As a young evangelical Christian coming of age in the 1990s, one of my most significant influences was Bob Briner’s book, “Roaring Lambs: A Gentle Plan to Radically Change Your World.” Briner had been a pioneering figure in sports broadcasting and management. In addition to bringing professional tennis to television for the first time, he founded ProServ, the agency that managed Michael Jordan’s early career.
Briner, who died in 1999, believed it was a Christian’s duty to help shape the culture around them with their faith. His focus was mainly on media and the arts, but also touched on higher education.
Briner’s thesis was that Christians had been absent from these realms of society, abandoning them to be taken over by people who didn’t share our values. He framed his work around Jesus’ calling the disciples the “salt of the earth” and “light of the world” (Matthew 5). Briner argued that this meant Christians should be the most exemplary professionals in literature, filmmaking, the visual arts and the academy.
“Roaring Lambs” transformed my beliefs about the division between sacred and secular (there isn’t one—God is everywhere) and the idea of vocation. I began to see that ministry wasn’t a higher calling than teaching or even municipal sanitation. Faithful Christians could shape culture through any number of vocations.
“Culture-shaping” was deeply embedded within the evangelical psyche. It was as much a part of our approach to discipleship as confession and repentance.
I don’t know how much culture I’ve shaped, but I have spent my career exploring numerous vocations—politics, teaching, hospitality, retail management, non-profit communications, even ministry. I still want whatever I do in my little corner of the world to contribute to the common good, but the impulse to “make my mark for God” has faded.
This is partly the result of age and the cynicism that comes with experience (and failure), and partly from being introduced to the contemplative and social-justice traditions within Christianity. But more than that, it is because I have seen the damage done by Christians whose desire to shape culture morphs into a desire to dominate it.
More than a decade after “Roaring Lambs” was published, another book came along that represented a more militant Christian worldview. “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate” by Lance Wallnau and Loren Cunningham drew inspiration from a purported 1975 meeting between Cunningham, founder of Youth With a Mission (YWAM), Bill Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ, and Francis Schaeffer, the creator of the L’Abri community in Switzerland.
Wallnau and Cunningham claim that in 1975, God gave Cunningham, Bill Bright, and Francis Schaeffer a shared vision to lead an invasion of the “seven mountains of society,” which they identified as family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. (The involvement of Schaeffer, who died in 1984, in this meeting is contested.)
This “Seven Mountain Mandate” went as unnoticed in the larger culture as Briner’s “Roaring Lambs.” Even most religious observers were oblivious to it. But it percolated in the pulpits and pews of the “New Apostolic Reformation” (NAR), a loosely connected and rapidly growing network of churches and parachurch ministries devoted to advancing Christian supremacy in the world.
Then, in 2015, a perfect storm of populism, discontent and racialized grievance descended an elevator in Manhattan, giving the NAR a perfect host to latch on to.
Not every evangelical Christian leader who coalesced around Donald Trump was part of the New Apostolic Reformation. Some, like pastor Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas and evangelist Franklin Graham, hold theological convictions in opposition to the more charismatic streams within the NAR.
But what they had in common was a belief that Christianity and Christian values (as they understood them) shouldn’t just be “welcome at the table” in a multi-cultural, multi-religious society where the government is neutral toward religion. According to them, Christianity should hold the seat of highest honor and dominion.
These evangelical leaders delivered to Donald Trump a voting base that would either support or ignore his worst instincts and moral degradation. In exchange, they received access to the White House during Trump’s first term. As has been widely reported, that access was, in many ways, tempered by professional Republican operatives who knew how the government worked and could hand-hold Trump’s agenda through traditional processes.
By Trump 2.0, the “normies,” mainstream Republicans who merely tolerated the court-evangelicals surrounding the president, had either been thrown overboard or abandoned ship after January 6. Trump has replaced many of them with true believers in the “Seven Mountain Mandate.”
To state the obvious, Donald Trump cares nothing about the NAR, the Seven Mountain Mandate or Christian dominionism. If he knows anything about these concepts, it is through his instinctive ability to adapt and survive in any environment. He likely side-eyes their proponents with the same blend of amusement and disdain as a left-coast liberal.
But he gets what he needs from them and, in return, gives them everything they ever longed for: power. They are cashing in on that power with staggering results, implementing a Seven Mountain Mandate agenda that, if left unchecked, will upend our nation as we know it.
In the coming days, I will write about how Christian-dominionists are storming each of the “seven mountains” they believe God has called them to overtake. There are variations in their approaches and even what they perceive to be a “mountain” that must be conquered. What they all agree on, however, is that dominion—domination—is their highest calling.
If Bob Briner used “salt of the earth/light of the world” to frame his beliefs about how the Christian should operate in the world, “Seven Mountain Mandate” proponents use “conquering lion” imagery from Revelation to frame theirs. But both miss the point.
Jesus came to a people who were the victims of power, not those who wielded it. The Holy Spirit fell on an insignificant collection of peasants in a backwater region of the empire. The Church grew from weakness, not strength.
I will conclude this series by imagining a world in which we are neither roaring lambs nor conquering lions but witness-bearers to God’s life-giving love.
- About the Author
- Latest Posts
Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
