The Spirit of the Antichrist

How the evangelical right has come to turn against what Jesus stood for.

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We have seen how seriously so many of America’s early evangelicals embraced the community-affirming commandment to “love your neighbor as yourself.” So seriously, in fact, that it inspired them to actively oppose chattel slavery, to organize to offer succor to the needy, and to decry the economic exploitation of the masses.

In God’s name, they have visited upon our nation a plague of lies, a harvest of hate, the rotted fruit of unchecked corruption and moral chaos, and unleashed levels of racial antipathy and xenophobia.

So how, then, has the love-affirming evangelicalism of the past become today’s forward legion of division and exclusion, a raging Christian faction openly supporting persons and policies that are essentially antithetical to the message of Jesus Christ?

I believe an answer is offered by the very Bible that evangelicals profess to live by. They have succumbed to what the First Epistle of John in the New Testament calls “the spirit of the antichrist,” 1 John 4:3

Now, when I use this term I am not talking about a monstrous supernatural being like the “beast” in the Book of Revelation (which, by the way, never mentions an antichrist). No, what I’m talking about are ideologies and public pronouncements that cynically distort the teachings of Christ—in the name of Christ—to serve the interests of a particular individual or group.

It is a spirit of antichrist that has weaponized rightwing evangelicals to support and even lead assaults on truth and decency; to cosign expressions of hate rather than striving to spread love; to spew spiteful invective against other faiths rather than accepting them as fellow children of God; and, most appallingly, to extol Donald Trump as God’s chosen vessel in the highest corridors of earthly power, even as his malevolent words and deeds dishonored God by sowing chaos and deadly disunion among us.

Rather than striving to build harmony, these evangelicals applauded the construction of spiteful walls of division. Rather than standing on moral consistency, they offered shameless excuses for the rankest of hypocrisies. Rather than suing for peace, they embraced the death-dealing agenda of the National Rifle Association. Rather than spreading gospel affection, they demonized Muslims and “liberals” and accused those who question them of being part of absurd, murderous conspiracies.

How did this come to pass? Who or what caused modern-day rightwing evangelicals to be possessed by this spirit of antichrist?

Signs of this transformation can be found in evangelists’ outraged opposition to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

But their full possession by a spirit of antichrist can be considered to have occurred when their leaders made a devil’s bargain with Donald Trump to defend his avalanche of lies, hate mongering, blatant moral indecency, and outright attacks on the democratic rule of law in return for his support of their agenda to dominate American society. For this, they chose to ignore all that Jesus has taught about truth, compassion, and care for community, while eschewing the love-leavened lessons of the Good Samaritan, the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Mount.

It is because of this spirit of antichrist that dominating American society is now more important to rightwing evangelicals than maintaining the integrity of the Christian Gospel, more important than honesty or love or care for those who look to them for truthful guidance and nurturance. In God’s name, they have visited upon our nation a plague of lies, a harvest of hate, the rotted fruit of unchecked corruption and moral chaos, and unleashed levels of racial antipathy and xenophobia.  

Not only is their worldview not loving, not generous, not socially inclusive, but the notion of religious freedom they extol extends no farther than their own ranks. They have so savaged the social justice legacy of their evangelical forebears that it is now unrecognizable.

Along with the rest of the world, rightwing evangelicals witnessed four years of Trump’s myriad depredations—his voluminous lies, his reprehensible corruption, his racism, and disregard for democratic norms and rule of law. With the rest of us, they witnessed his callous betrayal of his presidential oath to protect the American people with his refusal for months to alert us to the true deadliness of the COVID-19 virus, which has caused more than a half million deaths, many of which could have been prevented.

As President, Trump repeatedly failed to offer a comprehensive plan to address the horrendous toll in human suffering caused by the pandemic, along with his other ungodly assaults on the peace and well-being of U.S. society. Yet 76 percent of white evangelicals still voted to re-elect him. This is an abdication of moral authority of a magnitude not seen in this country since the widely entrenched Christian defense of human enslavement.

Will rightwing evangelicals ever reclaim their moral authority? That is hard to say. They do not seem to realize that they have lost their moral bearings and, therefore, are making no effort to regain them.

But if one day they should seek to become fully worthy of the faith identity they claim, they would have to confront the insidious evil of their white supremacist roots and the destructive false assumptions of their Christian nationalism. They would have to admit to and repent for the political and moral carnage they have helped to wreak upon American society.

They would have to strive with as much effort and conviction to repair the rends in America’s social fabric as they incited to tear it apart. All this would take an inclination to humility and comity that they have yet to evince.

Many rightwing evangelicals remain unmovably mired in racism and incivility. Those persons will not change. They are comfortable with their evil. Yet, although so much of what rightwing evangelicals believe is terribly wrong, I believe that many of them are sincerely wrong; that is to say that they are sincere about their faith but have been woefully misled in its application.

Thus, perhaps there is a measure of hope for the movement one day.