By Mark H. Hunter, Special to the Message
SHREVEPORT – As a 12-year-old boy growing up in Shreveport, James Michael “Mike” Johnson wanted to be a firefighter just like his dad. That is, he did until his father was nearly killed in an explosion.
[img_assist|nid=7252|title=Michael Johnson|desc=Louisiana School Law School Dean Michael Johnson wanted to be a firefighter before his father, who was a firefighter, was involved in a near-fatal explosion. The near-tragedy altered the course of Michael Johnson’s life.|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=67]“That altered the course of our lives,” Johnson said in a recent interview. Instead of becoming a firefighter, he became an attorney specializing in defending individuals and groups in religious and free speech cases.
As dean of Louisiana College’s Judge Paul Pressler School of Law, Johnson, 39, will help a new generation of students practice law from a biblical, conservative, Constitutional world view.
The Baptist school earlier this year purchased the former Federal building in downtown Shreveport and classes are scheduled to begin August 2012.
“We really believe that it is important to acknowledge our Judeo-Christian heritage and the moral foundations of our legal system,” Johnson said. “The law school will be founded upon the premise that there is an integral relationship between faith and reason.”
Johnson’s father, Patrick Johnson, and fellow firefighter Percy R. Johnson, no relation, responded to an ammonia leak at the Dixie Cold Storage plant in Shreveport on Sept. 17, 1984.
When a spark ignited the fumes the building exploded and both men were severely burned. Percy Johnson died three days later. Michael Johnson’s father eventually recovered from third degree burns on 80 percent of his body but he is still disabled.
“My dad is a great inspiration to me,” Johnson said.
While his mother cared for his father, Johnson cared for his two younger brothers and sister. “I think I grew up faster than I might have otherwise; I took leadership responsibility seriously.”
Johnson played football and was student body president at Captain Shreve High School, graduating in 1990. As a student at LSU, he served on student government and debate teams, graduating in 1995 with a degree in Business Administration.
He liked the law and government and earned a Juris Doctorate from the Paul M. Hebert Law Center in 1998. He was also elected his class president and president of the Christian Legal Society.
“I don’t really have a recollection of not knowing or believing in Christ,” Johnson said. “I think I probably made the decision when I was six or seven. I was baptized in a horse trough out behind our little country church at the age of seven. It was a hot summer afternoon.”
Talking about his faith takes him back to his father’s accident.
“When my Dad got burned he had a 10 percent chance to survive,” Johnson said. “Even his exit from the building was miraculous. He crawled out of a hole in a wall that investigators later determined was impossible to get through.”
“I saw with my own eyes the miraculous healing power of God,” Johnson said. “My Christian faith has not been a theoretical kind of thing. It’s always been a very real, tangible thing to me. I believe that we serve a big God and He can do awesome things.”
Johnson worked for several Baton Rouge and Shreveport law firms before joining the Alliance Defense Fund, the nation’s largest legal alliance of more than 1,700 attorneys and 300 organizations dedicated to defending religious liberties.
For six years of the eight years at ADF he spent much of his time defending the Tangipahoa school board from the ACLU over prayer in board meetings and other similar issues.
That dispute is just one example of why, Johnson said, it’s important to have a faith-based law school in Louisiana.
“Groups like the ACLU have gone to great lengths to de-emphasize the origins of our law, but the Founders felt that was very important,” Johnson said. “Washington said famously in his farewell address in 1796, ‘Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.’”
What the Founders meant, Johnson said, “is that you cannot have a surviving and thriving constitutional republic if you don’t have some basic sense of the moral foundation upon which it rests. That was the object and source of liberty in their view and we agree. This moral foundation is an important part of the fabric and culture of who we are as Americans and we do well to remember that.”
“They (the ACLU and other secularists) don’t like to review our accurate history and dismiss it as old fashioned, but you can’t deny what the founders wrote and what they believed. It’s in the very language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,” Johnson said. “They are trying to move us to a secular progressive kind of society and I think the vast majority of Americans are opposed to that and, I think, that’s the battle. It’s a cultural battle.”
Tony Perkins, president of the Washington D.C. based Family Research Council, serves on the law school’s Board of Reference and has known Johnson for many years. Perkins, who lives in Baton Rouge and attends Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, also disagrees with the ACLU and said America does need another Christian law school because “we already have a multitude of liberal law schools.”
“The law is the law but the worldview that goes behind the law is what’s important,” Perkins said. “We need to have people who not only know the law but also know the history of the country and have a compassion for people and a compassion for justice.”
“Mike is the right dean to help formulate a winning foundation and strategy for the law school going forward,” Perkins said. “He is a brilliant guy and completely committed to the cause.”
Johnson also serves as a trustee of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, serves on Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Commission on Marriage and Family and the board of Hearts of Hope (an unwed mother’s home) as well as several other ministries and charitable organizations.
He is married to Kelly, who he met two weeks before graduation from LSU law school and married her 364 days later in one of Louisiana’s first Covenant Marriages. They have four children, Hannah, 9, Abigail, 8, Jack, 5, and Will, three months.