Charlie Kirk: Part 6: Did He Represent the Church?

Time for a little theology on this fine day.

One of the comments I see most often regarding Charlie Kirk is that he represented the church in dark places, in the unwelcoming halls of higher education, and so forth. First of all, I have spent a lot of my life around higher education institutions, and none of them have been all that antagonistic to Christians or Christian belief, and as you might imagine, I’m not particularly shy about it. So, I’m not sure how unwelcoming it really was, but we’ll leave that aside for now.

The question I’d like to look at in this post is whether Charlie Kirk represented the Church. And we can’t talk about that addressing two of the big heresy’s in church today: The Seven Mountains Mandate and Christian Nationalism. (i’m using the term heresy a little loosely here, more in the sense of “false teaching,” or “idolatry.”)

First off, you have to understand that these are not “denominations” or organizations, they are movements. They are groups of people, pastors, writers, self-proclaimed prophets, and so forth that have a similar understanding of the Bible and God’s work in the world. There are a lot of people that fall into these camps that would never know they were actually following the Mandate and would never call themselves Christian Nationalists. So let’s see what they teach and go from there.

Seven Mountain Mandate

I’m trying to keep these posts somewhat short (shutup. I am.), so I don’t want to get into it all, and you can obviously do your own googling, but in a nutshell, the idea is that Christians need to “take” several areas of influence for Christ: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government.

Originally (to give them the benefit of the doubt here), the idea was that these seven areas should be “targets” of evangelism. We should have a witness to the world of education (Christians as teachers, professors, scholars, and so forth), we should have Christians that are witnessing to actors and directors, we should have Christians that are connected to the government, and so forth.

But then Lance Wallnau, C. Peter Wagner, and others got ahold of it, and it switched into domination, not evangelism. It’s morphed into the idea that Christians need to “capture” these areas, through whatever means necessary. This is where you get the idea of “godless hollywood,” “leftist Higher Education,” and so forth. If Christians aren’t in control of these areas, we need to take them at whatever the cost.

In particular, since taking these other areas takes a lot of work and time, they tend to focus on capturing political (temporal) power in order to accomplish spiritual goals, and it switched into domination, not evangelism. This is where it crosses into Christian nationalism. If you’ve ever heard the idea that we need to pass laws to make America a Christian nation, this is that. It’s saying “we don’t think we can convince people at the personal level that Jesus’ way is better, so let’s do it through the legal process.”

This is often tied to conservative politics . If you’ve ever heard the line “traditional values,” that’s what this is. It’s not Biblical values, no matter how many times people try to equate them. You will not find the nuclear family held up as a model in Scripture. It has not been the model of the church or the world for most of history, or even around the world today. It was the model for a small set of middle class and wealthy white people in mid-20th century America, and people like James Dobson have raised that to the “Biblical ideal.” It’s simply not true. (feel free to google the family lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, or Solomon. How many of the disciples were married? Did they live with extended family? Did Paul talk about the nuclear family? Is there a verse about 2 cars in the driveway, a roast in the oven, and a picket fence around the yard? )

NAR

Moreover, people who promote this view are often prominent members of the New Apostolic Reformation, a charismatic group of self-proclaimed “prophets,” (Paula White, Bill Johnson, and Johnny Enlow, for example) which I will go on record saying are downright unBiblical. They claim to get visions from God on a regular basis, and seem to have no problem when they’re wrong. This is the group who talks about angelic help from Africa and “blowing away” COVID and so forth. Even I think they’re pretty wackyadoodle, and I’m a born and bred Pentecostal.

There’s a lot of talk about Revelation, End Times, and prophecy, and everything takes on an apocalyptic tone. Elections become “spiritual battles,” where the Good side (the conservative side) is fighting with God’s power against the evil, demon-influence Bad side (the liberals). The liberals must be defeated because otherwise evil will reign, our nation may be destroyed, God won’t bless us, and any other terrible thing you can imagine.

As you might suspect, this is the group President Trump has around him as his “evangelical advisors,” people like Paula White especially. I do not believe these people represent even mainstream evangelicalism, much less the wider church. So it’s a little concerning this is the “spiritual direction” of the country

This is the group and belief system behind what I believe is the most dominant false belief of our time (in America) – Christian Nationalism. The idea that America was founded and should be a “Christian” nation, that Christians need to rule and force out others who disagree, and notably that conservative politics are the same as Biblical truths. This is rampant in my circles, and it’s one of the reason why I felt compelled to write these posts. The next one will get into this more.

So, the question is,

Was Charlie Kirk a believer in the Seven Mountain Mandate?

First of all, I think you can see some of the similar belief systems. Kirk clearly thought America needed to be more Christian. He once said we shouldn’t have any more immigrants from India, unless they were Christian.

He clearly talked about elections as a spiritual battle, and acted like every political thing RIGHT NOW was the most important thing ever.

Some of the common phrases from Mandate speakers are:
Christians should be the “head and not the tail,” talking about cultural arenas as “pillars,” “shapers,” “molders,” and “spheres.” Those who follow the seven mountain mandate speak of “occupying” the mountains, “invading” the culture, and “transforming” or “taking back” society.

I think Charlie Kirk used a lot of these and similar phrases frequently, the “taking back” our country especially.

He referenced a common Mandate phrase of “The Bible says very clearly to ‘Occupy until I come'”, which is talking about the parable of the talents, but has come to be used as a command to dominate cultural areas in Jesus’ name.

If you’ve googled Charlie Kirk and Seven Mountain Mandate, you will see that his organization put out a statement saying that “Charlie wouldn’t even know what the seven mountains are.” However, I would argue that the people he associated with and the ideas he espoused were heavily influenced. At the 2020 CPAC, he said “but I’ll tell you finally we have a president [Trump] that understands the seven mountains of cultural influence.” I mean, if it walks like a duck.

I would argue that the Seven Mountain Mandate and Christian Nationalism are a perversion of the true Gospel of Jesus Christ. They are about taking control and using power to force people to behave correctly, or silence them. That is not the way of turning the other cheek, giving water to our enemies, or allowing ourselves to be wronged.

Jesus is not about taking cultural high places – he specifically avoided Jerusalem during most of his ministry and worked in far-off Galilee. Paul even directly says “Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”(I Corinthians 1:26-29).

I do not think the NAR or the associated movements represent that self-sacrifice, that lowering of oneself, that becoming less so He can become more. I think their message has permeated many in the American church, whether they know it or not. It comes hidden in terms of patriotism, protecting our children, restoring a Christian nation, and “just standing for truth.” I think they have done a lot of damage to the faith of many people.

And unfortunately, Charlie Kirk was one of their loudest mouth pieces, especially to young people.