Former White House Press Secretary and current MSNBC host Jen Psaki slammed new House Speaker Mike Johnson for his evangelical Christianity, saying his political ideology should “scare us.”
Speaking to Fox News, Johnson had said, “I am a Bible-believing Christian. Someone asked me today in the media; they said, ‘It’s curious; people are curious. What does Mike Johnson think about any issue under the sun?’ I said, ‘Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it.’ That’s my worldview.”
In his first speech as House Speaker, Johnson stated:
I believe that scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you. All of us. And I believe that God has allowed and ordained each and every one of us to be here at this specific moment. This is my belief. I believe that each one of us has a huge responsibility today to use the gifts God has given us to serve the extraordinary people of this great nation, and they deserve it.
“You heard that right,” Psaki quavered on MSNBC. “The Bible doesn’t just inform his worldview, it is his worldview. In fact, during his first speech in his new job, Johnson suggested that his election as speaker was an act of God. Talk about a bit of a humblebrag there. So what exactly has God apparently called on Mike Johnson to do? Well, his views on policy are essentially what you’d expect from a religious fundamentalist. They’re more divisive than they are divine.
“But it’s not just his political ideology that should scare us,” Psaki wrote on the MSNBC website. “Johnson is basically a Christian fundamentalist. He believes that America is a Christian nation, and that those values should be reflected in our interpretation of the Constitution.”
“His ideas of what America should be are completely out of line with what America actually is,” she insisted.
Johnson’s Christian faith was forged at the age of 12, in September 1984. He was the oldest child of firefighter James “Pat” Johnson, who went into a warehouse to cap a leak. An explosion left Pat Johnson with burns over 80% of his body and he was given a 10% chance to live. His recovery after six operations and numerous infections inspired his son, who recalled in 2015, “I saw an actual miracle of my father surviving when they said that he shouldn’t. It made me a person of very deep faith.”
“His personal commitment to Jesus Christ is at the core of who he is and the foundation of the work he does,” Gene Mills, the president of Louisiana Family Forum, the state’s top faith-based conservative group, stated of Johnson.