The Radical GOP’s “Seven Mountains Mandate”
An all-encompassing Christian nationalist belief now infects the top of federal and state government.
Speaker Mike Johnson has not been shy about letting us know just how religious he is.
In the very first speech he gave after being elected Speaker, he made it clear he felt he had been chosen by God:
“I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority. He raised up each of you, all of us, and I believe that God has ordained and allowed each one of us to be brought here for this specific moment in this time.”
And during a subsequent interview, he was upfront that his worldview is driven by the Bible:
“I am a Bible-believing Christian,” he said. “Go pick up a Bible off your shelf and read it. That’s my worldview. That’s what I believe.”
Even before becoming Speaker, he had led prayers on the floor of the House.
And now, during a recent GOP conference weekend retreat supposedly meant to buck up his caucus to hold onto their slim House majority, Johnson reportedly treated the gathering more like a religious one than a political one.
And it did not go well, even among his own rank and file:
Johnson, a devout Christian, attempted to rally the group by discussing moral decline in America — focusing on declining church membership and the nation’s shrinking religious identity, according to both people in the room.
The speaker contended that when one doesn’t have God in their life, the government or “state” will become their guide, referring back to Bible verses, both people said. They added that the approach fell flat among some in the room.
“I’m not at church,” one of the people said, describing Johnson’s presentation as “horrible.”
I’ve written before about Johnson’s dominionist brand of Christian nationalism, which dictates that the Bible should drive decisions not just in government but in all aspects of society.
Christian nationalists are currently ascendant in the fight against abortion rights and now—thanks to Alabama’s Supreme Court—the fight against IVF. So it’s worth looking more closely at this faith tradition, specifically, the Seven Mountains Mandate and New Apostolic Reformation, which, more and more, influence leaders like Johnson. In this essay, I’ll shed light on this radical brand of conservative Christianity and how it is already transforming our nation.
What Is The Seven Mountains Mandate?
There is a movement among many right-wing political leaders that embraces the notion that religion, specifically Christianity, should have dominion over all aspects of society, particularly the government.
As Lauren Boebert put it bluntly:
“The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church.”
To believe this, of course, Christian nationalists like Johnson and Boebert must reject the entire notion of the separation of church and state that was clearly laid out by Thomas Jefferson.
And indeed they do. As Johnson himself put it in a CNBC interview last year:
"The separation of church and state is a misnomer…
"People misunderstand it. Of course, it comes from a phrase that was in a letter that Jefferson wrote. It’s not in the Constitution. And what he was explaining is they did not want the government to encroach upon the church — not that they didn’t want principles of faith to have influence on our public life. It’s exactly the opposite."
He, of course, is the one who misunderstands the concept, but this belief is central to his entire worldview, which he advertises quite openly, not only in speeches and interviews, but with the flag that flies outside of his congressional office.
Dubbed the “Appeal to Heaven” flag, it has been coopted from its origins in the Revolutionary War to become a symbol of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) sect of Christianity.
According to The New Republic:
A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.
Or, as NPR warned about NAR “apostles”:
Many embrace a concept known as "the Seven Mountains mandate" which says Christians have a duty to God to take control of the seven pillars of society: business, education, entertainment, family, government, media and religion.
This movement has its roots in Revelation 17:1-18, in which verse 9 reads: "And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains."
And its “authority to take over the world” derives from Isaiah 2:2:
“Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains.”
If that sounds apocalyptic, it absolutely is.
As Elle Hardy wrote in The Outline:
These modern apostles want to use the Seven Mountain Mandate to reshape America and the world ahead of the end times.
Hardy further warns of the Seven Mountains Mandate’s (7M) “theocratic wave of populism” that uses “charismatic leaders to inspire change from the bottom-up,” and is ultimately:
powered by the belief that in fulfilling the criteria for God’s return to earth, the religious right can justify walling themselves off from the demographic shift that is pushing them further into the minority.
In other words, there’s no need to appeal to younger or more diverse populations because if all goes to plan, the world will be ending anyway.
How The Seven Mountains Mandate Movement Pushes Us Closer To Theocracy
One way this movement has sought to take over government is through lifting up Donald Trump, whom they see as “their heathen ‘King Cyrus,’ the Persian leader in the Bible who conquered Babylon and allowed the Jews to return to Israel.”
It’s no accident that Trump’s former spiritual advisor, televangelist Paula White-Cain, is a prominent Seven Mountains apostle. Nor should we be surprised that it was two other 7M apostles, Jim Garlow and Mario Bramnick, themselves key evangelical advisers to Trump, who, as Matthew Taylor writes in The Bulwark, “were instrumental in sparking the Christian rage that fueled the conflagration of January 6th.”
In the days after the 2020 election was called for Joe Biden, Garlow and Bramnick organized a series of “Global Prayer for Election Integrity” calls “to pray and organize for Trump’s reinstatement as president.”
