New Speaker's Faith-Based Views in the Spotlight

Mike Johnson is moving from under-the-radar lawmaker into a broader spotlight as House speaker, and the transition will likely please conservatives to learn just how conservative he is, and trouble Democrats for the same reason. "Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it—that's my worldview," he told Sean Hannity on Fox News on Thursday night in his first major interview as speaker.

• Guns: Johnson told Hannity it's not appropriate in the midst of the Maine crisis to talk about tougher gun laws, but he sounded skeptical in general. "The problem is the human heart," he said, per the Messenger. "It's not guns. At the end of the day, we have to protect the right of the citizens to protect themselves and that's the Second Amendment." Johnson as speaker would play a big role in any such legislation, notes Axios. In Europe, he said, people have less access to guns and instead use cars to "mow down" victims, though Axios fact-checks him on that and finds that mass shootings in the US are far more frequent than European car attacks.

• Abortion: At New York Magazine, Irin Carmon recounts interviewing Johnson in 2015, when he was a newly elected state lawmaker in Louisiana, as well as an attorney defending the state's push to shut down abortion clinics. In the interview, he drew a link between abortions and school shootings: "Many women use abortion as a form of birth control, you know, in certain segments of society, and it's just shocking and sad, but this is where we are," he said. "When you break up the nuclear family, when you tell a generation of people that life has no value, no meaning, that it's expendable, then you do wind up with school shooters."
• Shootings, II: Rolling Stone notes that in 2016, Johnson also drew a link between mass shootings and the shift away from creationism to the teaching of evolution in schools. "People say, 'How can a young person go into their schoolhouse and open fire on their classmates?'" Johnson said in a speech. "Because we've taught a whole generation—a couple generations now—of Americans, that there's no right or wrong, that it's about survival of the fittest, and [that] you evolve from the primordial slime. Why is that life of any sacred value? Because there's nobody sacred to whom it's owed. None of this should surprise us."
• Gay marriage: Johnson has described homosexuality as "dangerous" and "unnatural" in his opposition to gay marriage. In the Hannity interview, he said he was a "rule of law" guy who accepted that same-sex marriage is the law of the land, adding that he loved all people no matter their "lifestyle choices." NBC News reports on how he once sought to criminalize sexual activity between homosexuals as an attorney for a group now known as the Alliance Defending Freedom.
• A defense: In the Federalist, Jordan Boyd praises Johnson as an "outspoken biblical Christian" and accuses his critics on the left of hypocrisy. President Biden frequently cites Bible passages and California Gov. Gavin Newsom has done so to support his "radical abortion activism," writes Boyd. "When Democrats manipulate scripture to secure political wins, their allies in the leftist media do not care," writes Boyd. "When Christian conservatives like Johnson cite their faith, however, they are immediate candidates for the left's 'Christian nationalist' lies and fearmongering."

(More Mike Johnson stories.)