‘Seven Mountains’ Plan For Right Wing Christians To Take Over Government
In his brief, miserable term in office, some saw trump as nothing less than the great, ancient Persian King Cyrus, who defeated the Babylonians, set Israel free and was blessed by god. Elevating trump to biblical heights fits nicely with something called “Seven Mountains Dominionism,” a belief gaining momentum that Christians should dominate the seven key “mountains” or “molders” of American society, including the government.
The Seven Mountain Mandate is becoming mainstream among white Christian evangelicals who tend to embrace conspiracy theories and trumpism. Seven Mountains adherents believe that trump is the vessel for their movement to succeed.
In 2017, former Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu labeled trump a modern-day Cyrus because trump had recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that was rejected by most world leaders, while it provoked rioting by Palestinians who were angry that the Dome of the Rock, the Muslim world’s most holy shrine, had been usurped by Israel.
“Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages,” said Netanyahu.
One Jewish group, the Mikdash Educational Center, picked up on the notion of trump as Cyrus when the center started selling a coin with trump’s silhouette superimposed over one of Cyrus
Crazy, far right wing lunacy, you say. Look again.
Christian nationalism is taught in Florida schools, lawmakers call to tear down the wall between church and state and a bizarre, and formerly fringe right wing religious group like those behind “Seven Mountains Dominionism,” are moving to mainstream Republicanism.
And meanwhile, the “Nones” are growing and they demand that religion be kept out government and social policy, out of public schools, and out of bedrooms, personal lives and health care decisions, like same sex marriage and LGBTQ+ issues.
An historic confrontation continues to smolder, yet another symptom of the schizophrenia that is this nation of red and blue.
The “Nones” refer to people who claim no religion and they are the largest religious demographic in the U.S., according to a General Social Survey (GSS), a sociological survey created and regularly collected since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and funded by the National Science Foundation. The GSS collects information and keeps a historical record of the concerns, experiences, attitudes, and practices of residents of the United States.
The report showed that 23.1 percent of respondents said they have no religion, roughly the same as the 22.8 percent who said they are evangelicals.
The non-profit Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) reported that while the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade and dozens of clinics are closing, more than 75 million, non-religious adult Americans want religion out of government. FFRF said that 98.8 percent of its membership supports Roe, similar to a YouGov analysis that showed that atheists are the most likely to identify as pro-choice.
FFRF, a national state/church watchdog with 36,000 members, is taking the religious right wing head-on with a national advertising campaign. Billboards and newspaper ads ran over the July 4th weekend, proclaiming “We’re Atheists & We Vote.”
“We’re putting public candidates and officials on notice that secular voters are here, that WE are the true ‘values voters’ and that it’s time that our secular viewpoint be respected and represented,” said a statement from FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
FFRF is teaming up with other like-minded organizations like Black Nonbelievers, a non-profit, Atlanta-based organization that provide information and support to African Americans who “are living free of religion and might otherwise be shunned by family and friends.”
Another member of the campaign is Hispanic American Freethinkers, a group that formed in 2010 to attract and educate Hispanic Americans about “critical thinking skills, skepticism, and the questioning of supernatural claims.”
Others supporting the FFRF campaign are non-religious students and “just ordinary, everyday atheists, agnostics and humanists who believe in the all-American ideal of true religious freedom.”
The full-page print ads ran mostly in large cities like Portland, Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. Brent Michael Davids, a Mohican composer who identifies as an atheist, is featured in FFRF’s New York Times ad, saying he “trusts in reason, science and America’s secular Constitution.”
“Use my tax dollars only for evidence-based, not faith-based, purposes,” Davids said.
Dan Baker, FFRF co-president, is a member of the Lenni Lenape/Delwared Tribe and compared the nation’s destruction of native Americans with the current trend toward Christian fundamentalism in government.
“Christian invaders usurped the continent under Manifest Destiny and today we are facing grave inroads by Christian nationalists wanting once again to install a theocracy,” Baker said.
And that light at the end of the tunnel is the oncoming train of Christian nationalism and its goal is nothing less creating a Christian theocracy.
One of the most ominous signs of the drastic shift in Christian nationalism is the growing support of the so-called Seven Mountains Dominionism or the Seven Mountain Mandate, with the central tenet that members must build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, starting by turning the U.S. into a Christian state, including the spheres of business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, family and religion.
Followers believe that by fulfilling the Seven Mountain Mandate they can bring about the end times.
One of the leading proponents of the Seven Mountain Mandate is Lance Wallnau, a self-described business consultant based in Dallas, Texas, who in 2013, co-authored the movement’s call to arms, “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate,” with Pastor Bill Johnson from the California megachurch Bethel Church.
Wallnau claims that Satan controls academia, entertainment, politics and business and that “Our real enemies are the ones that are shaping laws, shaping media, and shaping the next generation.”
To fight the “real enemies,” Wallnau promotes what he calls the “7M Underground” to bring together producers, directors, attorneys, politicians and economists.
“We should be moving to the top of these mountains,” Wallnau said. “Christians are called to go into proximity to the gates of hell. That’s why they’re showing up in government.”
The trump years were ripe for people like Wallnau and his strange prophesies. Vice President Mike Pence, is an outspoken evangelical, while trump’s acting attorney general for a time, Matthew Whitaker, once proposed banning non-religious people from being appointed to the judiciary. He also said judges needed a ‘biblical view of justice.”
