Mike Johnson, the new speaker of the House, knows the culture wars. In Congress, he has gone after gender-affirming health care, abortion, and gun regulation. But for a close ally of Donald Trump and a crowd-pleaser within the GOP, there’s also something a little more old-school about Johnson: He appears to be a true believer in the crusades of the religious right.

The evidence for his religious conviction is plentiful. Johnson, a Southern Baptist, hosts a podcast with his wife that provides “analysis of hot topics and current events from a Christian perspective,” often dismissing the concept of separating church and state. (The point of the establishment clause, he insists, is to protect religion, not to create a firewall.) He often gives sermons of a political nature at churches. He was once tapped to be the dean of an ill-fated Baptist law school aiming to produce religiously motivated conservative lawyers. And he served on the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission board from 2004 to 2012.

Johnson’s whole career has been steeped […]