WASHINGTON—It may have been the two decades navigating the challenges of leadership in Christian ministry that best prepared Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) for his latest role in elected office.
For 15 years in that earlier period of his life, the soft-spoken Oklahoman directed the largest youth camp in the United States. More than 51,000 young people filtered through Falls Creek each summer.
Now, after 10 years as a U.S. senator, he’s helping to direct activities again—this time guiding colleagues as vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference. The group informs the media and the public about the efforts and mission of the party’s senators.
Lankford was elected to the role by peers in November. Since then, he has been tasked with doing whatever Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) needs him to do.
It’s a “wild-card” role, said Lankford, 56, and one that mainly involves working to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda.
And though he’d prefer not to have such a public job, he frequently appears as a voice for Senate Republicans in interviews for newspapers and television.
He doesn’t care for the idea of people knowing much about him, and he’d prefer to be more anonymous in his work.
Constituents, too, should “know their government is doing its job and trying to stay out of their life,” he said.
Goals in Congress
As part of the 119th Congress, Lankford is focused on securing the border, reforming the tax code, developing the domestic energy industry, and protecting the unborn.
The Senate will have to work well as an institution to pass Trump’s wish list, Lankford said.
“We have to be able to move a set of ideas and literally relearn how to be able to pass bills,” he told The Epoch Times. “The Senate has not done a lot of legislation work of late, and so there’s a lot of pent up energy to be able to do that.”
He embraces the challenge of urging his fellow Republican senators to work well together.
“For me, it’s helping bills get to the floor, guiding the process, being more efficient in how we’re handling the [Senate] floor.”
Thune controls the actions there. But Lankford aims to help move votes through faster, taking up to 30 minutes, rather than dragging them out for an hour or more. That will allow for more agenda items to move through.
Since the start of this Congress, senators have spent more time in Washington, with frequent confirmation hearings for Trump’s executive branch nominees. The Senate is scheduled to be in session for most of 2025 with fewer breaks.
Under Thune’s leadership, senators often work longer hours, too. They voted to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just before 10 p.m. on Jan. 24, a Friday, when traditionally, they would have been long gone from Capitol Hill.
From Minister to Congress Member
Lankford was born in Dallas and grew up in his mother’s home after his parents divorced when he was four.
“I watched her struggle,” he said. “I watched her make incredible sacrifices [and] that affects you as you grow up.”
In his 20s, Lankford moved to Oklahoma, where he worked for more than 20 years in ministry, including 15 years as the director of student ministry for the Baptist Convention of Oklahoma, and director of the Falls Creek Youth Camp.
But then, he said, he “felt a call” to run for office. He resigned from his position in Christian leadership and lived off his “life savings” to campaign in 2010.
Voters liked what he was offering. He represented Oklahoma’s 5th Congressional District between 2011 and 2015 and served as chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee. That group sets the agenda for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Once on Capitol Hill, he said he found the roles of Southern Baptist minister and congressman really aren’t much different. Both are about serving people and solving issues.
“I think conservative ideas really do help people in every community, in every neighborhood,” he said. “It’s not about ‘Well, these are good rural values.’
“They’re just good values. Period.”
His best moments in office, he said, have involved helping people, especially veterans, correct their records, obtain health care, or successfully navigate behemoth bureaucracy.
A Policy Guy Since Childhood
Lankford started thinking about government policies early in life.
“I was the nerdy kid growing up that was in speech and debate, starting in the fourth grade,” he said.
To prepare for debates, “you had to research both sides so that you can understand both.
“So I’ve always been interested in policy.”
But politics? Not so much.
“Didn’t even run for student council,” he said. “Wasn’t involved in any of that. But I was always interested, always a voter, and always engaged.”
He wanted to know about “ideas that actually help people,” he said.
And he was always a Republican.
Lessons Learned
Lankford learned important lessons about advancing agendas last year when a bipartisan border bill he helped negotiate failed.
There were “100 things that went right and 100 things that went wrong,” he said.
One problem, he said, was that too few lawmakers—Republicans and Democrats—haggled over the details.
The bill, which President Joe Biden supported, would have required the Department of Homeland Security to close the southern border if Border Patrol apprehended more than 5,000 illegal immigrants a day on average for seven consecutive days. The bill would have also curbed the president’s ability to use parole authority to allow those who cross the United States illegally to stay in the country.
The bill also would have sped up the adjudication of asylum claims to six months, Lankford said. The asylum system is currently so backlogged, requests often take years to process.
Trump expressed opposition to the bill, which helped sink it in the Senate in February 2024. House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), had already come out against it, saying it didn’t go far enough to secure the border.
Lankford said inaccuracies that were spread widely about the bill also led to its failure. It illuminated for him the power of social media.
So-called influencers can “make anything up they want to be able to make up, push it out and everybody thinks it’s true,” he said.
“Social media just exploded with information that was false about the bill. And once false information went out there, the lie gets around the world six times before the truth gets its boots on,” he said.
“We didn’t have enough people that were involved in our team to be able to dispute what it was that was false. And so the false narrative ‘became’ reality.”
Some on social media said the bill would have granted amnesty to illegal immigrants, which Lankford said wasn’t true.
The bill would have granted “conditional permanent resident status” to certain illegal immigrants who had been paroled into the United States or had temporary protected status.
Some said it would have weakened border security and handed out work permits to those who cross the border unlawfully. Also not true, he said.
“By far, the wildest social media rumor was that the bill allowed 5,000 people to come across the border” every day, he said. He said the legislation actually would have made it tougher to gain asylum in the United States.
The bill states the Homeland Security “shall activate the border emergency authority if during a period of 7 consecutive calendar days, there is an average of 5,000 or more aliens who are encountered each day; or on any 1 calendar day, a combined total of 8,500 or more aliens are encountered.”
Faith Not a Hobby
Lankford is a devout Southern Baptist whose faith impacts every aspect of his life, not just his job.
“If your faith only affects what you do—like for me, what I do on a Sunday morning [in church]—if that’s the only time my faith affects me, that’s really not a faith,” he said. “That’s a hobby.
“A hobby is something you do on weekends. A faith is something that permeates every part of what you do.”
Lankford believes that “every person is created in the image of God, and they have value and worth inherently because they have the fingerprints of God on them—the same as I do—so I should treat that person with respect.”
When it comes to politics, he said, that belief means working with people to solve problems … even if they disagree with you.
But the pace of reaching solutions in government can be frustrating for him.
“When I get up and mow or work in the yard, I can turn around and see something got done,” he said. “In this job, it takes forever to see something get done.”
Outside of work, Lankford reads, watches old movies—recently “The Fugitive” and “The Princess Bride”—and spends time with his wife, Cindy. They have two daughters and, until a few months ago, doted on a golden retriever named Liberty Belle, who lived to 14.
In his office, Lankford displays a blown-glass sculpture in the shape of a flame, created from broken glass by a Christian artist in Oklahoma City. The piece reminds him of the rising tensions in Washington, and how broken things can become strong and useful and lovely again.
“That’s a picture of faith, as well, to say what other people would say is shattered and broken, God takes and remakes into something beautiful.”
The artwork reminds him to gently push for reconciliation when tempers flare and political negotiations falter.
It’s “my reminder that when someone’s in my office and says, ‘We’re too angry, we’re too broken, and we’re too divided,’ I‘ll [point to that art and] go ’That used to be shattered. That used to be pieces. And it’s been remade. So it’s brand new.’”
And he’s found that with renewed relationships, despite differing political views, comes the potential for progress.