Lawmakers slam Mike Johnson for honoring 'radical Christian' who 'helped fuel' J6

Although the Religious Right often attack Democrats as anti-religion, the fact is that many prominent Democrats are churchgoing Christians. President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) are known for being devout Catholics; former President Barack Obama has been a Mainline Protestant his entire life, and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) and MSNBC's Rev. Al Sharpton are Protestant ministers.

But Biden, Pelosi and Obama, unlike the Religious Right, don't use religion as a litmus test. The problem that many Democrats, including veteran strategist James Carville, have with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) isn't the fact that he's religious — it's that he embraces a radical strain of evangelical white Christian nationalism they find troubling.

In a letter sent to Johnson on Thursday, February 15, 26 members of the Congressional Freethought Caucus laid out their concerns about Jack Hibbs — the far-right Christian nationalist Johnson chose to lead the House's opening prayer on January 30.

READ MORE:Mike Johnson wants Dems to condemn James Carville for comparing 'Christian nationalism' to al-Qaeda

The group of lawmakers, led by Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California), warned, "Pastor Hibbs is a radical Christian Nationalist who helped fuel the January 6th insurrection and has a long record of spewing hateful vitriol toward non-Christians, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community. By preaching that God had anointed the Trump administration and could still intercede to save Trump's presidency on January 6th, Hibbs advanced a religious permission structure that led to violence by those who believed any means were justified to carry out what they viewed as God's plan."

Other Freethought Caucus members who signed the letter ranged from Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) to Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington State).

Huffman told Religion News Service, "We know that some of these hate preachers were very involved in inciting people to attend on January 6, (2021), and giving them a religious permission structure that contributed to the violence. To now have those people not only have zero accountability for what they said and did… but to be given the prestige of a congressional invocation.… should be alarming to people who care about this threat to our democracy, as well as the continuing attack on church-state separation."

READ MORE: 'Erode the 1st Amendment': Religious scholars expose Mike Johnson’s 'malignant' Christian nationalism