Jewish family fled hometown after Mike Johnson warned of ‘enemy’ to the gospel: report

A Jewish family that challenged Christian prayer in their local school fled their home town after then-evangelical attorney Mike Johnson warned of an “enemy” that was “silencing the gospel,” according to a new report.

Johnson’s words, spoken when he was a senior attorney with the evangelical legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, appeared in a local Louisiana newspaper published in 2004 and uncovered Friday by the Huffington Post.

“The ultimate goal of the enemy is silencing the gospel,” the Shreveport Times report quotes Johnson as saying. “This is spiritual warfare.”

Johnson was speaking at the Airline Drive Church of Christ about a lawsuit brought by two Shreveport Elementary School parents challenging prayer sessions, Christian sing-alongs and a recess teacher-led prayer group called Stallions for Christ, according to the report.

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One week earlier, Johnson had published an opinion piece in the same newspaper challenging the legitimacy of the separation of church and state, according to documents published by the Huffington Post.

“In the suit, the American Civil Liberties Union includes several meritless claims that First Amendment rights of two Stockwell Place Elementary School students have been violated because the school failed to maintain the so-called ‘separation of church and state,’” Johnson wrote.

“The lawsuit…offers the latest example of the radical left’s desperate efforts to silence all public expression of religious faith.”

The Huffington Post notes the House speaker’s spokesperson denied the former attorney was referring to Jewish people as the enemy.

“You are mischaracterizing his remark,” Taylor Haulsee told the Huffington Post. “Johnson was referring to any coordinated attempt to impede religious expression that is protected under the Constitution, not any single family.”

Yet the lawsuit ended with a partial-dismissal and settlement after the family fled the state to “escape the harassment and threats” their children faced at school, according to court records uncovered by the Huffington Post.

The American Civil Liberties Union, not an official party in the case, said at the time that the family likely could have won the lawsuit, the Huffington Post notes.

“Had the plaintiffs remained in the state,” then-executive director Joe Cook told the Shreveport Times, “they would have been found meritorious.”

Read the full report here.