Some questions that arise regarding my new book on Trump & Antichrist follow.

Why is the first chapter about Sigmund Freud? Freud underwent an amazing encounter with the same fresco that I did on visiting the Orvieto Cathedral in 1897. In fact, he was so taken by it that he returned two more times to study it. An entire book, excellently researched and beautifully written, is devoted to the impact that fresco had on Freud. It is called Freud’s Trip to Orvieto. The author, Nicholas Fox Weber, is an art historian.
I include that chapter right up front in my book because it demonstrates that art goes much deeper than theology insofar as Freud, a declared atheist, nevertheless found himself smitten by the archetype of the Antichrist along with the other two frescos in the same chapel, one on Hell and another on “The Resurrection of the Flesh.”
As a rule, it is the evangelicals and fundamentalists who have pined on “the Antichrist” in recent times, but my book does the opposite: I take the Antichrist archetype and apply it to those whose politics and values are oriented to the common good which includes truth, justice and the building of community. If Freud was vulnerable to a religious archetype of significance, other leftward thinking persons can surely join the cause and a new consensus on the left can emerge.
I hear that you are redefining MAGA in this book. Yes, I am. Instead of “Make America Great Again,” I think the movement as it operates can rightly be called, “Make America Grotesque Again.”
Grotesque as in the days of Jim Crow laws that were hell-bent on denying blacks their rights to vote. Grotesque as in the days of slavery. Grotesque as in the days of lynchings. Grotesque as in the days of genocide toward Native Americans including rounding up children and separating them from their families to attend government or church schools. Grotesque as in wiping out the buffalo in the 19th century to destroy the Plains Indians so dependent on the buffalo. Numbers went from 30 million buffalo to 500. Grotesque!
What do you mean when you say the opposite of evil is not the good but the Sacred? This was one of the findings I came to in writing my major study on Evil, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society.
This means that we cannot have a conversation on evil until we have a conversation on the Sacred. If we are out of touch with the Sacred, we are necessarily out of touch with how to deal with evil; we see only its effects, we don’t get to its essence and we don’t deal with it effectively therefore. To be continued
Adapted from Matthew Fox, Trump & MAGA as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, pp. 1-8, 51-56, 9-22.
See also: Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality
And Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
Banner image: “Luca Signorelli’s 1501 depiction of the face of antichrist, from the Orvieto Cathedral.” Photo cropped. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
What does it mean to you to hear that the opposite of Evil is not the good but the Sacred? What follows from that? How do we learn the Sacred?
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.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE.
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE.
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.

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

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

The Coming of the Cosmic Christ: The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance
In what may be considered the most comprehensive outline of the Christian paradigm shift of our Age, Matthew Fox eloquently foreshadows the manner in which the spirit of Christ resurrects in terms of the return to an earth-based mysticism, the expression of creativity, mystical sexuality, the respect due the young, the rebirth of effective forms of worship—all of these mirroring the ongoing blessings of Mother Earth and the recovery of Eros, the feminine aspect of the Divine.
“The eighth wonder of the world…convincing proof that our Western religious tradition does indeed have the depth of imagination to reinvent its faith.” — Brian Swimme, author of The Universe Story and Journey of the Universe.
“This book is a classic.” Thomas Berry, author of The Great Work and The Dream of the Earth.
5 thoughts on “Questions Posed about My New Book on Trump, MAGA, Antichrist”
I have trouble with your emphasis on evil. I believe in oneness and that God is all. What say you?
I’m finally getting what MAGA stands for. No wonder it was a blank to me. I still don’t relate to Make America Great Again. Immediately what comes to mind is, where is America exactly? I live in Canada. The indigenous are asking us questions, and telling us that the idea that you can come over and own land, is a completely foreign concept. Like owning the air and the water, it’s inconceivable. As inconceivable perhaps as to the black woman from the Carolinas who asked, “when was America great? I’ve always been doing laundry!”
I blame MAGA for all the funny flag waving I see. It’s such a joke! We have it now up here: lots of Canadian flags waving about (is anyone lost?).
Grotesque is accurate for what I see as ruthless in asserting “hands off, this is mine,” and lethal in terms of “stay out and don’t question my power.” Thank you for being a prophet, Matthew Fox!!
If God is in everything, then everything is sacred, and any violence against any part of creation is evil. If we love and respect all life, then we celebrate the sacred.
The opposite of evil being the sacred spiritually makes a lot of sense because if you don’t have Faith in the omnipresence of Our Creator~Source of Divine Love with-in, through, among Us, it is very easy to become lost in duality, egocentricity, materialism, greed, power, control, power, racism, ignorance, and other patriarchal values/actions that have caused much suffering and destruction of others and our Sacred Earth in human history up to our present days — many forms of personal and societal evils. As human beings in the conscious evolution of our human and Divine Natures, we have a great responsibility on our unique spiritual journeys to choose the Sacred over evil with-in the Living Divine Spirit of LOVE, Wisdom, Truth, Justice, Healing, Creativity, Diverse Wholeness~ONENESS….
Thanks for parsing this out, and also for speaking about Freud’s fascination with the painting of the Anti-Christ. To try to understand the whole of Creation as sacred, we find ourselves struggling to understand and give a proper place to evil or sin. I have been reading “Will and Spirit” by Gerald May, MD, which is about the difference between psychiatric help and spiritual direction, or between psyche and soul. It is fascinating to me that he says true spiritual surrender into the love of God is to lose one’s self into cosmic unity, while psychological work keeps us in duality and self-definition, and at risk of self-aggrandizement. I would love to hear what you think about this. Again, thank you for the great insight about the archetype, and naming so many of the parts of their destructive and divisive agenda.