How Mike Johnson’s Christian fundamentalism informs his views on climate change

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson represents the 4th?District of Louisiana, the cultural center of the?Ark-La-Tex?region, where the American States of?Arkansas, Louisiana, and?Texas?meet.?Its center is Shreveport, Louisiana’s third largest metropolis.

Shreveport was formerly a major player in United States oil business and once hosted Standard Oil of Louisiana.?In the 1980s, the Louisiana oil and gas industry suffered a large economic downturn, delivering a blow from which Shreveport has never recovered. Johnson attended?Captain Shreve High School?in Shreveport in the second half of the 1980s.

Johnson is a member of the Southern Baptist Convention,?the world's largest?Baptist?denomination, and the?largest?Protestant?and?second-largest?Christian denomination in the United States.

America’s roughly 52 million Baptists hold a wide range of views on climate change. About 7% of Americans are Southern Baptists, the largest group within the denominational family. For Southern Baptists, scripture is the key to their attitudes toward climate change.????

In 2007, the Southern Baptist Convention drew upon a biblical passage in?a resolution on global warming?declaring that Christians should exercise dominion over the Earth, and that the U.S. government should reject mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.[1]

Johnson, a Christian evangelical, famously has said “The separation of church and state is a misnomer.” Religion is meant to inform government policy.

“Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it – that’s my worldview,” Johnson told Fox News.[2]

In 2017, Johnson said: “The climate is changing, but the question is, is it being caused by natural cycles over the span of the Earth’s history? Or is it changing because we drive S.U.V.s? I don’t believe in the latter. I don’t think that’s the primary driver.”[3]

Since 2018, Johnson has received about $240,000 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, according to Open Secrets, a campaign finance watchdog. The American Energy Alliance, which represents fossil fuel interests, gave Johnson a score of 100% in 2022.[3]

Consensus over climate within Baptist communities remains unsettled.

In August 2020, the Evangelical Climate Initiative issued “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action.” In their Call, the evangelicals declared that “Human-Induced Climate Change is Real” and “Christian Moral Convictions Demand Our Response to the Climate Change Problem”.[4]

Jackson Voss, a Louisiana native and current policy coordinator at the Alliance for Affordable Energy, views Johnson’s positions on climate change as influenced less by politics than by a deep conviction in Christian fundamentalism. On this view, Johnson’s climate skepticism is borne out of evangelical “dispensationalist belief”—the idea that the end times herald the second coming of Christ.[5]?

Dispensationalists interpret the Bible literally and believe the “rapture” is imminent. We are in the final period of Earth’s history.

On the Dispensationalists reading, then, there is no need for action to mitigate climate change. The end is nigh.?

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[1] Sara Peach (March 13, 2012). Baptists and Climate Change. Yale Climate Connections. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2012/03/baptists-and-climate-change/; NPR (February 6, 2006), https://www.npr.org/2006/02/08/5194527/evangelical-leaders-urge-action-on-climate-change.

[2] Ed Pilkington (November 15, 2023). Speaker Mike Johnson calls separation of church and state ‘a misnomer’. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/15/mike-johnson-separation-church-state-misnomer

[3] Lisa Friedman (October 26, 2023). New House Speaker Champions Fossil Fuels and Dismisses Climate Concerns. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/climate/mike-johnson-climate-policies.html; Henrieta Wildsmith (May 31, 2017). U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson and Climate Change. https://eu.shreveporttimes.com/videos/news/2017/05/31/u.s.-rep.-mike-johnson-and-climate-change/102355868/

[4] Evangelical Climate Initiative (August 2020). Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action. Influence Watch. https://www.influencewatch.org/app/uploads/2020/08/climate-change-an-evangelical-call-to-action.-08.20.pdf. An earlier “Climate Change: An Evangelical Call to Action” was delivered to President George W. Bush in 2006 by 86 Evangelicals.

[5] Delaney Nolan (October 31, 2023). New House speaker Mike Johnson holds extreme views on climate change, science. Louisiana Illuminator. https://lailluminator.com/2023/10/31/mike-johnson-extreme/

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