Rep. Mike Johnson’s Election is a Threat to Global Democracy

Hardline Republican opposition to Ukraine aid package may reveal affinity toward Putin and global autocracy.

Rep. Mike Johnson’s election as Speaker of the House is a significant milestone in the growing power of Christian nationalists who seek to merge the American identity with a very narrow version of Christianity. He is second in line to the presidency and, depending on the outcome of the 2024 elections, may be joined by a president and world leader who champions Christian nationalism to appease his base. This political development is a threat not only to American democracy but also to the many fragile democracies around the world that are experiencing the impact of a transnational creep of Christian nationalism.

Johnson’s legal career and congressional record provide a glimpse into what this transnational Christian nationalist movement looks like and how the outcome of the 2024 elections will make or break democracies everywhere.

Our new Speaker of the House is perhaps best known as one of the most influential architects of a carefully crafted “third option” for an Electoral College objection. It was worded to make it more palatable for two-thirds of House Republicans to vote to dispute the count, even after a mob of Christian nationalists and ally groups invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Johnson’s stealthy legal skills were honed two decades before running for office while he served as senior legal counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the influential conservative Christian law firm that has been involved with 33 Supreme Court cases, including the Masterpiece Cakeshop case which gave a bakery the right to refuse to sell products to a gay couple, and the case that led Court to strike down federal protections for abortion. But ADF’s and Johnson’s work did not stop there. They were also pushing these ideas globally. 

Exporting Religious Nationalism - Hungary
ADF’s global arm, Alliance Defending Freedom International (ADFI), has been exporting cookie-cutter legal strategies and wedge issue politics to Europe, empowering far-right political parties like Law & Justice (or PiS) in Poland and Victor Orbán’s Fidesz in Hungary, which has been downgraded to an electoral autocracy because it attacked LGBTQ rights, press and academic freedom, and judiciary independence. 

Orbán wraps his attacks on abortion access and LGBTQ rights in the fearmongering Great Replacement theory – which is at the core of White Supremacy – namely, the belief that diverse migrant populations are replacing White populations in decline. This same White Supremacist ideology has motivated extremist attacks around the globe, from the two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2018 to the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue five years ago to the 2022 mass shooting of mostly black shoppers in Buffalo, New York. And in fact, our new Speaker of the House just echoed replacement theory in London, his first international appearance.

When anti-rights Christian leaders export their culture wars abroad, leaders like Orbán then turn around and seek to build political alliances and influence electorates in powerful countries to extend their power and prestige. In 2022, Orbán, who rarely grants audiences with independent Hungarian outlets, made himself fully available to Fox News’s Tucker Carlson before he was fired for his role in pushing false narratives that cost Fox embarrassing financial and court losses.

Carlson broadcast his show from Hungary and filmed a documentary that bills Orbán as a great protector of family values and vanquisher of illegal migration. Carlson’s documentary borrows from Orbán’s anti-semitic playbook, vilifying the Jewish, democracy-building, Hungary-born philanthropist George Soros, who funded Central European University (CEU) and study abroad programs in Budapest. This led to a protracted legal battle between the Orbán’s government and CEU. CEU is a target because it is a beacon of higher education and democratic ideals among the former Soviet states of Eastern Europe.

Religious nationalists create strange alliances for power. Orbán remained a strong ally of Putin even after the Ukraine invasion. Despite Hungary’s own experiences of Russian aggression, Orbán has worked to shift his nationalist base away from its traditional fear of Russia toward the belief that Mr. Putin stands on the same side of the barricades in defending traditional values.

Exporting Religious Nationalism - Russia

As it turns out, American Christian nationalists also share an affinity for Putin’s strongman style of leadership and its symbiotic relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church. Hardliners like Speaker Johnson, following Donald Trump’s “America First” position, have succeeded in galvanizing the House against funding Ukraine. While some of this may be fueled by pure isolationism, the ideological affinity between Christian nationalists in the US and autocratic leaders may also explain why some House Republicans are soft on Russia. In addition, it must be said that Johnson’s campaign received funding from Russian oligarchs in 2018. 

Political scientists and sociologists delving into public opinion surveys are finding that Americans’ opinions toward Russia and Putin and assistance for Ukraine have been shaped by Christian nationalist ideology. The intrusion of this ideology accounts for the emerging incline of Americans toward authoritarian forms of social control, white ethno-nationalism, anti-democratic values, and support for strongman leaders. 

Putin sycophantically uses a particular strand of Russian Orthodox Christian nationalism that vilifies Western democracy and human rights norms, claiming that the West’s secularity and sexual liberalism are a global, neocolonialistic threat to developing nations. Ironically, Putin has sired children with multiple women decades younger than he and his wife of many years. Russian and American Christian nationalist leaders have been working together over the past two decades to export a stylized narrative of this secular-religious divide to Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America, often operating with funding from Russian oligarchs with strong Kremlin ties, like Konstantin Malofeyev and Vladimir Yakunin, who finance Russia-friendly and Christian Orthodox initiatives in former Soviet countries and the West. For example, Malofeyev, dubbed “God’s Oligarch,” has wanted to start a Russian Orthodox version of Fox News for Russia.

These examples illustrate the growing geopolitical power of Christian nationalism and the supporting roles that American leaders play. American-based Christian nationalists and their political allies like Mike Johnson are working with the world’s autocrats to manipulate religion in ways that till the ground for the concentration of authoritarian power from the ground up, using populist movements and government institutions that restrict the voice, dignity, and will of all the people. Factionalizing the public by demonizing vulnerable populations and sanctioning it with an adulterated version of religion is their common playbook. 

Stopping Religious Nationalism at Home
Freedom House has documented a 16-year decline in democracies and a resurgence of autocracies. We are only a generation or two removed from the fact that America and its allies sacrificed millions of lives to beat back authoritarianism for the sake of democracy and freedom everywhere by winning World War II (1945) and the Cold War (1991). We can’t dishonor that legacy and go backward.

Good and well-meaning Americans might well support some of the ideals in either of the platforms of the Republican or Democratic parties. What none of us can afford, however, is for Christian nationalism to deliver us into an autocratic future out of some misguided and desperate grasp for power by one party whose base is threatened by pluralism.

To disrupt the global backsliding of democracies and honor our history, American leaders will need to address the manipulation of religion by autocrats and their enablers, both here and abroad. This includes challenging a growing faction within the Republican Party, which cozies up to religious nationalist autocrats. Religious communities in the US have a moral responsibility to challenge the growth of Christian nationalism in the U.S. and its exportation globally through alliances with other forms of religious nationalism and autocrats.

We must deploy our leadership courageously to advance equality, fairness, and compassion for all. We must resist the divide-and-conquer strategies of autocrats and their religious allies. Without taking extraordinary measures now, the growing scourge of religious nationalism, as was evidenced by the outcome of the recent election for Speaker of the House, will lead the world further down a dark and terrible path. We can’t allow history to repeat itself. We know where this story can end. Democracy cannot die for the controlling needs of a powerful few.

Go Deeper:

The Republican Party’s Strong Man Caucus by Sara Posner

Elected officials who say they were put in place by God are as scary as they sound by Anthea Butler

Mike Johnson’s reading of Scripture misses what it really means to be a Christian nation, by Liz Theoharris