Loren Cunningham’s teaching on ‘the seven spheres’ is being distorted by a movement some warn could become a great religious threat to American democracy. 

Weekly Word focuses on issues facing Europeans today, occasionally touching on American issues when they affect us here in Europe.

As Loren is often quoted as a source of the controversial ‘Seven Mountain Mandate’, let me offer my observations. 

Loren first shared his new understanding of the ‘classrooms’ through which nations could be discipled in the summer of 1975, at a Youth With A Mission conference in Chichester, England.

I had met Loren eight years earlier on his first visit to New Zealand when I was seventeen and he a mere 32 years – before there were any YWAM schools or bases anywhere.

Now aged 40, Loren related his new understanding about six ‘classrooms’ or ‘mind moulders’ through which a nation could be taught the ways of God: church, family, arts and entertainment, media, education and government. 

Chichester was my first involvement with YWAM in Europe, and I was a little unsure of the movement I was joining. But now I pricked up my ears.

What Loren was saying resonated reassuringly with what Francis Schaeffer had taught for years from his L’Abri centre in the Swiss alps. Schaeffer’s books had greatly helped me through my student years when struggling to relate my faith and my studies.

They tapped into the long Calvinist tradition based on the sovereignty of God over all of life.

I was also relieved that Loren’s ‘classrooms’ sounded like the ‘spheres’ of Dutchman Abraham Kuyper from nearly a century earlier, also based on Calvin’s teaching. Maybe there would be room for me in YWAM, I thought.

Yet as Loren explained his new awareness that missions involved more than just evangelism, he made no reference to the classic Reformed thinking that had transformed Geneva, and shaped countries including Scotland, England and the Netherlands.

With his Pentecostal background, he was probably unaware of it, I thought. He then described sharing his revelation with Bill Bright of Campus Crusade, who around the same time had had a similar ‘epiphany’.

Bright’s own list of nine ‘zones’ was spelt out a decade later in his book, Kingdoms at War: Tactics for Victory in Nine Spiritual War Zones.

Seven spheres

Over time, Loren’s original list of six became seven, now widely known in YWAM circles as ‘the Seven Spheres’, economics being added later.

I still have my original notes on the six ‘classrooms’ from Loren’s first presentation on my reporter’s notebook. I remember a discussion following Loren’s talk that maybe ‘business’ ought to be included. 

As the story got retold, Bill’s list of nine ‘spiritual war zones’ became ‘exactly the same’ as Loren’s.

Schaeffer too was added to those ‘receiving the same revelation’ that summer, when in actuality his whole theological training had been steeped in Calvinism.  

Much later, others took the story further, repackaging it as ‘Seven Mountains’ to be conquered in Jesus’ name. Loren also began referring to the ‘seven mountains’, adding ‘or classrooms’, talking of Caleb who said: ‘Give me this mountain’.

In my understanding, Loren (who passed away over a year ago) was not encouraging others to ‘storm these mountains’ or take them by force.

Rather, he was urging faithful engagement in the various spheres of life, as salt and light, as yeast, as planted mustard seeds.

Our Christian presence would bring new life into each sphere, much as the presence and expansion of the early church eventually turned the Roman Empire upside down. A bottom-up approach.

Others however took Bright’s reference to Nine Spiritual War Zones, and book titles like Taking our cities for God as license to take control of each of these spheres, even forcibly if necessary.

A book entitled Invading Babylon, written about the time of the Iraqi invasion, reflected this thinking – in contrast to Jeremiah’s instructions to the exiles in Babylon to ‘seek the welfare of the city’.

This was a top-down approach, involving force if necessary. One well-known prophetic figure I personally met years ago has been openly urging American Christians to stock arms in preparation for a civil war.

Straight line

Unfortunately – and incredibly –  a straight line can be traced from this distorted interpretation of Loren’s and Bill’s teaching to the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Matthew Taylor’s recent book, The violent take it by force, explores the trail of a movement of evangelical and charismatic Christians inspired by the so-called Seven Mountains Mandate to wage spiritual battles on a massive scale.

Known as the New Apostolic Reformation, this network of leaders and believers, ‘apostles and prophets’ – several of whom I have encountered myself over the decades – has emerged to yield huge influence on millions.

Their unconventional theology has led to mountain-climbing spiritual warfare expeditions against the Queen of Heaven in the Himalayas, and to the attempt to take control of the Capitol, with rioters blowing shofars, blaring out worship music, and kneeling in prayer, attempting to overturn the election results. 

Taylor warns that Christianity in America has not been this divided since the eve of the Civil War. He urges Christians to speak to these differences and build bridges.

The ‘Seven Mountain Mandate’ is now being used to promote Christian nationalism and Christian supremacy, writes Taylor, accelerating extreme polarisation and sometimes sparking real-world violence.

Yet Loren taught on ‘responding in the opposite spirit’. Jesus taught us to love our neighbours. And our enemies. Who will we follow?