Trump, Evangelicals, & the Seven Mountain Mandate
By: Emily Swan
Tags: Jesus, Christianity, Politics, Equality, Culture

The fastest-growing faith sect in both the United States and the Global South (Asia, Africa, and South America) is called Independent Network Charismatic (INC) Christianity, as detailed in a recent book by Brad Christerson and Richard Flory — sociologists from Biola and USC, respectively. INC Christianity combines Pentecostalism with the Fundamentalist-Evangelicalism that currently pervades much of the American faith landscape and enjoys outsized global influence due to operational and financial innovations.

One of the major draws of INC churches in the United States is the music; they very often produce and/or perform contemporary Christian worship songs that heavily influence believers around the world. Many of these INC celebrities recently attended a White House gathering (pictured above). The Christian Post reports that,

“The musicians and ministry leaders participated in a worship service and visited the Oval Office and the Cabinet Room, where they prayed for the president and took part in a policy briefing on what the administration is doing to help the faith community and religious freedom.”

I identify as a pentecostal — but a self-critical one who finds large swaths of this branch of Christianity deeply offensive. As a happily-married lesbian pastor, I find the homophobic aspects of Pentecostalism personally diminishing of both my humanity and my calling. In the book I co-wrote with Ken Wilson, Solus Jesus: A Theology of Resistance, I spend an entire chapter explaining how Pentecostalism veered from its initial impulses of radical inclusion and pacifism toward 1) the power-seeking path of Evangelicalism and 2) the biblical literalism of Fundamentalism.

This might be confusing if you’re not familiar with the territory. Fundamentalism was a reaction against modernism (read: evolutionary theory and historical inquiry) and is especially marked by 1) an understanding of the Bible as literal and inerrant, and 2) hostility toward other faith traditions, science, and academia. Early evangelicals did not identify as fundamentalists (Billy Graham among them), just as early pentecostals did not idenify as evangelicals. But, through a tangled history I unfurl in Solus Jesus, at this stage in history most pentecostals in the United States are both evangelical and fundamentalist, even if some evangelicals are not pentecostals.

My largest critique of INC Christianity and Pentecostalism in general is its tendency to seek power, and then abuse it when they have it.

The misuse of power is so pervasive in most American Pentecostal circles that it has become theologically justified. Over my years of pastoring I’ve become acquainted with two such charismatic theologies called “The Seven Mountain Mandate” and “Dominion Theology.”

The “seven mountains mandate” is sometimes called “seven pillars” or “seven spheres.” It was originally called “seven spheres,” based on a shared vision between Loren Cunningham (founder of Youth With a Mission), Bill Bright (founder of Campus Crusade for Christ), and Francis Schaeffer. Dominion theology is part of C. Peter Wagner’s Kingdom Now Theology and informs those who are part of the New Apostolic Reformation movement.

Understanding these ideas will help make sense of the American evangelical embrace of Donald Trump.

Dominion Theology is a belief claiming that, since God gave Adam dominion over the earth in Genesis, Christians should seek to dominate the world in the name of establishing the kingdom of God. “Seven mountains” refers to the thinking that seven major areas of human life need such Christian influence: education, religion, family, business, government/military, arts/entertainment, and media.

Brad Christerson and Richard Flory write, “This model of social transformation is clearly top-down or ‘trickle down’ model.” In other words, the more powerful and influential one becomes, the more social transformation one affects. It follows then that God blesses the pursuit of power in followers willing to use their authority to further an often-narrow interpretation of godliness in whatever given field.

The objective of influencing one or more of these “mountains” caused many Evangelicals and Pentecostals to turn their heads away from the distasteful behavior of a number of top politicians in the last few years. The pursuit of power and influence trumped protecting the human dignity of the vulnerable: undocumented immigrants, Dreamers (DACA recipients), women, the poor and uninsured, those who are differently-abled, African-Americans, the LGBTQ+ community (especially transgender persons), among others. The alarm bells were drowned out because power has become a sacred entitlement in this religious sub-culture.

The Jesus of the Bible didn’t pursue political power — he eschewed it. It was through the laying down of power for the sake of the vulnerable and oppressed that he taught us the unending power of LOVE —and love, the Apostle Paul tells us, is not self-seeking.

So, counter-intuitively, Christians believe that spiritual influence comes through the laying down of power. The pursuit of power, influence, and dominance hinders the work of God and continues tempting people to misuse their gifts to gain the praise and acquiescence of others. This is how we end up with Evangelical worship celebrities surrounding a President who, quite likely, will soon be inpeached for crimes against the United States — a President who just shelled out $2 million for misusing charity funds. And, by the way, many of the leaders pictured above are associated with Bethel Church in Redding, CA — a church that’s reiginited the entirely discredited conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ people.

I still claim to be pentecostal because I still hold to personal experiences and find it difficult to dismiss the numerous occasions it seems God — or something, someone — helped, comforted, healed, and/or navigated me or someone I know. And dismissing charismatic expressions of faith entirely would disregard the daily encounters experienced by some of the poorest and least powerful people in the world — that feels patronizing. But I’m shouting into the Interwebs with all my might that American Christianity is distorted, corrupt, and anti-Jesus … and this picture in the Oval Office is emblematic of all the reasons why the American church continues to shrink. For all our sake, I hope this “peak” in INC government influence is also the beginning of its undoing as it manifests its power-seeking demons.