As we have been noting for nearly a year now, a theology known as "Seven Mountains" has been slowly creeping its way into "mainstream" Religious Right activism.
Beginning with Janet Porter's "May Day for America" prayer rally on the National Mall last year, this Dominionist theology has become increasingly common place in Religious Right events, ranging from the National Day of Prayer events to Jim Garlow's "Pray and Act" 2010 election effort.
As we have explained before, Seven Mountains dominionism seeks to place Christians in control over the seven forces that shape and control our culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion. The reason for this, as Lance Wallnau, the leading advocate for Seven Mountains theology, explained is that Jesus "doesn't come back until He's accomplished the dominion of nations." And the way "dominion of nations" is accomplished is by having Christians gain control of these "seven mountains" in order to install a "virtual theocracy" overseen by "true apostles" who will fight Satan and his Antichrist agenda.
In the past we have caught people like Porter teaming up with Seven Mountains advocate Cindy Jacobs and praying for God to give Christians control over the media and government mountains. We've even found David Barton sharing the stage with Jacobs. In fact, later this month both Barton and Garlow will be joining other Seven Mountain Dominionists/Spiritual Warriors for an event called "Government Transformation Summit For Visionary Leaders" [PDF] in Texas.
But Barton has tended to keep his ties to this movement under wraps and we had never heard him explicitly advocate Seven Mountains Dominionism ... until today on his radio program:
Barton: There's five areas that you have to be able to influence and control if you are going to take a culture and that's media, business, government, education, and pulpit.
Now, for twenty years as it turns out - I wasn't even aware of this - way back, Bill Bright from Campus Crusade, when he was still alive, Loren Cunningham, Youth With a Mission, these guys got together back at the same time and really felt like there were seven areas that had to be taken for a culture and these are the seven that they gave: family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government. Now we've grouped some of those together and throw some together, but they said those are the seven areas you have to have and if you can have those seven areas, you can shape and control whatever takes place in nations, continents, and even the world.
Green: So it's the same idea, saying "look, every single area of the culture you need to be involved in."
Barton: That's right. Christians got to get involved. And there's a Scripture they used that came out of Isiah 2:2 and it says "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," so this is now called the Seven Mountain Prophecy, there's a book out by that name.
It says the Lord's house is going to be established on top of the mountains and these are the seven mountains. If you're going to establish God's kingdom, you've got to have these seven mountains and again that's family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business and government.
Now that's what we believed all along is you got to get involved in this stuff. Jesus said "you occupy 'til I come." We don't care when he comes, that's up to him. What we're supposed to do is take the culture in the meantime and you got to get involved in these seven areas.
It was just the other day that Mike Huckabee was saying that all Americans should be forced to listen to Barton's messages - at gunpoint if necessary.
Is Barton's call to have right-wing Christians take complete control over every aspect of society the message that Huckabee had in mind?
