House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and two dozen members of Congress assembled at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., last week for the second-annual National Gathering of Prayer and Repentance . The event was chock-a-block with Christian nationalist pastors and featured a clarion call for spiritual warfare, with members of Congress beseeching fellow Christians to “tie the hands of Satan” and to “bind the demonic forces” that are supposedly possessing America.
The National Gathering for Prayer and Repentance is the brainchild of Johnson, a religious zealot who is third in line for the presidency and who, as Rolling Stone has reported , is convinced that America is “dark and depraved” and deserves God’s wrath. The gathering is staged as a far-right counterweight to the National Prayer Breakfast, a longstanding ecumenical religious event, which was also held in Washington last week. That gathering was attended by President Joe Biden, who offered a bland prayer that America should remember its character of “honesty, decency, dignity, and respect,” and find strength in togetherness.