It’s been clear for some time that the religious right is losing the battle for the young–bigly. A 2014 study by the Brookings Institution revealed that the religious right is speaking mostly to an audience in their 50s and older. More importantly, the great majority of Generation Xers and millennials who identify as religious tilt left. While only 36 percent of religious conservatives are 48 or younger, a whopping 56 percent of religious progressives are 48 or younger.
The facts seem to bear this data out. Most of the religious right’s main heavyweights are in their 50s, and there aren’t many people younger than 40 waiting in the wings. But one prominent fundie is trying to change that–and in the process, hasten along a larger strategy of taking over the world.
You may know Lance Wallnau as one of the loudest religious right cheerleaders for Donald Trump. But before then, he was known as one of the main architects of the “Seven Mountains strategy.” That’s the idea that Christians must take over the seven forces, or “mountains,” that influence our culture–business, education, entertainment, media, education, family, religion, and government. According to this line of thinking, once this takeover happens under the leadership of so-called “apostles” and “prophets,” Jesus can come back.
Watch Wallnau explain it here.
And here.
Late Monday night, Wallnau blasted out an email to his followers asking them to check out a post on his blog about his effort to stop Christian millennials from leaving the faith. He claimed that some 70 percent of Christians who go off to college end up losing their faith by the time they graduate. Apparently Wallnau wants us to take him at his word. He doesn’t provide a link to this supposed survey, and I haven’t been able to find any data that supports this contention.
But such things don’t stop Wallnau from warning his audience that they should be prepared for their kids to “MEET THE ENEMY” (emphasis in the original) when they go to college. More often than not, Wallnau says, born-again millennials simply aren’t prepared to withstand “the pressures of professors, employers, and peers.” He believes this is at least in part due to the “bubble boy” mentality still practiced in much of the evangelical world–a world of homeschooling or Christian private school, filtered Internet service, and the likes of Pat Robertson, David Barton, and Bryan Fischer as news sources alongside Fox News.
Wallnau tells his followers that they face an enemy that has “pulled out all its stops” in its effort to “reprogram the mind(s) of Americans”–particularly millennials. To that end, he has devised a six-day summer camp in July called “7m Gen Camp.” Watch a promo for it here.
The camp will be held at Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries in Fort Mill, South Carolina–on the site of the old Heritage USA complex. Wallnau is a member of the board of Joyner’s Oak Initiative, a “grassroots organization” intended to mobilize “effective leaders” in the Seven Mountains.
Wallnau intends to use this camp to give 16-24 year olds the tools they need to “stand against the world if necessary.” To that end, he wants to help campers form “cohort groups” that will form the foundation for a “great awakening” on high school and college campuses. For that reason, he calls them “the 7m Gen”–an army of “Joshuas and Calebs” who will be “taking land from the enemy in their lifetime.” We know what that “land” is–the areas of culture that are supposedly under the devil’s control.
As Wallnau sees it, these kids are part of an “untapped aristocracy” not like those who are part of a legacy of attending Ivy League schools. He believes they are much more than that–“a special generation of young princes and prophetesses.”
This is very familiar to me. I experienced this during my own college days at the University of North Carolina, when I was tricked into joining a hypercharismatic campus ministry that preached a message almost identical to what Wallnau is preaching. We were told that we were “strategically placed” in different areas of campus in order to win people to Jesus. We also had it drilled into our heads that people hated us “because of what we believe.”
I have to wonder, though–would people be flocking to this camp if they knew it was being run by a fraud? You’ll notice that Wallnau calls himself “Dr. Wallnau.” However, his doctorate actually comes from Phoenix University of Theology International, a school that allows full-time ministers to earn degrees with “life experience” as the equivalent of course credit. As it turns out, PUT is actually a diploma mill. There are no set course requirements even though students pay a fee to get a degree. Moreover, it isn’t accredited–meaning that “normal” PUT degrees are essentially worthless.
But then again, most of Wallnau’s audience may not know this–ironically, because of the very bubble mentality that inspired him to open this camp. Sounds like this is a tacit admission that Wallnau knows that he and his fellow fundies are swimming against the tide.
(featured image courtesy Wallnau’s Facebook)
