Three Responses to My New Book on Trump, MAGA & Anti-Christ

I am sharing with DM readers today three interesting and early responses to my new book on Trump & MAGA as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election. 

From an Episcopal priest and activist:

I’m really liking it and find it incredibly important and helpful. We’ve shared it with a few people, and the responses have been interesting. Some absolutely love it, while others find the use of the term “anti-Christ” a bit inappropriate, even though they agree with everything else you’re saying.

It seems like this reaction highlights why progressives might be losing the religious narrative that the right has been pushing. We’re often hesitant to use religious archetypes to name the evils present, even though we do believe there are spiritual realities at play. We just feel sort of, I don’t know, not qualified to name things for what they are! This makes your book even more crucial, in my view.

From Neil Douglas Klotz, Aramaic scholar:

In my humble opinion, many “spiritual but not religious” people don’t take evil seriously. I always tell people that Jesus’ word for “evil” (bisha) means unripeness, which is true. But there are all phases of unripeness–too early, right on time, and way past its date, fully rotten and ready for the compost. Behaviours that may have seemed acceptable in the past need to be re-evaluated every season and every era. It’s not at all their “everything is just a point of view,” as the extreme post-modernists say (which has actually infected “neo-libralism”). Some things need to be composted, already! This is what the “wheat and tares” story in the Gospels reveals, even though it got the full fall-redemption treatment in that theology.

From a Grandmother: 

Once I started reading, I couldn’t put it down.  The energy of the book is lingering.  Realizing that I have felt this heaviness looming and didn’t know how to name it.  You have named it and now I know what we are facing.

Very quick and concise read.  Easy to follow and absorb.  Startling to see it all woven together!  This book and its author I believe will go down in history as the person and vehicle that dared to call out evil by its true name into the light of truth and justice.  My prayer is that the Holy Spirit guides it into the hands of all those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

I am aware that some people are ill at ease with language like antichrist.  It derives from the apocalyptic tradition of the Bible, so it seems appropriate to invoke in our apocalyptic times.  

As I point out in the book, Hildegard of Bingen painted a powerful Antichrist painting in the 12th century and Martin Luther and other reformers invoked the term heavily in the 16th century Reformation era.  

Many fundamantalists have used it in recent times, but I choose to turn the tables and apply it to issues of earth and human survival in our time. I have a section in the book on why Americans in particular are not at home with talking about evil.  This archetype may help us get over that.

See Matthew Fox, Trump & MAGA as Anti-Christ : A Handbook for the 2024 Election.

See also Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh : Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.

And Fox, The Pope’s War : How Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.

And Fox, Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen.

Banner Image: “Christ with Angelic Host.” Fresco by Fra Angelico and Bennozo Gozzoli, Chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto. Wikimedia Commons

Queries for Contemplation

Do you agree with Neil Douglas Klotz that many « spiritual but not religous » people do not take evil seriously ?   Carl Jung says that it is necessary to talk about the Antichrist because if we do not shed light on it and recognize it and name it, it holds the power to overtake our souls and society itself.  Do you agree with Jung ?

Recommended Reading

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: 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.

Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society

Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them. 
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science.  A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

The Pope’s War: Why Ratzinger’s Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved

The Pope’s War offers a provocative look at three decades of corruption in the Catholic Church, focusing on Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. The final section in the book focuses on birthing a truly catholic Christianity.
“This book should be read by everybody, not only for its ferocious courage, but also for its vision for what needs to be saved from the destructive forces that threaten authentic Christianity.” ~ Andrew Harvey, author of The Hope.
“In the gripping The Pope’s War, Matthew Fox takes an unwavering look at the layers of corruption in the Catholic Church, holding moral truth against power.”   — Jason Berry, author of Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Illuminations of Hildegard of Bingen

An introduction to the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen, Illuminations reveals the life and teachings of one of the greatest female artists and intellectuals of the Western Mystical Tradition.  At the age of 42, she began to have visions; these were captured as 36 illuminations–24 of which are recorded in this book along with her commentaries on them.
“If one person deserves credit for the great Hildegard renaissance in our time, it is Matthew Fox.”  – Dr Mary Ford-Grabowsky, author of Sacred Voices.