Only one current presidential hopeful has endorsed a gubernatorial candidate who wants to go back to the days before women could vote, says women no longer own their bodies when they become pregnant, and insists transgender women should be forced to poop outside.
And, in case you hadn’t guessed, it ain’t Joe Biden.
Donald Trump—the Christian-iest Christian who ever Christian-ed—has enthusiastically endorsed North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s bid to become the state’s next governor, calling him “Martin Luther King times two”—even though Robinson has, on at least one occasion, favorably quoted Hitler.
In other words, the most fringe, extreme, un-American, and frankly barmy viewpoints are being normalized in this country—by a once-marginally sane political party and the media’s leaders who refuse to call them out. And because the media need a horse race all the way up to November—even though all four horsemen of the apocalypse have long since dogpiled onto that syphilitic Shetland pony the GOP has trotted out for the third straight election cycle—the alarm bells that should be pealing across the country have been oddly few and far between.
But some media outlets are still doing yeoman’s work when it comes to putting the fear of God’s followers into us. And it’s past time we start paying closer attention.
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In an exclusive new exposé, internet culture hub The Daily Dot shines a spotlight on the fringe Christian dominionist Seven Mountains Mandate and its social media platform, the Nexus Mountain Network. The platform has secured the memberships of several candidates running for high office across the country.
The Daily Dot notes that Seven Mountains Dominionism exhorts Christians to “conquer the seven domains of family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government”—and now it has its own social media platform to help make that happen.
Think of it as sort of a Facebook for fundies.
Midwifed out of the New Apostolic Reformation, a network of self-appointed prophets and apostles founded in the late 1990s that gathered around the late C. Peter Wagner, the Seven Mountains Mandate is championed by Lance Wallnau, a self-described Christian Nationalist prophet in Keller, Texas who was one of Wagner’s mentees.
Wallnau brought the idea to prominence through his 2013 book “Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate.” Various religious scholars and journalists say that Wallnau was among the earliest Christian leaders to support Trump and remains his most ardent defender. They’ve also observed that believers of the Seven Mountains Mandate participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attempt to overturn the 2020 election: several New Apostolic Reformation luminaries spoke at the Jan. 5 Freedom Plaza rally and at least two defendants arrested at the riot shared posts about the Seven Mountains.
Now this Christian Nationalist movement has its own social media platform, the Nexus Mountain Network, to spread the Seven Mountains Mandate and serve as the digital connective tissue for acolytes working to establish God’s Kingdom in America.
Among the members of the Nexus Mountain Network are three recent candidates for Congress, including two who won their primary elections. The outlet also identified a candidate for lieutenant governor, three state legislature candidates, and a “handful” of former candidates for office who are currently members of the network.
And, oh yeah, North Carolina’s Robinson has his own ties to Seven Mountains, though he’s not yet a member of Nexus.
During an interview with Nexus Mountain Network founder Chad Hawley, Robinson insisted, “This is a Judeo-Christian country founded on Judeo-Christian principles.” Robinson also claimed that “in order for us to keep this nation strong I believe that Christians have to be at the forefront of leading in the nation.”
In other words, Robinson thinks the only way to keep this country from going to shit is to literally force a sizable portion of its population to defecate outside. And if you could strip voting rights away from more than half of us, that would be cool, too. Because GOP Jesus isn’t fucking around anymore. He needs to take this country back from … erm, devout Catholic Joe Biden.
And in case you aren’t sufficiently appalled yet, you’ll be happy to learn that these people are both deadly serious and seriously influential.
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In 2022, Wallnau declared that “Jesus was promised nations for His inheritance, not just churches!” Meaning they want to take over the country, have gotten tired of waiting for God to return to establish His kingdom, and are counting on Cheesus Christ, Crotch-Groping Superstar to do it instead.
And don’t look now, but they’ve already started enacting their agenda.
One judge on the Alabama Supreme Court, which recently declared that embryos are real people who would do anything in their limited power not to be a Klondike Bar, is a Seven Mountains adherent. And MAGA Mike Johnson—the House speaker who would follow Jesus anywhere, so long as they eventually land on “terrifying theocratic dystopia”—also has ties to the movement.
And then there’s Marge.
Meanwhile, some of the movement’s detractors are suitably alarmed. Matthew Taylor, whom The Daily Dot describes as one of the top religious scholars of the New Apostolic Reformation, noted that the movement is “a political theology of Christian supremacy, which uses prophecy to claim that God is commanding all Christians to strategically take over the high places in society so as to Christianize that society.”
Taylor has seen the movement metastasize in recent years, much as MAGA has come to encrust the GOP.
“The Seven Mountains Mandate concept started on the true fringes of American Christianity,” Taylor told The Daily Dot. “When Wallnau formulated it, he was a run-of-the-mill pastor in Rhode Island, but through the … entwinement with Christian Trumpism, it has rapidly moved from the margins to the center of religious right organizing in the U.S. and globally.”
Yes. Yes, it has.
And that, dear friends, should scare the shit out of all of us.
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Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link.