“Pastor Hibbs is a radical Christian Nationalist who helped fuel the January 6th insurrection and has a long record of spewing 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,” the February 15 letter says.
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In his House floor prayer, Hibbs called the Constitution God’s “great gift to all freedom-loving people.” The letter’s signers said that Hibbs’ prayer invoked “holy fear” and “repentance” for “national sins,” adding, “These were allusions to the militant and fanatical agenda he preaches about the LGBTQ+ community, Jews, Muslims, and anyone who conflicts with his ‘biblical worldview.’”
The letter’s signatories also said that, leading up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol, Hibbs repeated former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election had been “stolen” by an unprecedented nationwide conspiracy of voter fraud. Hibbs said God had “anointed” Trump and that the Christian religion allows for Trump’s followers to commit violence to carry out “God’s plan.”
Hibbs has called the Muslim faith a “death cult,” “demonic,” and a “vehicle” for Satan. He has also said that Jewish people are experiencing a “stupor” and a “Godgiven blindness” and that they should worship Jesus.
“These facts suggest a breathtaking lack of consideration for the religious diversity of our Congress and pluralistic nation. 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,” the letter states.
The letter asks Johnson to describe the steps he’ll take in the future to prevent someone with “a hateful and divisive record” from delivering a House prayer and to “ensure that people of all faiths and values are equitably represented as Guest Chaplains.”
Out LGBTQ+ Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Becca Balint (D-VT), Robert Garcia (D-CA), and Mark Takano (D-CA) signed the letter with 22 other House representatives.
Hibbs is a controversial figure in Christianity because of his extreme antipathy towards LGBTQ+ people. Just last year, he said that “Satan himself” planned the “transgender agenda.” He said that teachers should out LGBTQ+ students to their parents in order to fight the “demonic and dark satanic powers” in public schools that are “sexualizing” and “mentally abusing” children.
“Transgenderism is a violation of the word and will of God,” he said. “It’s a violation of humanity. It’s a violation of science. It’s a violation — if you’re an evolutionist — regarding evolution.”
Hibbs is also a supporter of conversion therapy, the harmful pseudoscientific process by which LGBTQ+ people are converted to be straight and cisgender. In 2018, he spoke at a rally in Sacramento alongside the ex-LGBTQ+ group “Changed” opposing A.B. 2943, a bill that would have labeled conversion therapy a form of “consumer fraud” in the state because practitioners make promises they can’t deliver on.
“The entire gospel is about change. It is about hope,” he said at the rally. “The very gospel message is that Jesus Christ changes lives…. And we are just simply asking that people be left alone and let them make their choice. If they want to receive our input from God’s word or not.”
“When two people of the same sex get together, it’s out of sheer wanton lust and pleasure only for self,” Hibbs preached in 2021. “Nothing comes of it. No life can come from it. No family can come from it…. Homosexuality—L-B-G-T-Q actions—prove the existence of God, because God’s word says this would be some of the outcome and actions of the Last Days.”
In 2013 and 2014, he was a leader in the fight against a bill in California to reduce anti-LGBTQ+ bullying in schools. One of his arguments was that cis boys would pretend to be trans girls to get into the girls’ bathroom, something that just hasn’t happened. He said the law would also make bullying worse, though he didn’t quite explain how.
Hibbs has also said that Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are “people with antichrist worldviews.”
