A Q&A With Russell Johnson, The Combative and Charismatic Leader Of Pursuit NW
The Bulwark, an international publication, published my piece about the up-and-coming influencer/pastor this week and in this special addendum I'm sharing some bonus content
This week The Bulwark published a piece I wrote about the controversial and charismatic jet-setting, Rolex wearing politician-turned-pastor Russell Johnson. It’s a milestone for my career and I wanted to make sure I shared the article with my own subscribers.
Here’s a link to that:
But I also wanted to offer my readers a bit of bonus content as well as some insights that occurred to me during during the six months I was working on this in-depth article.
Johnson is one of the headliners at “Freedom Con: Rise of the Statesmen” coming up next week and has visited GCC’s compound to preach before. Although theologically he comes from a Pentecostal background, he has gravitated toward and allied himself with fellow pastors who focus heavily on politics and rightwing political activism.
Guys like Mark Driscoll, Josh Howerton, Eric Metaxas, Ryan Visconti, Doug Wilson and Josh McPherson have formed a vanguard of white protestant pastors seemingly dedicated to Donald Trump and the MAGA movement as much as they are Jesus Christ. Some would argue they’re more dedicated to the former more than they are the latter.
Although most chafe at being labeled “Christian nationalists” they do all believe in the basic profession of faith: The US was founded as a Christian nation, it flourished because white protestant Christian men were in charge and to be “great again” we must return to that as the status quo.
God is over the government and in order to be great that government, just like individuals, must submit to the authority of God. In practice that boils down to secular elected leaders making statements of obeisance to religious authorities – they must “kiss the ring” as the saying goes.
But in order order to muddy the waters and avoid speaking honestly, the men all have different rhetorical strategies to respond when the label is applied to them.
Driscoll and McPherson use the false dichotomy, a logical fallacy that presents only two options as if they are the only possibilities, and shrug off the issue from there.
“When we get accused of Christian nationalism I just kind of chuckle and go, ‘Well what’s the alternative? Atheistic globalism?’” McPherson said on a podcast in April. “I mean, I mean like this is crazy, like, like we need nations to flourish to be founded on a moral worldview.”
It’s a less articulate way of saying exactly what Driscoll said at McPherson’s church in late March.
“The slander is, ‘You guys are Christian nationalists!’” he said. “Well I don’t want to be an atheistic globalist so yes, I am a Christian nationalist.”
But Johnson comes at it from a different angle. During our interview for the piece I asked him what being called a “Christian nationalist” means to him.
