Giving a talk not likely to be heard in many law schools, a lawyer stood before the podium asking college students to pray with him.
Mike Johnson of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) spoke to the Eagle Collegians Forum Leadership Summit (EFC) about legally upholding Christian morality.
“The phrase Christian lawyer is not an oxymoron,” Johnson told EFC.
As an ADF lawyer, Johnson fights for conservative values in court. He provides a service for conservatives that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has been providing for years for liberals. Johnson moves across the country, standing in for the right, which for many years went unrepresented against the strong ACLU.
“Our parents didn’t really do their jobs,” Johnson said. “While the ACLU was having their way in the courts, the church was content to sit in the pews.”
Johnson’s “report from the front lines of the culture war” focused on four main issues, which he said are the foundation of the ACLU’s agenda. By taking advantage of a sleeping right, the ACLU used activist judges to push their homosexual agenda and their assault on marriage. They gave abortion grounding under what Johnson called an invited right, the right of privacy. Hardcore porn got a footing with free speech. And the silencing of the gospel spread like wildfire throughout schools, courts and everywhere else across the country.
Johnson said these things were made possible by the lack of opposition, but also by judges legislating from the bench. This new type of judge doesn’t follow the language of the Constitution, but instead interprets it and invents things, creating controversy. Johnson questioned where the right to privacy was when the Constitution was written. If it needed to be there, it would have been there, he said.
“The father of the country doesn’t know as much as Justice [Anthony] Kennedy?” Johnson said.
The ACLU relied on the issue of morality and a judge’s interpretation of it. Morality is a point of view. This point of view is being pushed upon the unwanting American people, Johnson told EFC. Pointing to the homosexual agenda and the assault on marriage, Johnson cited statistics showing most Americans are against extending the right of marriage to homosexuals. The same showed true for abortion. Americans are not in favor of the ACLU’s agenda, he said.
“We’re chipping away at Roe [v. Wade (1973)],” he said. “We’re going to get our shot at Roe. Its days are numbered.”
The chipping away Johnson mentioned was true not only for abortion laws, but also for hardcore porn and the silencing of the gospel. In fact, in his region of Louisiana, Johnson said he has received very encouraging decisions. As Senior Legal Counsel there, he spent much of his time fighting the very liberal courts of New Orleans.
Recently, Johnson went into court for a case involving the removal of the Ten Commandments from government property. Upon his arrival, he prayed with the reverend there in support of ADF like normal. But due to the slick ACLU attorney he faced and the staunchly liberal judge, Johnson asked the reverend to try something new. He asked the reverend to pray for a spirit of confusion over the opposing council, something he picked up from a colleague.
When the ACLU attorney stepped up to argue, he was tongue-tied. None of his co-counsel were prepared. So he limped through his argument, alone and stumbling over his words. The judge was astonished. So was Johnson, but the jovial reverend in the back of the courtroom stood and clapped, saying ‘Hallelujah, praise the Lord.’
Johnson won the case, and more importantly, gained a small victory. The case was later appealed and Johnson lost, but he felt it important he was there, fighting the ACLU.
“We’ve got to be everywhere the ACLU is,” Johnson said. “I don’t think their agenda is inevitable anymore.”
Rather than waiting to for the ACLU to find cases and choose the battles, Johnson and the ADF have taken up lawsuits of their own. Being on the defensive is important, but being on the offensive is doubly so, Johnson told EFC.
“We stand at a unique time in history,” he said, with the same crisp smile on his face. “As Christians, it is our job to stand up and hold that banner high.”
Trevor Hayes is an intern with Accuracy in Media, Accuracy in Academia’s parent group.
