OPINION:
Jen Psaki, on “Inside with Jen Psaki” on MSNBC, tore apart new House Speaker Mike Johnson as a radical, religiously fanatical nut job bent on bowing Americans to a brutal Bible-thumping reign. All the guy did, mind you, was pray and express his Christian faith.
That’s all that’s needed to get the far left in a tizzy.
Here’s the context: Johnson answered a question about his worldview by saying, “Well, go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it — that’s my worldview. That’s what I believe and so I make no apologies for it. That’s my personal worldview.”
And all the Psakis of the world collectively snarled and sneered.
Johnson is a “deeply religious conservative Republican,” Psaki said. He’s a “religious fundamentalist” and pushes an “extreme Christian conservatism,” Psaki said.
“The Bible doesn’t just inform his worldview,” Psaki said. “It is his worldview.”
She wasn’t just reporting. She was mocking, scorning, deriding. As if. As if the idea of a political leader with open, unabashed and unwavering Christian faith and biblical belief was an announcement of the end of the world.
Thing is, Johnson’s worldview is pretty close to how Founding Fathers governed, as well.
It’s also pretty close to how Americans used to view the world.
The Bible was America’s first textbook in public schools. More than that, it was the first and only book in many of America’s early settling homes — the text used to teach reading, to teach virtues, to teach standards of behavior.
“The New England Primer was the first textbook ever printed in America and was used to teach reading and Bible lessons in our schools until the twentieth century,” FireLightChurch.org wrote. “In fact, many of the Founding Fathers and their children learned to read from The New England Primer.”
And from the C.S. Lewis Institute — this: “The founding fathers read the Bible. Their many quotations from and allusions to both familiar and obscure scriptural passages tell us that they knew the Bible well; they knew the Bible from cover to cover. Biblical language and themes liberally seasoned their rhetoric; the phrases and the cadences of the King James Bible, especially, informed their written and spoken words. The ideas of the Bible shaped their habits of mind and informed their political pursuits.”
The Bible, one might say, was their worldview.
Johnson also believes — as do most Christians — that God ordains the world, ordains leaders, ordains the lives of His Believers, and that what happens in life, including what positions the faithful hold in life, are not happenstance, random acts or coincidences.
“I believe that Scripture, the Bible, is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority,” Johnson said. “I believe that each one of us has a huge responsibility today to use the gifts that God has given us to serve the extraordinary people of their great country, and they deserve it. And to ensure that our republic remains standing as the great beacon of light and hope and freedom in a world that desperately needs it.”
Psaki mocked his views.
Psaki’s core audience and like-minded believers, no doubt, yukked right along, seeing such a worldview — God first, followed by family and country and Constitution — as a real impediment to seizing individual liberties, seizing God-given freedoms and rights, seizing all that’s great about America and instilling in place a total top-down elitist control on the people, a collectivism more akin to communism.
But it’s Johnson’s view — his worldview — that will save America.
A country founded on an ideal of individualism, with liberties coming from God and government serving only as protection of these liberties for the people, cannot last for long if the political leaders don’t recognize God as the real leader. And that’s what Democrats and Psaki sycophants can’t endure or forgive: Johnson is a Christian nationalist, and 100 percent unapologetic about it.
They mock him because they fear him, and they fear him because his kind will keep America from moving toward Marxism.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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