According to Matthew Taylor in The Violent Take It by Force, in 2001, C. Peter Wagner heard Lance Wallnau teach about the seven mountains at a prophecy conference. Wallnau had heard Loren Cunningham describe “seven mind moulders of culture” to him when they met the year before and then transformed what Cunningham said with his own Seven Mountains imagery (See Part 1). Wagner was a leader in what Taylor called the Independent Charismatic world and instantly recognized the potential for Wallnau’s seven mountains teaching. This fateful encounter led to the formation of the Seven Mountain Mandate.
Wagner invited Wallnau to teach on the Seven Mountains to the ICA, the International Coalition of Apostles, where he met others in Wagner’s inner circle—people like Cindy Jacobs, Ché Ahn, and Dutch Sheets. The ICA members enthusiastically received his teaching. Wagner began to mentor Wallnau and would later call him “one of the most creative thinkers in the church today.” In turn, Wallnau would refer to Wagner as “probably the first father I had in the Spirit.” When Wagner died in October of 2016, Wallnau said:
So what Peter did was he endorsed an idea, that, I’m convinced, gave the whole Seven Mountain thing legs that went global, because then Dutch Sheets would say it and then Cindy Jacobs would say it. . . . Everybody that was in alignment with [Peter] would go with it, pretty much. So everywhere I went, I heard about it.
In 2008, Peter Wagner published Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World. In his Introduction, he referred to seven supreme molders of culture—namely religion, family, government, arts and entertainment, media, business, and education. For society to change, these molders of culture need to be led or “dominated” by persons of goodwill, whether Christians or non-Christians. Wagner said the ideology underlying this vision or thrust is “dominion theology.”
The 2022 republished version was titled of Dominion! Your Role in Bringing Heaven to Earth. Wagner said he’d been working on what he called “the dominion mandate” since the mid-1990s. He also referred more clearly to the seven molders of culture as the Seven Mountains:
A starting point is to recognize what many of us have been calling the “Seven Mountains,” which are the supreme molders of culture: Religion, Family, Education, Media, Government, Arts & Entertainment, and Business. For a society to change, each one of the Seven Mountains needs to be influenced or “dominated” by persons of goodwill, whether Christians of non-Christians. This is a positive way of looking at dominionism.
Matthew Taylor said around the mid-2000s there was an elaborate programmatic and theological entwining of charismatic dominion theology and Wallnau’s Seven Mountains concept in NAR leadership. Then in late 2007 and early 2008 there was a very intentional rollout of the Seven Mountains and dominion theology ideas. In his December 2007 address to ICA, Wagner said: “Our apostolic movement is entering a new season that many of our older apostles could not have imagined. Rather than ‘building our own kingdom’ as critics might say, today’s apostles are intent on building the kingdom of God.” And they were willing to take the radical steps needed “to help make it happen.”
Within the space of a year, nine new books were published about these ideas, including: The Reformation Manifesto by Cindy Jacobs, The Seven Mountain Prophecy by Johnny Enlow, and of course, Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World.
The Birth of the 7 Mountain Mandate
Then in 2013, Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson coauthored Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate, with contributions from Peter Wagner, Ché Ahn, and others. In Wallnau’s essay, titled “The Seven Mountain Mandate,” he retold the story of the Cunningham-Bright meeting and his own encounter with Cunningham in 2000 (See Part 1). Then he said:
As I heard Loren tell me his story, I was somewhat stunned. It seemed odd that this message had been out since 1974, yet I had not heard about it earlier. It so transformed my thinking that I have made it central to my message ever since. Loren called these seven areas “mind molders,” and Bill Bright called them “world kingdoms.” I saw them as seven mountains whose lofty heights are mind molders with strongholds that occupy influence as world kingdoms. Each of the seven mountains represents an individual sphere of influence that shapes the way people think. These mountains are crowned with high places that modern-day kings occupy as ideological strongholds. These strongholds are, in reality, houses built out of thoughts. These thought structures are fortified with spiritual reinforcement that shapes the culture and establishes the spiritual climate of each nation. I sensed the Lord telling me, “He who can take these mountains can take the harvest of nations.”
So, the road to the Seven Mountain Mandate began with a vision or impression given to Loren Cunningham in 1975 about spheres or classrooms to disciple and teach the nations. This would be accomplished, according to Cunningham’s vision, by people who were called to each of the spheres or cultural areas. He originally saw them as a framework for evangelism and as “Great Commission strategies” to influence the seven spheres of society with the gospel. They became the key foundational principles for YWAM’s University of the Nations.
