Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ | Matthew Fox

The following is an excerpt from Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ by Matthew Fox. It’s a featured Speakeasy selection, and there are still limited review copies available for qualified reviewers.

Recently I underwent an “Aha!” moment on visiting a church in Orvieto, Italy. I was in town to teach a week course on the Spirituality of Thomas Aquinas in honor of the 800th anniversary of his birth and 750th anniversary of his death. This particular church was a beautiful and art-filled Cathedral begun in the 13th century (shortly after Aquinas lived) and it contained a renowned painting by Luca Signorelli entitled “The Antichrist.” I reproduce that painting on the cover and inside of this book (see pages 38-41 below). Accompanying me in the church was my Italian friend Gianluigi Gugliermetto (GG) a fellow Episcopal priest who did his theological studies at Claremont University in California and has translated a number of my books into Italian. Indeed, part of my trip to Italy was to give two talks on the most recent book he has translated, that on The Reinvention of Work. (Which they called in Italian, Work as Life.)

The “Aha!” moment occurred when Gianluigi and I were looking at the giant painting entitled the “Antichrist” which covered an entire wall in a large chapel within the Cathedral of the Assumption. Painted at the very beginning of the sixteenth century, it inspired Michelangelo and other painters.

My first response on looking at the large fresco on the left wall on the Antichrist came from my gut, not my head. On viewing it, I said out loud: “It feels like Donald Trump.” The principal figure was preaching to a sizeable crowd of people, a number of whom were in rapt attention. He had sort of a hair problem as his hair stood up in two places and resembled horns. There was a demon whispering in his ear telling him what to say.

As one looked more carefully at the crowd in the painting, one saw a number of people who had been beaten up by persons listening to this preacher. There was violence and hostility afoot in the crowd. There were some groups of people set off from the crowd arguing with one another and apparently disagreeing with the speaker and in the back, there were what one person calls “ninja-like figures” dressed in all black outfits spread out on the steps of a huge church that left an impression of darkness and menace. Indeed, Nicholas Fox Weber compares the men in black outfits “dancing their hideous dance” to the Ku Klux Klan.

Until I saw that painting in Orvieto I had always shied away from speaking about the “Antichrist.” I felt that kind of apocalyptic language was owned too much by fundamentalist ideologues and was too subject to manipulation.

However, given the realities of today’s Armageddon-like atmosphere with many nations reverting to fascist ways in their politics and elevating leaders who are outspoken radical right revolutionaries; and with powerful corporations such as the Koch brothers, the Heritage Foundation, Opus Dei and others striving mightily to end democracy as we know it; and with white supremacism on the rise and so-called “Christian nationalism” represented in very high places; and a now completely compromised unsupreme court; and the fascist “Project 2025” being offered as a blueprint for a second Trumpian presidency, I am struck anew by the power of the Antichrist archetype.

What is clear from this rich painting with 156 different characters in it by my count is what a contemporary twist the painter put on the archetype of the Antichrist. Instead of conceiving of the Antichrist as a future event, he pictures his presence in his own day amidst both ordinary and famous people—Christopher Columbus, Dante and the artist himself all play a role in this fresco. The artist is pictured in the left-hand corner observing the theatrical scene alongside esteemed artist Fra Angelico who also contributed paintings in the chapel. It has been suggested also that the artist and the Antichrist share the same visage.

This gives us permission to speak of the Antichrist in the context of today’s political and moral landscape—which is what my intention is in offering this book as a commentary on the news of our day.

Many pundits have observed how the Republican party under Trump has become less a party than a “cult.” But they have not specified what kind of cult it is. In this book I raise the question: It this cult a 21st century version of a Cult of the Antichrist?

The Antichrist is a symbol found in apocalyptic literature of the Bible and has often appeared in Christian history such as in the powerful painting by Signorelli in the Orvieto Cathedral in the early 16th century—a painting that “bowled over” Sigmund Freud and was “like a bomb” in his life (see chapter one). Many others have been similarly struck by the painting, including myself. We explore its meaning vis-à-vis evil in chapter two. And its opposite, Christ, in chapter three. And its fuller meaning as archetype in chapter four. And we consider how Jesus, as 14th century mystic and prophet Meister Eckhart interprets him, was a precursor of democracy (chapter five). In chapter six we address what may be a deeper meaning to the acronym MAGA and in chapter seven we name 18 elements of the Antichrist in American politics today. (18 is the summary number of 666, a number associated with the Antichrist.) In chapter eight we consider the paintings and teachings of 12th century abbess, saint and doctor of the church, Hildegard of Bingen, who connects the archetype directly to patriarchy. In the Conclusion we offer practical advice on arming oneself and society against succumbing to allurements of the Antichrist aura and mystique. We share ten pictures in the center of this book, two painted by Hildegard—one of Christ and another of the Antichrist; and 8 from the frescoes by Fra Angelico and Luca Signorelli. The cover is a closeup from Signorelli’s Antichrist painting.

This is my third book on Evil. My first, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, sought to develop a new language for talking about evil by relating the wisdom of the East with the wisdom of the West on the topic. The second, The Pope’s War: How Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved, took a hard look at evil in institutional religion and culture through two papacies in my lifetime. And now this, that looks at evil through the archetype of the Antichrist with the help of artists such as Hildegard of Bingen and Luca Signorelli and the author of the Book of Revelation.

Recall that not only did Hildegard and Signorelli employ the language of the Antichrist, but Martin Luther did so from the year 1520 to his death 25 years later. After studying Lorenzo Valla’s denunciation of the alleged Donation of Constantine as a forgery in 1520, Luther applied the trope first to the curia and then to the pope. He cited Matthew 24: 2, Thessalonians 2:9, Daniel 2, 7, 8, 9 and the Book of Revelation chapters 13, 14, 17 and 18 in making his case. Eventually other reformers including Zwingli, Calvin, Knox and Cramner applied the Antichrist symbol to the papacy of their day as well. So applying the Antichrist archetype as we do in this book to Trump and the MAGA world and its values is not at all without precedent.

Any discussion of evil must be wrapped in a larger context understood as an Original Blessing, to seeing the history of the universe for what it is: An unfathomable gift and mystery of goodness and grace that has brought us forward along with countless other species and galaxies and planets. That we wrestle with evil is integral to our existence. But existence itself remains an ineffable mystery evoking ongoing beauty, wonder, awe—and one hopes—gratitude in return.

Praise for Trump & the MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ

“If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world.”
—Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine

“Matthew Fox is our living elder statesman of the authentic Christian mystical tradition. This book may be the most important of all the great and pioneering works he has graced us with over five decades as our greatest living Christian theologian.”
—Andrew Harvey, author of The Son of Man: The Mystical Path to Christ and Love is Everything: A Year with Hadewijch of Antwerp

About the Author

Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest, is author of 43 books on culture and spirituality including Original Blessing, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, A Spirituality Named Compassion, and The Reinvention of Work. His honors include the Abbey Courage of Conscience Peace Award (other recipients include the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks and Maya Angelou), the Gandhi-King-Ikeda Award from Morehouse College, Atlanta, the Tikkun Ethics Award and the International Sufi Humanities Award.

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