Proponents of the Seven Mountain Mandate say it started in 1975, when God allegedly delivered a message to missionary movement leader Loren Cunningham, Campus Crusade for Christ founder Bill Bright, and televangelist Francis Schaeffer to invade the “seven spheres.” The idea was resurrected in 2000, when Cunningham met with Wallnau, and told him about the vision of 25 years earlier. Wallnau began promoting seminars and training courses on the theory as a “template for warfare” for the new century.
Some of the more prominent believers in the Seven Mountains Mandate are Rafael Cruz, a Protestant pastor and father of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Paula White, former spiritual advisor to trump; Miranda Derrick, a TikTok dance star and member of the Shekinah Church, a Michigan-based church that follows the Seven Mountains Mandate and has been labeled a cult; and Andrew Wommack, a charismatic TV evangelist and faith healer and founder of Andrew Wommack Ministries and Charis Bible College, who once said that a “demonic deception” keeps Christians from understanding that God is working through trump.
David Barton, an outspoken proponent of the Seven Mountains Mandate, also runs a Ted Cruz super PAC. Barton is an evangelical Christian political activist and author and founder of WallBuilders, LLC, a Texas-based organization that promotes pseudohistory about the nation’s religious basis.
Barton also is on the steering committee of an effort known as “Project Blitz,” a coalition of Christian right groups, including the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation, the National Legal Foundation, and Wallbuilders Pro-Family Legislators Conference, which was formed by Barton.
According to a statement, Project Blitz works to “protect the free exercise of traditional Judeo-Christian religious values and beliefs in the public square, and to reclaim and properly define the narrative which supports such beliefs.” The agenda includes providing lawmakers with model legislation to clear a way for Christian practice in the public square; support conservative legislators; and promote the Bible in public schools and the codification of “religious exemptions” regarding women’s reproductive healthcare and LGBTQ civil-rights protections.
“Project Blitz” has been renamed, “Freedom for All.”
The tenor of the right wing, conservative evangelical movement was reflected in the annual “Road to Majority Policy Conference,” hosted each year by the “Faith & Freedom Coalition,” a national grassroots movement formed in May, 2009, by Christian Coalition founder Ralph Reed. The coalition claims to represent more than 2 million conservatives and people of faith “in support of time-honored values, stronger families, and individual freedom.”
This year’s conference was held last month in Nashville, featuring speeches by far right evangelicals and Republican national leaders. Unsurprisingly, the keynote speaker was trump, who speech was laced with ominous, violent dog whistles .
“The greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside, as powerful as they may be,” said trump. “The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from within. And you know the people I’m talking about.” Other speakers called Democrats “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” engaged in “a war against the truth.”
“We believe that the United States of America is the greatest and most virtuous republic in the history of the world, we’re going to keep it that way,” said the pandering, hypocritical trump. “Above all else, we know this in America, we don’t worship government, we worship God.”
Speakers parroted trump’s big lie about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and rejected the scientific consensus on climate change,. They included Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., who used violent metaphors in warning, “The backlash is coming. Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.”
“We find ourselves in a pitched battle to literally save this nation,” said North Carolina Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has been the subject of numerous investigations into campaign spending and mistreatment of women. He took a cue from Christian nationalists who frequently cite Ephesians in their rhetoric.
“I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor,” Robinson said.
“Hope is not lost,” said Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who once called Obama a “dictator” who should be “removed from office” while she praised trump’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic that led to hundrfeds of thousands of avoidable deaths, saying, “he was right on it from day one.”
“As Scripture teaches us, when our faith is being tested our perseverance grows, we strengthen our character and we have hope,” said Ernst, who voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the 2021 Capitol attack and rejects the scientific consensus on climate change and has said that any governmental regulation to address it should be “very small.”
Other speakers included a who’s who of right wing, evangelical vote-seeking Republicans, like Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas; Virgina Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who nominated trump for the Nobel Peace Prize; Nikki Haley, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; trump Secretary of Education, Besty DeVos; Fox personality Jeanine Pirro; N.C. Lt.Gov. Mark Robinson; radio host Michael Medved; Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.; Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn.; Herschel Walker, the GOP candidate for Senate from Georgia; Jentezen Franklin, Senior Pastor of Free Chapel Church in Gainesville, Fla., and one of trump’s spirtual advisors; Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; Sen. Joni Ernst, R-; former trump Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany; Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas ; Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla.; trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Paula White, president of Paula White Ministries, chair of the evangelical advisory board in the trump administration and a proponent of prosperity theology, which preaches that money and wealth are to be sought because both are of divine favor; Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla.; Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; Christian singer and songwriter Sean Feucht, an opponent of public health orders during the COVID-19 pandemic; Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.; Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga.; and radio host Todd Starnes, who was fired in 2019 from Fox News after he endorsed the notion that American Democrats worship a pagan god, Moloch.
The Faith & Freedom Coalition is steeped in politics, claiming that it has made 5.2 million personal home visits in the key battleground states; distributed 43 million printed voter guides and Christian Voter Education packets; distributed another 33 million video ads via text messages, email and to the social media accounts of the 17.3 million eligible Christian voters; and phoned more than 25 million Christians “to make sure they voted.”