Seven Mountain Mandate | Safe for Whose Whole “Family?”

Conservative evangelical Christians had been fighting for “the family” long before Seven Mountain Mandate (7MM) teachers like Lance Wallnau identified it as a sphere of influence to be conquered. In the 1980s and ’90s, they were all about protecting “the family,” with Christian media outlets marketing themselves as “safe for the whole family.” In 2025, “the family” has become more of a weapon than something to be protected.

It doesn’t take a literary or rhetorical savant to understand the use of quotation marks around “the family” in the above paragraph. The term, as used by many evangelicals, has become synonymous with a particular kind of family: European American and heteronormative.Outside of any legislative actions, conservative evangelicals have sought to enshrine their narrow views of family in several ways. 

One is by referring to family as a “sacred institution.” At minimum, this implies that their understanding of what constitutes a family is ordained by God and intractable (this despite the fact that the Bible—even within the New Testament—presents an evolving understanding of family structure).

Another example involves how we determine who can and can’t see a particular film in the theater. In the 1960s and ’70s, evangelicals pushed for the Motion Picture Association (MPA) to adopt a film ratings system. In the ’80s and ’90s, they pressured the MPA to enforce a stricter system, which led to the creation of the PG-13 designation. 

All of this was under the banner of advancing “family-friendly” entertainment. Studies have shown that MPA ratings have clear racialized and anti-LGBTQ+ biases, assigning more restrictive ratings to films featuring global-majority and non-heteronormative actors and storylines. In recent years, evangelical “pro-family” organizations have created their own ratings systems that are even more restrictive than the MPA’s.

The idea is that non-white and queer films are “less safe” for families. The subtext is that there is only one kind of family.

These are just a couple of the many ways the U.S. evangelical machine has sought to influence culture to accept that there is only one acceptable type of family. Seven Mountain Mandate adherents, however, aren’t just interested in influencing culture—they want to dominate it. With the current Trump administration, they are finding legislative means to do so. The examples are legion, and most overlap with other 7MM concerns (education, arts & entertainment, etc.). I will highlight two here, and more examples will follow in subsequent installments of this series.

“Radical Indoctrination”

In January, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling.” The order, championed by 7MM followers, set into motion an environment that will not only stigmatize but could feasibly criminalize LGBTQ+ identities.

The order instructs federal agencies to remove funds from schools that promote what it calls “gender ideology.” The administration argues that allowing children to be exposed to stories and teachings about LGBTQ+ identities will cause them to question their own identities without parental consent.

Additionally, the order instructs the Attorney General to work with state and local agencies to prosecute teachers who allow trans students to “socially transition.” Trump has suggested that a teacher who refers to students by their preferred pronouns and gender is “sexually exploiting” minors.

As a result, public schools are scrambling to figure out what this may mean for their future. Many schools around the country are preemptively pulling books from libraries that feature LGBTQ+ characters, storylines, and families.

This isn’t just a passive “reversion to the mean” of cultural understandings of marriage and family, as some “anti-woke” crusaders would have us believe. It is erasure—an active attack on any way of being that falls outside the “one man, one woman” family structure.

Of course, it doesn’t matter that Donald Trump’s own family falls outside that norm. The erasure isn’t intended to address biblical concerns around adultery and divorce, so it doesn’t affect him.

CRT and DEI

The executive order punishing schools for advancing what it labels “gender ideology” also targets schools that teach Critical Race Theory (CRT). This is part of a larger strategy to remove Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs from U.S. institutions.

For conservatives—including many evangelicals and 7MM adherents—CRT and DEI have become shorthand for what they falsely claim are “anti-white, anti-straight” policies. They’ve repeated this lie so often that organizations seeking to expand representation are now forced to rebrand their programs to avoid accusations of bias.

CRT is an obscure legal theory about the use of power, and DEI is a framework that has origins in programs to enforce civil rights legislation. Both are complex ideas, and even their proponents have varying philosophies about their meaning and implementation.

But both have one thing in common—they seek to tell the truth about history.

What does this have to do with family? A lot.

Here is a truth about U.S. history: Since the deliberate dismantling of Reconstruction efforts after the Civil War, we have found ways to re-enslave African Americans through legal means. This has taken many forms, but one of the most recent is the “War on Drugs.” (This has been thoroughly documented, most famously by Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book “The New Jim Crow” and Ava DuVernay’s documentary, “13th”.)

One notable element of the War on Drugs is that African American men have been incarcerated for illegal drug use at rates much higher than European American men, even though both groups use drugs at similar rates. The result is generations of African American men have languished in prisons while generations of European American men have remained in their communities after paying a fine for the same offense.

So again: what does this have to do with family? Many of those men are fathers—Black fathers in prison and white fathers at home with their families.

The narrative, then, is there has been a “crisis” within African American communities. Telling the truth about history highlights the reality that it is a crisis—a crisis of mass incarceration. But if you erase history or tell lies about it, then you see the situation as a “crisis of fatherhood.”

Without the accurate telling of history, this “crisis of fatherhood” can be subtly framed as a “crisis of character in African American families.”

Removing programs that tell the truth about history isn’t a virtuous effort to “protect children.” It is a deliberate effort to control what is normative. In this case, “normal families” are white ones with a mom, dad, and two-and-a-half kids under one roof.

(An aside: Anyone who scoffs at the suggestion that “pro-family” ideals have anything to do with racialized identities need only look to the border, where we are turning away families en masse who look more like the “ideal family” created by European Americans than even European American families do.)

It must be repeated: Donald Trump is not a proponent of the Seven Mountain Mandate. But its adherents have found a willing ally. 

And since he is not the target of their hate, he is more than willing to advance their weaponization of “family” in exchange for their loyal support. Sadly, their alliance is only safe for some families.