An open letter to Speaker Mike Johnson

Because the Jesus I read about in the Gospels said, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other” (Matthew 6:24). Yet you seem to serve the master of political power with remarkable devotion while claiming allegiance to Christ. You cannot do both. You cannot pledge yourself to an administration that traffics in cruelty and call it Christian witness. You cannot advance policies that harm the vulnerable and claim to follow the Prince of Peace.

The Jesus of Scripture had much to say about the poor, the marginalized, the forgotten. “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). He didn’t qualify this. He didn’t say, “Care for the least of these unless it’s politically inconvenient” or “Love your neighbor unless they’re undocumented” or “Welcome the stranger unless it costs you votes.”

Yet under your leadership, we have witnessed policies that treat human beings as dispensable — as problems to be managed rather than people made in the image of God. We have seen budget proposals that gut assistance to families struggling to feed their children. We have watched as health care becomes less accessible to those who most desperately need it. We have seen the stranger not welcomed but turned away, sometimes into danger.

Where is your prophetic voice for these, the least of these? Or have you confused proximity to power with faithfulness to God?

I think often of Matthew 25, the passage about the sheep and the goats. Jesus doesn’t ask about doctrinal correctness or religious rhetoric. He asks: Did you feed the hungry? Give drink to the thirsty? Welcome the stranger? Clothe the naked? Care for the sick? Visit the imprisoned?

This is the measure. This is what separates the sheep from the goats — not how loudly we proclaim our faith, but how faithfully we live it out in our treatment of the vulnerable.

So I must ask you: If there is indeed a day of reckoning, as you surely believe there is, will you be counted among the sheep or the goats? When you stand before the God you claim to serve, will you be able to say that you used your position of extraordinary power to protect the vulnerable, to lift up the poor, to welcome the stranger? Or will you have to explain why political calculation mattered more than the explicit commands of Jesus?

The evangelical faith we both know teaches that God will not be mocked. You cannot claim the name of Christ while betraying his teachings. You cannot wrap yourself in the language of faith while enacting policies that are the antithesis of the Gospel.

It’s not too late to choose differently. It’s not too late to let your faith actually inform your politics instead of the other way around. It’s not too late to be a voice for the voiceless rather than a servant of power.

Make no mistake: history will judge. More importantly, as you believe, God will judge. I hope and pray you live what you say you believe, turn to God and away from serving a master of chaos, revenge, lust for power and an unquenchable desire for money.

The Rev. Dr. G. Penny Nixon is the co-director of the Peninsula Solidarity Cohort and affiliated with the Plymouth Jazz and Justice Church in Oakland.