Arts and entertainment: the mountain the church left standing empty

Genesis 1:28 did not carve out an exception for storytellers.

The dominion mandate in Genesis 1:28 puts every sphere of creation under the stewardship of those made in God's image, and it does not stop at the edge of a soundstage or a publishing house. Matthew 5:13-16 calls believers salt and light, not a quiet minority content to let the culture season and light itself. Salt that never touches the meat preserves nothing. Light kept under a basket illuminates nothing. A Christian who writes brilliant fiction and never lets it reach a shelf, or who can sing but never records, has taken the light and hidden it exactly where Matthew 5 said not to put it.

The Great Commission in Matthew 28:18-20 sends believers to make disciples of nations, not just of individuals hunting for a church on Sunday. A nation's imagination runs through its stories long before it runs through its sermons. Psalm 33:12 NKJV says "Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD," but a nation learns what it believes about God largely by watching what its screens and its speakers keep telling it, week after week, whether anyone in a pulpit is paying attention or not.

Reclaiming a mountain does not start with a boycott.

The instinct many Christians reach for is to criticize what Hollywood or the music industry puts out, and then walk away feeling like something was accomplished. Criticism from the sidelines never once retook a mountain. Retaking a mountain means someone picks up the instrument, the camera, the manuscript, and does the work with the same excellence and patience that built a policy institute or a school. It means treating a novelist's craft, a songwriter's ear, a filmmaker's eye, as a calling as serious as a lawyer's brief or a legislator's bill, because it shapes just as many lives, arguably more, since a story reaches people who would never open a policy paper at all.

This is the argument at the center of Divine Disruption: Restoring America to God's Providence: engagement across all seven mountains, arts and entertainment included, is the stewardship a nation whose God is the Lord requires, carried through its stories as much as through its statutes.

The mountain is not going to sit there waiting patiently for the church to come back to it. It never has. Someone is telling the story right now. The only open question is whether anyone building from a Christian conviction is willing to pick up the pen and tell it instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why single out arts and entertainment as abandoned when Christians work in every industry?

Individual believers working in film, music, and publishing is not the same as the church treating those crafts as a mission field worth building institutions around. Other mountains, like education and government, have decades of Christian-founded organizations, schools, and legal groups behind them. Arts and entertainment largely does not, which is why the culture's stories are shaped overwhelmingly by people with no stake in a biblical worldview.

What does the Seven Mountains Mandate actually say about arts and entertainment?

It names arts and entertainment, meaning film, music, and literature, as one of seven spheres of cultural influence believers are called to engage, alongside religion, family, education, government, media, and business. The framework holds that culture is shaped by the stories a society tells itself, and that abandoning any one mountain simply hands that sphere's influence to whoever is willing to occupy it.

Isn't focusing on culture instead of policy a distraction from real change?

No, because policy follows culture more often than it leads it. A nation's laws tend to reflect what its stories have already convinced people is normal or unthinkable. A believer who only engages government while ignoring the songs and films shaping the next generation's assumptions is treating the symptom while leaving the cause alone.

How does this connect to the broader argument in Divine Disruption?

The book argues that restoring America to God's providence requires engagement across all seven mountains, not selective retreat into the ones that feel safest or most familiar. Arts and entertainment is presented as the mountain most in need of believers willing to build with the same seriousness already given to law, education, and business.