According to NPR,
these calls promoted false claims of election fraud and hosted prominent figures in the effort to overturn the election including Trump's former lawyer Sidney Powell.
Additionally, per Taylor in The Bulwark the calls were:
a central interface between the grassroots Christian nationalist forces angrily mobilizing on Trump’s behalf, on the one hand, and the planners and orchestrators of January 6th.
Mike Johnson, himself a proponent of Trump’s “Stop the Steal,” having authored the Supreme Court brief opposing the certification of the 2020 election results, has been a regular participant in these calls and has even called Garlow “a profound influence on my life and my walk with Christ.”
But now, thanks to the Alabama Supreme Court’s recent radical decision defining embryos as children, Johnson is no longer the most prominent 7M apostle in the news.
Enter Tom Parker, Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, whose concurring opinion in the court’s 8-1 decision contained explicit references to “God” and even cited scripture almost two dozen times, something Parker has come to be known for in his 20-year career on the court.
The Washington Post compiled a few of the most explicit religious references in Parker’s concurrence, including:
“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” Parker wrote in his concurring opinion.
“All human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory,” he wrote.
“The principle itself — that human life is fundamentally distinct from other forms of life and cannot be taken intentionally without justification — has deep roots that reach back to the creation of man ‘in the image of God,’” he wrote, citing the book of Genesis.
“[Alabamians] have required us to treat every human being in accordance with the fear of a holy God who made them in His image,” he wrote in his conclusion.
Parker, who was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2004 and became Chief Justice in 2018, has not hidden his devotion to the Seven Mountains Mandate strain of Christianity.
In March of 2023, he attended a New Apostolic Reformation prayer call, on which he called for “more of God” in the judiciary.
So I am asking the Lord to put revival on their hearts … that there will be a growing hunger in the judges of Alabama, and around the nation for more of God. And that they will be receptive to his moves toward restoration of the judges, so that they can play their forecast role in revival in this nation.
Additionally, the day the recent decision declaring embryos are people came down, Parker appeared online in an interview with QAnon conspiracy theorist Johnny Enlow, author of “The Seven Mountain Prophecy.”
As Media Matters for America points out in its coverage of the interview:
Parker claimed that “God created government” and said it’s “heartbreaking” that “we have let it go into the possession of others.” Parker then invoked the Seven Mountain Mandate, saying, “And that's why he is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now.”
As Matthew Taylor, senior scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, & Jewish Studies, points out in an eye-opening X thread about Parker and his connections to the New Apostolic Reformation movement, this is not something that they make an effort to hide.
They are working to transform our society right out in the open.
In fact, Parker is a result of decades of work by the NAR movement.
And that’s precisely what Parker has done.
The influence of this movement’s apostles like Parker on our society isn’t hypothetical. It’s already happening, and not just in this Alabama Supreme Court embryo decision.
You can trace Parker’s influence back to the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v Wade.
As The Washington Post reminds us:
“Today, the only major area in which unborn children are denied legal protection is abortion,” [Parker] wrote in one case, according to ProPublica, “and that denial is only because of the dictates of Roe.”
He also wrote that Roe was wrong in arguing that states couldn’t ban abortions before viability.
Mississippi cited that line of reasoning in its case to challenge Roe at the U.S. Supreme Court, a move his supporters say helped pave the way for Roe’s fall in 2022.
In fact, ProPublica seemed to predict Parker would do just that back in 2014 with a piece titled:
This Alabama Judge Has Figured Out How to Dismantle Roe v. Wade
And it is no accident that the overturning of Roe, in turn, made the Alabama ruling possible, since:
Post-Roe, states can decide when life begins, and anti-abortion bills may determine what this means for embryos used for infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization.
If there is a silver lining from this ruling out of Alabama, it’s that people are waking up to the radical Christian worldview that has infected right-wing politics and the judiciary…and the threat it poses to our nation.
Taylor rightly points out why the alarm bells should be blaring for all of us.
Johnson is also confused if he thinks Thomas Jefferson was a Christian, nor was he the only so-called founding father who wasn’t Christian. I know he’d neither listen nor care but he would do better if he understood the Deist views Jefferson actually held and read his writings on religion. Among other things while he believed in a creator god, he didn’t believe that god communicated with humans or had anything to do with human society, and yes, I know I’m oversimplifying here. But a core element of those beliefs is that religion has no place in government.
I don't seem to remember where in the New Testament, Jesus encouraged his disciples and followers to overthrow the government and take over all of society, with force if necessary. So-called Christians select passages out of the Old Testament and use them to support their own agenda. They're not interested in the messages that Jesus taught; their behavior is anti-Christ. What they want is total control and power over everyone who isn't the same as they are, which is why they align with Republicans.