Antichrist Clarification Hotline

I wish to get ahead of a matter.

A few weeks ago, I was honored and pleased as punch to see a conversation I had with Greg Garrett published online. I’ve followed his work for many years and draw courage from his witness which often seems to operate alongside and sometimes a few steps ahead of mine (not that this is a race) despite the fact that we’re so far apart geographically. The conversation can be accessed here. We talked whiteness and conflict avoidance and Adrianne Lenker and LeBron James and Sarah McCammon and Republicans and art and antichrist. Please read it.

Yes, antichrist. I do not say that Public Servant 45 is the antichrist. But I do affix the word to an effort. The effort is one tentacle, if you like, of a multi-headed manifesting here there and yon. I speak of GodblessTheUSA.com. If you’re like a lot of people following news in these United States, you’ve probably forgotten about it already. But I hope you haven’t forgotten about antichrist. It names a thing. It matters how we name a thing.

Yes, the second letter to the church community of Thessaloniki refers to “a man of lawlessness.” But I still don’t think of antichrist as a person. Do I think my governor and both my United States Senators and my representative in my House of Representatives have succumbed to a spirit of antichrist when they tweet calls to prayer and Bible verses and hop on their official government social media accounts to target brave jurors in New York City? I do. I really do.

This doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible or legally liable for their behavior. It just means a spirit—I’m comfortable calling it a spirit—is in play. I’m good with calling it an energy too.

But by affirming this, I do not intend to say they are antichrist. They are like children who have gone astray. They are also, in their current state, a threat to themselves and others. They’ve also been badly betrayed by their church communities—if the organizations that faith launder their grift can be rightly spoken of as church communities. I’ve said as much before. Almost two years ago, actually. Right here. A number of folks who used to invite me out for coffee stopped inviting me out for coffee after it dropped. So it goes.

But I’m not done with antichrist. I still think it a helpful term for naming an energy that gets holds of people. When I add some syllables to it, I’m even comfortable describing it as one part of a constellation of sad interests that have gotten hold of little old me every so often. It’s in that book I go on and on about.

So…let the record show…I, David Dark, being of sound mind (so far as I can tell), have not referred to any one person as the antichrist.

Given the weaponization of the word “antichrist,” I don’t recommend its deployment in most contexts, but I think it can be deployed meaningfully in some. And if “identity in Jesus Christ” is the preferred parlance of a governor who’s executed a pastor and targeted his own sister and forbidden the teaching of history in public schools and made of Tennessee a forced-birth state, it might be time to offer a life-sustaining theology as an alternative to the weapons-grade theology within which “identity in Jesus Christ” functions as a cheat code for publicly abusive people. More on that here from Governor Bill Lee and Andrew T. Walker of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Baptists, right? Right?!

Wrong! There’s more than one kind of Baptist in this beautiful world. Yes, there’s Baptists like Speaker Mike Johnson and Mitch McConnell and Al Mohler and Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton and Dan Darling and Brent Leatherwood and James Lankford. But those are Southern Baptists. Not that all Southern Baptists are alike. There’s as many different ways of being Southern Baptists as there are Southern Baptists. May they all find hope and healing in a wide variety of contexts. Also, hear this: I don’t think any Southern Baptist pundit, politician, or influence peddler is the antichrist. *raises hand* Aslan’s paws. I mean it.

In any case, I wish to lift up the words of one Baptist thinker in particular. I speak of Mark Wingfield of Baptist News Global. I’ve placed a screen grab below. But you can link to his piece here. I don’t want to gush, but Mark, like Greg Garrett, is my kind of Baptist.

I share Mark’s work, because I treasure his very direct approach. He calls particular pastors who’ve chosen to disgrace and debase themselves and humiliate their families liars. He deploys the concept of antichrist specifically and carefully. I believe he’s right to do so.

If calls for armed violence against those who don’t accept a particular leader as above the law…issued by those who claim Christ isn’t a form of antichrist, I don’t know what is.

And again, this might be insider-baseball for those of us for whom the word “Christ” has meaning. For those tuning in and for whom that word means little or nothing, feel free to sit this one out.

Here’s the thing: Politics isn’t always theology. But theology is always politics. And politics is always a contact sport. Theology too.

Some theology is a threat to public safety. As Sarah Dark has been overheard to say: Keep your ministry to yourself.

Some theology is a brutal fantasy concerning God and oneself and others. To be overcome, it must first be confronted. This is me confronting it. Nonviolently. I’ve said what I’ve said.

People, mind your people.

Editor’s note: The first image above is culled from the promotional material of The Omen (1976). The second image is from an extraordinarily controversial book called We Become What We Normalize.