Is the Anti-Christ Among Us?

I spent several of my teen years in friendship and what we termed fellowship with evangelical Christians. To this day I am grateful for the encouragement to experience Christ as a living, active presence who loved me as the person I was and could become. I became increasingly concerned about the "me and Jesus" focus with little concern for social justice, as well as an underlying judgmentalism about so many others, and a systemic misogyny which I couldn't abide. 

There was also a preoccupation with "End Times" which baffled me, and the earnest desire to identify an ominous figure called the Anti-Christ, with a number of candidates in the running. It was supposedly based on prophecy from the Book of Revelation but it had a Superhero/Nemesis feel to it all that excited people.

Let me say that I emphatically agree with the proposal that virtually everything about the Emperor Trump is antithetical to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I cannot understand how millions of Christians who claim that the bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God can read it and not make the sign of the cross to ward off his evil words and deeds. It is as though they have been swept into a cult and nothing seems to shake their trust in an entirely untrustworthy human being. While I may not describe Trump as the Anti-Christ, he is anti-Christ. 

I was intrigued to see an article in ABC Religion and Ethics by D. Stephen Long titled Should we call Donald Trump “antichrist”? Of course I had to read it and I found it worthwhile. I would encourage you to read Professor Long's piece in it's entirety, but I'll include a couple of paragraphs here: 

Yet I think it appropriate that reasonable people of faith begin to refer to Trump as antichrist. I don’t come to that conclusion lightly. When Trump was elected, I regularly referred to him as the “Orange Vulgarian.” I still find that reference descriptively accurate, but a friend admonished me that calling the president names was not the best strategy to win over his supporters. Since many of those supporters are family, friends, college classmates, and others, I thought it best to refrain from such epithets and attempted to make reasonable arguments on behalf of a different kind of Christianity and politics than the one that gained ascendancy with Trump...

Calling Trump an antichrist may give him too much credit. He is, after all, more of a carnival huckster who has turned the US presidency into a reality show sponsored by one continuous infomercial, but he is a carnival huckster who has the power of the US military at his command. Watching Mark Milley and William Barr stand in solidarity with him as they made their “brave” campaign against the people gathered at St. John’s Episcopal Church should cause all people of true faith to turn to the book of Revelation for political wisdom.

When this is all over, when the smoke from the tear gas (or whatever chemical agent used) has cleared, American Christianity will stand condemned for following the beast.

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/stephen-long-should-we-call-trump-antichrist/12335450