his own woes in addition to Pressler—a history of covering up sexual abuse cases and victim shaming.
As so many of us have come to understand, it seems to be okay in the MAGA-era SBC and GOP to look the other way on character and behavior, as long as the strategy remains intact. So Patterson didn’t hold Pressler accountable. Instead, Pressler had a law school named after him: The Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, where Mike Johnson served as Dean for two years, despite it never opening. Before he was dean, he was the chairman of the board and said the school had been planned since 1999.
Jurkovich and Patterson were part of a panel in 2020, still attending events together. There’s not really any accountability in the SBC, and we can use that as an indicator for the SBC-run GOP and America too.
Let’s not forget David Barton in this hotbed of a slumber party. When you’re searching for anything whack about the far-right these days, Barton pops up like a lil’ jack in the box. Through his WallBuilders org, Barton works to end the separation of church and state.
Johnson counts him as a long-term friend and, a “profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do.” The overlap while researching is nauseating. Like this finding, about the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools and its textbook, The Bible in History and Literature:
“The NCBCPS’s list of advisers reads like a Who’s Who list of religious, social and political conservatives. It includes two U.S. representatives, the chaplain to the U.S. Senate, and two of Time magazine’s “25 Most Influential Evangelicals”— Joyce Meyer and David Barton. The group has been endorsed by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, the Eagle Forum, Focus on the Family, and a host of similar groups and figures. The NCBCPS uses such organizations to advertise, and then looks to grassroots supporters to push the curriculum in their school districts.”
The Fundamentalist world feels very small—because it is.
These pastors all preached at the church where I was raised— men we were to adore and consider beloved, wise men of God. There’s a lesser-known pastor peppering my research—Timothy Pigg—who I remember from the church nursery. One of the abusers Patterson enabled was Darryl Gilliard, a pastor who spent a lot of time in my church youth group, and I know his victims. So, it all starts feeling really close to home and known from the inside out when that happens.
But these men haven’t borne beloved fruit. It’s rotten, small, and needs airing, particularly where women, LGBTQ, BIPOC, and democracy are concerned. Patterson doesn’t believe divorce should be allowed even in cases of abuse, just as fundamentalists like Johnson are against abortion in cases of rape. There is no mercy in their America, nor respect for others’ freedoms. Covenant Marriage will result in deaths just as surely as abortion bans have. Entire minority groups will see their freedoms lost. America will change. Democracy will end.
The model for what it’s like to live in their authoritarian theocracy is their homes first and their convention second—which is why it’s vital to listen to survivors who’ve escaped, care why Kelly Johnson embodies a cult stare and the fundie high-pitched voice, and understand what’s behind the mask of the man who’s now second in line for the presidency.
Scrubbed footprint or not, it’s evident what bed Johnson sleeps in and what his strategy is. Is that difficult to imagine he’d be president someday, perhaps rather soon? Lamar White Jr, a progressive writer said, “His climb to the top is not surprising considering his personal charm, his charisma and intellect, which were disarming,” said White. “That obscured the end goal and what he was really up to.”
As someone who escaped extreme fundamentalism of the 2x2s and spent a lifetime choosing authenticity over belonging (read::ALONE in my journey out) the tentacles of which I’m still at 69 deconstructing (I left at 15) this is terrifying. Thank you Tia for the research.