Roughly two dozen House Democrats, led by an avowed atheist, attacked a conservative evangelical preacher last week as a “radical Christian nationalist” after he offered a prayer to call the nation to repent for its sins.
Those sins, according to the pastor’s critics, include support for the radical LGBTQ agenda.
According to The Washington Times on Friday, California Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, a self-proclaimed atheist, and 25 other House Democrats sent a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson complaining about Pastor Jack Hibbs delivering the House invocation on Jan. 30.
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Hibbs, who leads Calvary Chapel in Chino Hills, prayed about “a coming day of judgment” in the invocation. What apparently set Democrats off about the prayer, as opposed to his other political stances, was Hibbs’ saying, “Hear my cry in this hour of great need that we might be humbly blessed before You in repentance of our national sins.”
In their letter, the Democrats smear Hibbs as a “radical Christian Nationalist” who exhibits “a long record of hateful vitriol toward non-Christians, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ community.”
“He should never have been granted the right to deliver the House’s opening prayer on January 30, 2024,” they wrote.
Besides his references to aspects of LGBTQ activism as backing a “sexually perverted cult,” Hibbs was blasted by Democrats for questioning the 2020 election results and “providing religious support and cover” for the Jan. 6., 2021, U.S. Capitol rioters.
Huffman and his allies also ripped Rev. Hibbs for criticizing same-sex marriage, laws that block schools from telling parents about their children’s transgender impulses, and Islamic terrorists.
Moreover, the Democrats warned, Hibbs furthers “the false and exclusionary Christian nationalist narrative that the United States was established as a ‘Christian nation,’” and he worked to make prayer part of local school board meetings.
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The Democrats were also upset that House Speaker Mike Johnson green-lit Hibbs even though Hibbs is not one of Johnson’s constituents.
“These facts suggest a breathtaking lack of consideration for the religious diversity of our Congress and pluralistic nation,” the letter stated.
“It appears that Speaker Johnson – with the tacit approval of the House Chaplain – decided to flout the Chaplaincy guidelines and use the platform of the Guest Chaplain to lend the imprimatur of Congress to an ill-qualified hate preacher who shares the Speaker’s Christian nationalist agenda and his overriding antipathy toward church-state separation.”
However, the residency argument is undermined by Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, who welcomed a pastor from the Armenian Apostolic Church in Beirut, Lebanon, to offer the invocation last November.
The Democrats were also upset that the House chaplain had not approved a left-wing pastor representing the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation from offering the invocation.
Hibbs, in response, told the Times that he demands Huffman “produce any connection I have with January 6 because I do take that as a slanderous statement when, in reality, I had nothing to do with it.”
Hibbs added that 15,000 people attend his church weekly, including non-Christians, who show up “to hear the truth about the Bible for real.” He said that he “never delivered it in a way that is spiteful, or angry or hateful.”
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