In Saturday’s DM, we meditated on the new kind of religion emanating from some very influential billionaires in Silicon Valley such as Peter Thiel, who today launches his four-part seminar on his take on the Anti-Christ. A version that proposes, among other things, that Greta Thunberg is an antichrist in our day. (sic and sick.)
Why are powerful billionaires connected to powerful people with many levers to pull—such as the vice president of the United States—busy talking about antichrist in our time? Part of the scene is that we are living in apocalyptic times, when so much seems to be falling apart all around us—“the center cannot hold” as Yeats put it 105 years ago—and battles of good vs evil are seeming to envelop us. Our times echo those when the Book of the Apocalypse was composed around 95 CE.
A second reason why billionaire power-brokers are talking up apocalyptic religion is that they want to carry the religion of the future. Some in Silicon Valley believe AI is so powerful it qualifies as the new divinity. From deus ex machina to deus ex AI!
Thomas Aquinas however warns that “greed knows no limit and tends to infinity.” Greed is the reigning religion of many visible power figures of our time. Of course, greed/avarice is opposite to spirituality or healthy religion, as every religious tradition I know of teaches.
The billionaire religious model now seeking to take over the world—having succeeded in taking over one political party in America and striving mightily to ensure America becomes a one-party nation—is built on greed. Peter Thiel explicitly condemns a government “of the people, by the people and for the people” in favor of a government of, by, and for the powerful.
And many of the rich are bowing mightily to the plan. We behold entire legal companies, media companies (canceling of Steven Colbert by CBS is one such example), universities, corporations—you name it—are on their knees. Capitalism sans conscience is a sign of our times.
The very unsupreme court has fueled this movement exponentially with its Citizens United decision (2010), that effectively invites billionaires and their corporations to spend limitless amounts of dark money on elections, thus ensuring the amassing of political power for the rich. Right wing billionaires who 82% of all media—social and traditional—and spread this new religion’s gospel everywhere, and manifest no shame in wrapping it in Christian nationalism. SCOTUS claiming out of thin air that no American president can be charged for crimes while in office, provides the icing on the cake.
In my book on the Antichrist, I cited Carl Jung’s warning how such archetypes hold a fascination and seductive quality, and offer a powerful way of alluring individuals and masses of people. Today’s social media—with ever louder voices and buttressed by algorithms—can spread lies, hatred, and chaos faster and further than ever before.
The US president has hired Thiel’s secretive surveillance company Palantir to compile data on Americans from DOGE findings. Thiel now will have access to sensitive information including CDC, tax data and private health records on millions of American citizens. Palantir is making billions from our government, building spy tools for ICE, the Pentagon, and police. What could possibly go wrong?
In June, thirteen former Palantir employees signed a letter urging the company to cut ties with the Trump administration because “data that is collected for one reason should not be repurposed for other uses.”* Thiel now will have access to sensitive information such as CDC, tax data and private health records. Bernie Sanders warns: “Our civil liberties and right to privacy shouldn’t be the price we pay for security.”
* Emily Jarvie, “Trump Administration Expands Partnership with Palantir to Collect Data on Americans,” ProActive, June 2, 2025.
See Matthew Fox, Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 488ff.
And Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ.
And Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the World.
And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality.
And Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul & Society.
And Fox, A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice.
And Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox, Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video meditation, click HERE.
Banner Image: A meeting of the rich and powerful in the Oval Office, August 6, 2025, while a portrait of Ronald Reagan seems to give his benediction. Photo by Molly Riley from the White House. Wikimedia Commons.
Queries for Contemplation
Do you think a religion based on greed augurs well for the future of our species and of the planet? Might a religion that puts compassion and justice first, be a better alternative? Which is more Christ-like? Which is more Antichrist-like?
Related Readings by Matthew Fox
Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality
Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him. He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French). He gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way.
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake
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.
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth
Fox’s spirituality weds the healing and liberation found in North American Creation Spirituality and in South American Liberation Theology. Creation Spirituality challenges readers of every religious and political persuasion to unite in a new vision through which we learn to honor the earth and the people who inhabit it as the gift of a good and just Creator.
“A watershed theological work that offers a common ground for religious seekers and activists of all stripes.” — Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spirituality and Practice.
“I am reading Liberating Gifts for the People of the Earth by Matt Fox. He is one that fills my heart and mind for new life in spite of so much that is violent in our world.” ~ Sister Dorothy Stang.
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
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
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Awareness with Social Justice
In A Spirituality Named Compassion, Matthew Fox delivers a profound exploration of the meaning and practice of compassion. Establishing a spirituality for the future that promises personal, social, and global healing, Fox marries mysticism with social justice, leading the way toward a gentler and more ecological spirituality and an acceptance of our interdependence which is the substratum of all compassionate activity.
“Well worth our deepest consideration…Puts compassion into its proper focus after centuries of neglect.” –The Catholic Register
Occupy Spirituality: A Radical Vision for a New Generation
Authors Adam Bucko and Matthew Fox encourage us to use our talents in service of compassion and justice and to move beyond our broken systems–economic, political, educational, and religious–discovering a spirituality that not only helps us to get along, but also encourages us to reevaluate our traditions, transforming them and in the process building a more sacred and just world. Incorporating the words of young activist leaders culled from interviews and surveys, the book provides a framework that is deliberately interfaith and speaks to our profound yearning for a life with spiritual purpose and for a better world.
“Occupy Spirituality is a powerful, inspiring, and vital call to embodied awareness and enlightened actions.”
~~ Julia Butterfly Hill, environmental activist and author of The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods
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2 thoughts on “More on Thiel & the Billionaire Religion Seeking to Conquer the World”
My brief answers to your two questions Matthew are: NO (more Antichrist like), and YES (more Christ like). My more full answer to the very important theme of politics and religion being confused/manipulated by the Far Right and some Silicon Valley billionaires like Thiel is in my Commentary response to your DM last Saturday on this same theme. I am glad you have repeated this very important theme in today’s DM, especially Gil Duran’s enclosed YouTube interviews on “The Antichrist Playbook: Peter Thiel & Silicon Valley Apocalypse Hype” for those who may have missed this enlightening information. Thank you Matthew for continuing to be a prophet of Truth & Justice for our very challenging times to our democracy, Humanity, and Our Sacred Mother Earth!
There have always been those who practice compassion and justice, and it is tragic that those who don’t and who actually preach against these Christian values get their demonic agendas in place behind the claim that they are the “real” Christians. The perversion of the marriage of religion and politics is all about power and foments violence while claiming that the “others” are the anti-Christ and are the cause of the violence—so that harsh and violent oppression is necessary and sanctified. In a “normal” world and time, the President and people like Thiel would have been restrained and given psychiatric diagnoses of personality disorders, grandiosity, delusion disorder and suchlike.