“Trump has put God back in the White House!” Those were chilling words I heard on a chilly morning while attending a community Easter sunrise service overlooking Possum Kingdom Lake. I had no idea our omnipotent God could ever be taken out of the White House, public schools or anywhere else, or that God required Donald Trump to put him back. The speaker followed the Trump proclamation with a few statements about the “Seven Mountains Mandate.”
My family and I had risen well before the crack of dawn and traveled to an outdoor Easter service, but not to receive a fringe right political message. Fortunately, the service was otherwise a meaningful experience. The sights and aromas of God’s creation clashed with unpredictable weather. The majestic sunrise and message about the empty tomb provided a joyful spiritual experience.
But on the drive home I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had witnessed the mixture of something holy with something profane. The Seven Mountains Mandate is part of a hyperpoliticized theology which teaches that believers should control seven spheres of society: religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business. It doesn’t just teach Christians to contribute to those spheres, but to dominate them. It is also called dominionism.
This charismatic, spiritual warfare movement, now closely aligned with far-right-wing politics, started in the 1970s, becoming more widely known in 2013 after publication of Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate, by Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson. It’s also intricately linked to the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and proselytized through figures like Paula White-Cain, senior adviser to the White House faith office in the Trump administration. The NAR is a controversial Christian supremacist movement, also associated with the far right, that contains Pentecostal and evangelical elements. The movement advocates for spiritual warfare to bring about Christian dominion over all aspects of society and end the separation of church and state. NAR leaders often refer to themselves as apostles and prophets.
Landon Schott, pastor of a Fort Worth church called Mercy Culture, has claimed Christians cannot vote for Democrats and that critics of his church are witches and warlocks. In January, Nate Schatzline, another Mercy Culture pastor and a Texas state representative, prayed to remove demonic spirits from the state Capitol and give it back to the Holy Spirit. I could not agree more that the place needs cleansing.
Perhaps part of the cleansing occurred last month when Schatzline announced he will not seek reelection. Instead, he will assume a new role with the National Faith Advisory Board, founded by White-Cain.
The New Apostolic Reformation movement was heavily influenced by the late C. Peter Wagner, who coined the term and founded the movement’s characteristic networks. Wagner described the NAR as “the most radical change in the way of doing church since the Protestant Reformation.” The NAR is now believed to be the fastest growing segment of Christianity.
Wagner’s 2008 book Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World, with its language of spiritual violence, encouraged his followers to gain political influence through spiritual warfare and to transform society. Shortly before his death in 2016, Wagner endorsed Trump’s candidacy for U.S. president.
The NAR’s ties to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol attack, were detailed in a podcast series titled Charismatic Revival Fury by Matthew D. Taylor, a scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies. Taylor asserts that NAR is “the backbone … of Christian Trumpism.” The NAR was originally a small, radical fringe movement with a disparate, loose organizational network, remaining stealthy and difficult to track. Then Trump recruited it in 2016 to rally evangelical support for his campaign and the movement accelerated exponentially.
According to Taylor, radicalized NAR spiritual warfare adherents believe entire cities and institutions, such as the Democratic Party, are possessed by territorial demonic spirits. These demons can be exorcised through large numbers of Christians engaged in active spiritual warfare.
Those in the movement, including Wagner, have undertaken journeys to places they consider spiritual strongholds, such as climbing Mount Everest in 1997 in an expedition called “Operation Ice Castle” to pray against the “Queen of Heaven” or “Mother of the Universe,” believed to be the demon underlying Catholicism’s concept of Mary, mother of Jesus.
Many NAR followers believe Trump to be an imperfect vessel ordained by God to conquer the seven mountains. Trump’s past philandering and current vile and hateful rhetoric (with no remorse) are excused. He is compared to Cyrus, the anointed but idolatrous pagan king of Persia mentioned in Isaiah 45. Therein lies the paradox of Christian Trumpism.
In the weeks preceding the Jan. 6 attack, self-proclaimed NAR apostles such as Dutch Sheets told followers they needed to be at the Capitol to ensure Trump would remain president. Sheets met with Trump administration officials at the White House days before the Capitol attack. Four of the six protest permits that day were issued to “NAR-affiliated charismatic church groups.”
Media Matters reported in January 2024 that former Trump strategic adviser Steve Bannon often spoke of a spiritual war that characterized Democrats as demons. In a dominionist-controlled government, every elected official or candidate is either under attack or controlled. There is no middle ground.
Sound familiar? This is exactly the state of Texas politics, with megadonors, some who are leaders of this very dominionist movement, controlling the narrative through purity tests and brutal, deceitful primary races against candidates they cannot control. These tactics, while contrary to Christian principles, are accepted because the end justifies the means.
Tim Dunn, Midland megadonor and dominionist pastor, once described his mission from God and the necessity of going into dark places such as politics. Over a decade ago, Dunn told then Republican Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus, who is Jewish, that only Christians should hold leadership positions in the House.
Now these spaces are even darker. Dunn exerts immense control over both the Texas House and Senate and one of his political action committees notably donated $3 million to Lt. Governor Dan Patrick right before he was to preside over Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial. Dunn’s groups have offered an outpouring of support for Paxton over the years, never mind his moral shortcomings. And Dunn-backed policies have found increasing success in Texas.
Patrick plays a key role here. An outspoken conservative Christian, he hasn’t publicly declared himself a Seven Mountains Dominionist, but he has called the doctrine of the separation of church and state a myth and frequently aligns with the spiritual warfare crowd. This year, under Patrick’s leadership, the Senate passed a bill mandating that public schools put posters of the King James Version of the Ten Commandments up in every classroom (education mountain). And earlier this year, Trump appointed Patrick to serve as chair of the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission.
The new wave of Trump Christianity, whether labeled as Christian Nationalism or the New Apostolic Reformation, is misguided fanaticism and a distortion of biblical and constitutional truths. All U.S. citizens who believe in religious liberty and the separation of church and state should be concerned.
John Wesley described a four-part framework for understanding the Christian faith: Scripture (most important), tradition, reason and experience. Reason and experience have proved that using Scripture for political gain or using politics to advance a narrow Christian doctrine results in a movement toward more power for the few but away from the love of Christ for all.
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