‘The Antichrist’ is an age-old slant against dissent

Like much of our vocabulary the word anti-Christ has a long and colorful origin story. It has been, for hundreds of years, used by Christians to countenance murder. You might say it is the original hate speech.

The concept of an anti-Christ was first developed as foretelling of a final persecutor in the Book of Daniel. Written in about 167 B.C., scholars now agree that the text refers to the Hellenistic ruler of Palestine, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who was making a credible attempt at the time to annihilate Judaism and all who practiced it. But because the writer doesn’t name the ruler specifically early Christians applied the passage to the Roman emperors who were persecuting them and the early Christian church.

Building on the concept of the “coming persecutor” derived from Daniel’s writing, in the New Testament we have the first two epistles of John, the Revelation to John, and the Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians, all referencing either a coming persecutor, or an anti-Christ.

Early Christians seized on the passages describing a single, cataclysmic, Antichrist: “the Beast from the Abyss,” (Revelation 17:7), “the man of sin” who will come in a time when belief is in decline, deceive people with “signs and wonders,” and even claim to be God himself (Thessalonians 2:1-12).

Because Thessalonians is a bit thin on physical description and detail medieval theologians supplied additional color to flesh out the Antichrist. Drawing on logic, for example, if the Antichrist is the anthesis of Christ, and Christ was born of a virgin, the Antichrist must be born of a whore, conceived by an evil spirt.

Unfortunately, while my father might have gotten up to some devilry in his youth, he is most definitely not an evil spirit. More’s the pity.

While largely ignored by the early church the first epistle of John does introduce a distinction between “The Antichrist,” the one to come who will create chaos and “anti-Christs” living contemporarily. This distinction allows Christians to label anyone they find distasteful an anti-Christ without having to label a single individual The Antichrist.

This is a useful rhetorical device that allows the church to designate any hated ruler, from Nero to Peter the Great to Benito Mussolini, as The Antichrist, but absent a day of judgement shortly following the decline of The Antichrist it can be allowed that this anti-Christ was not The Antichrist, just one of the many that walk among us, seeding temptation and chaos in their wake.

It’s a neat sleight of hand we like to call a “logical fallacy,” one that has worked nicely for both the Catholic and Protestant churches. In the 16th century the view that the Antichrist was embodied in either an institution (Martin Luther focused on the papacy as the Antichrist, rather than any individual pope) or spread out among unbelievers hostile to the Christian church become accepted dogma.

The idea of the anti-Christ (small a) embodied by an individual or institution allowed either church to demonize those of other faiths, primarily the Jewish and Muslim, but also go after freethinkers within its own ranks, or Christians foolish enough to follow the other brand, with cheery Spanish Inquisition zeal.

Given this history of demonizing, then murdering, those who don’t profess complete agreement with the tenants of either Christian based belief system, branding someone The Antichrist comes perilously close to hate speech and incitement to violence. It is not a perfunctory slur. The term anti-Christ has been used to demonize and destroy entire communities. It is an excuse for a pogrom, a justification for throwing people on a pyre.

Although finding out that I am the Antichrist caused one friend to shoot me a message dripping with disappointment saying, “You are the Antichrist?”, so apparently, I have fallen short of spreading chaos and discontent expectations. My husband grumbled that surely the spawn of Satan should have warmer feet when they come to bed.

In her book “Take Back the Game” Linda Flanagan outlines how less public funding for youth sports created an opportunity for private enterprise and church-based organizations like the Catholic Youth Organization to take control of local sports. Church-based youth sports are a multi-million-dollar business in the United States. For example, Upward Sports “partners with churches to leverage sports in the community,” and reported total assets in 2021 of $53 million.

Outreach Magazine, which offers “big Ideas on how your church can reach people with the Gospel” tells its readers youth sports build health and self-esteem, but the “kids involved in Upward Basketball and Cheerleading … also have the chance to learn about God.” Upward Sports works with over 2,000 churches, influencing some half million children. One local program estimates fully a third of the youth in their program are “unchurched,” or, put another way, not Christians.

But to participate, athletes and coaches are required to incorporate “devotions” into every practice, and five minutes of scripted prayer “to help players “develop spiritually.” Coaches are required not only to check the box marked yes that they have a commitment to Christ, but to further “explain my personal relationship with Jesus.”

In the abstract declaring an op-ed writer the Antichrist because they don’t believe public funds should be drained to pay for religious indoctrination is a bit silly. In the concrete evangelical Christians and Southern Baptists fuel some of the most hate-driven ideologies and zealotry, including xenophobia, rabid antisemitism and withholding necessary emergency care from women when it conflicts with their peculiar belief system.

Martin Luther had the right of it. The Antichrist is likely not an individual, no matter how colorful, outspoken or disagreeable. But in the institutions that empower men to hate in the name of a loving god.

Tamara Burke and her family were longtime residents of Stowe, leaving the Garnache-Morrison Memorial Forest as a gift to the community. She and her husband, the sheep, and a riot of golden retrievers now call Craftsbury home. She continues to work in Stowe.