House Speaker Mike Johnson Urged Politicians to Undergo a 'Religious Test' Before Running for Office: Report
Oct. 31 2023, Published 1:55 p.m. ET
House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly urged aspiring politicians to undergo a “religious test” before running for office, RadarOnline.com has learned.
In a shocking development to come after Johnson was named House Speaker last week following Kevin McCarthy’s removal from the role on October 3, a seminar the GOP House Rep. gave in 2016 surfaced online.
The 2016 seminar reportedly showcased Johnson’s Christian fundamentalist worldview, according to journalist David Corn.
The seminar also reportedly emphasized Johnson’s belief that all elected officials in the United States should share the same Christian fundamentalist worldview as him.
“You better sit down any candidate who says they’re going to run for legislature and say: ‘I want to know what your worldview is. I want to know what you think about the Christian heritage of this country. I want to know what you think about God’s design for society. Have you even thought about that?’” he said during one portion of the 2016 seminar.
“If they hadn’t thought about it, you need to move on and find somebody who has,” Johnson continued at the time. “We have too many people in government who don’t know any of this stuff. They haven’t even thought about it.”
Also concerning is the fact that Johnson and his wife, Kelly, used the seminar to argue that their Christian fundamentalist worldview is the “only legitimate worldview” and that the United States is a “Christian nation.”
Meanwhile, Johnson also appeared to admit that his religious beliefs directly affected his positions on public policies such as climate change and abortion.
According to Corn, the new House Speaker argued that the need to address climate change “defies the created order of how this is all supposed to work.”
He also reportedly compared climate change advocates and environmentalists to “the devil.”
“When you take God out of the equation, and you remove absolute truths, you got to make all this stuff up,” the GOP congressman from Louisiana said. “So what they’ve done is, as the devil always does, they take the truth and they turn it upside down.”
“So the radical environmentalists,” he continued, “they actually believe that the environment is God.”
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As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Johnson was brought into the spotlight last week after he successfully secured the House Speakership after the position was left vacant for nearly one month.
Although not much was known about Johnson when he picked up the House Speaker’s gavel on October 25, information about the Louisiana House Rep. started to emerge after he was placed in the position that is second in line to the presidency.
MAGA House Reps. Such as Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert celebrated Johnson’s sudden ascension to the House Speakership, but other congressmembers noted how Johnson was directly involved in former President Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
According to multiple media outlets, Johnson led an “amicus brief” that supported a Texas lawsuit that would invalidate the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.