Then in 2000, Loren Cunningham had a meeting with Lance Wallnau, a pastor of a church with connections to the Latter Rain sect, part of what Matthew Taylor called the Independent Charismatic world. This seems to have been the same movement named the New Apostolic Reformation by Peter Wagner in 1994. Wallnau was stunned by Cunningham’s story and said it transformed his thinking. He combined Cunningham’s spheres with another person’s vision of seven mountains, “and the Seven Mountain Mandate was born,” according to Taylor.
A more appropriate turn of phrase might be to say the Seven Mountains were conceived, but not yet “born.” The birth awaited the further meeting of Wallnau with Peter Wagner, who had been working on the “dominion mandate” since the 1990s. Wagner mentored Wallnau like an ideological midwife. And seven mountain dominionism, occupied by modern-day “kings” with ideological strongholds, was born and named the Seven Mountain Mandate. Loren Cunningham’s original post millennial vision for discipleship and the Great Commission was transformed into a prophetic meme for dominion theology.
Mandated to Seek Dominion?
Matthew Taylor noted where the idea of dividing society up into spheres of authority, and then seeking Christian influence over them, can be traced back to the thought of Abraham Kuyper, “an early twentieth century Calvinist theologian and Dutch prime minister.” Kuyper’s concept of “sphere sovereignty” was first expressed in a public address he gave at the inauguration of the Free University in 1880, a Dutch institution founded on Christian principles. Essentially Kuyper argued that the aspects of life, such as family, church, government and science were distinct “spheres” that should operate independently under God’s authority, without undue interference from other spheres. Monergism Books has made Sphere Sovereignty by Kuyper available.
Also, by the time of the Cunningham-Bright meeting in 1975, these ideas were being revived within the spread of what was called Christian Reconstructionism, “that was pushing dominion theology and would provide many of the theological underpinnings for the religious right in America.” Reconstructionists maintained a distinction of spheres between self, family, church, and state. Rousas Rushdoony had published the founding document for reconstructionism, The Institutes of Biblical Law in 1973, two years before the Cunningham-Bright meeting. Although Francis Schaeffer was linked with the movement, he disavowed any connection or affiliation with reconstructionism.
Michael Horton warned against the seductiveness of power-religion in reconstructionism and theonomy. He argued that the Christian rhetoric of the movement was weak and would drive reconstructionism toward sub-Christian ideas about sin, and the perfectibility of human nature. Horton maintained that God’s law can—and often has been—put to evil uses by Christians and others; in the state, in churches, in the marketplace, and in families. Within an article titled: “In God’s Name”, he wrote: “Make sure you distinguish between the church’s calling to proclaim the Law and the Gospel (revealed in Scripture) and the state’s calling to enforce civil justice, based on natural revelation.”
Even in the realm of morality, Sola Scriptura (only Scripture) stands. Just as we cannot dictate the personal behavior of individual Christians beyond Scripture (although we do it anyway), we cannot dictate public morality in the name of God beyond that which is written into the human conscience by creation. We cannot even attempt to force the Ten Commandments on a godless society. This does not mean that we do not preach them and call all men and women to repentance by the preaching of the Law, but it does mean that we cannot really enforce the Ten Commandments in the civil sphere.
There was not any “new revelation” from God on reaching the lost, to revise the Great Commission, or to encourage Christians to become more engaged in efforts to transform our cultures. Loren Cunningham’s original vision was consistent with what Scripture had already said about seeking to save the lost. And it seems that individuals now associated with the NAR co-opted Cunningham’s vision and transformed it into a “mandate” to seek dominion over these so-called mountains of culture. Post millennial eschatology is distinct from dominion theology/dominionism and should not have the role advocated for it by Peter Wagner in Dominion! That argument is made in another article, “Fantasy and Delusion in Dominion! and the NAR.” As Matthew Taylor observed:
What Cunningham added to the Kuyperian/Reconstructionist concept was a charismatic and prophetic gloss: God has now revealed these important political concepts mystically in the late twentieth century.
The wrong-footed pursuit of the Seven Mountains concept has led Christians into a time C. S. Lewis cautioned against in his 1941 essay, “Meditation on the Third Commandment.” Lewis said Christians who pursue dominion through a political party can only end as a part of Christendom claiming to be the whole. “The principle which divides it from its brethren and unites it to its political allies will not be theological. It will have no authority to speak for Christianity. It will have no more power than the political skill its members give it to control the behavior of its unbelieving allies.” For more on this thought, see “When Nationalism Gets a Christian Gloss.”
