Book Review: Us and Them

Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession - Robert C. Fuller
Oxford University Press (November 21, 1996)
Topic: Eschatology, Protestantism
Summary: The history of American use of the Antichrist image in times of national crisis
Rating: ♦♦♦♦♦ (Essential)

Anyone familiar with Evangelical Christianity of the last forty years could probably reel off at least a half-dozen proposed candidates for the Antichrist. In Naming the Antichrist, Robert Fuller demonstrates how often crises within the nation and the American Church have precipitated the naming of religious and/or secular forces within the country as minions of the Antichrist. In so doing, he connects the theme of a satanic influence seeking to undermine the nation's status as a bastion of true Christianity forming out of the experiences of the Puritan influence in the British colonies in America and passed down as a unique element of our American heritage.

Fuller begins his exposition with an overview of the history of the concept of an antichrist. His view of the Biblical texts largely assumes secular biases and is the most unsatisfying aspect of the book. However, it has little bearing on what follows and can largely be ignored. The book begins to hit home with the assumption of many Protestant Reformers that the papacy was the Antichrist predicted in Scripture. This assumption - born in the struggles of the Reformation and its aftermath - was gradually discarded by many European Protestants over time but became etched in the collective consciousness of those who left for America.

The Elizabethen Settlement, with a compromise between Protestant and Catholic sensibilities, was totally unsatisfactory for the Puritans who wanted a church completely devoid of any remains of Roman ritualism. Cromwell's bloody revolution and the tyranny that followed soured the English on Puritan ideals and after the Restoration many of their negan a trek that would bring them to America. With them they brought their intense hatred of Catholics as the legendary "other" as they sought to build their "city on a hill." With no Catholics around to dread, the Antichrist rhetoric was put on a back burner but there was an inherent assumption that they were building the great Christian society free of popish influence. On the occasions that their hegemony was threatened, the natural inclination was to attribute a sinister motive with Rome as the likely power behind the nefarious plot.

The ineveitable assertion of British control over the colonies with its Church and "popish" Common Prayer was, of course, an obvious source of displeasure. But even events within their own communities were seen as threats. The perception of threats from without and within engendered a sense of trepidation that could and did veer out of control when a loss of their beloved "perfect Christian society" seemed imminent. The events surrounding the Salem Witch Trials demonstrates how events that could not be explained by their categories of thought could be combined with this fear to produce tragic results.

Out of this foundation came a tradition of "naming the Antichrist" as a method of closing debate, separaing "us" and "them", villifying the enemy, and protecting the societal hegemony. Whether the enemy be Catholic France (in the French and Indian War) or later the British (in America's war for independence), the struggle was painted in apocalyptic terms with the enemy an agent of the devil himself. Of course, many prominent Americans who supported these causes were Englightenment thinkers who were aghast at their allies rhetoric but were grateful for the wide support it generated. Thus the sometimes strage allies we see today with intellectual neoconservatives and Evangelical Christians is itself a tradition with a heritage.

This pattern would continue throughout the 19th century. Americans attempted to construct their "perfect society" that would transform the world with evangelization, orphanages, soup kitchens, temperance movements, and other social endeavors and a postmillennial eschatology dominated. During stable periods, the antichrist rhetoric would recede but resurfaced when a threat was percieved. These could be in the form of Enlightenment philosophy, Freemasonry, or Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Europe. During the Civil War, anti-slavery forces in the North and pro-slavery forces in the South demonized each other as Satan's minions.

The loss of Protestant hegemony in the 20th century brought an end to the dream of the "perfect Christian society" and there was a retreat into a pessimistic view and a developing dispensationalist eschatology. Yet the overall pattern for "naming the Antichrist" has become such a staple of American life that it survived in new forms. Theological modernists who disagree with all that came before now seek to build their perfect society and demonize opposition in a more secularized form. Our political discourse is centered on the inference of nefarious motives by the opposition. And, of course, Evangelicals have continued the unbroken American tradition of pointing to an enemy as the son of perdition.

Throughout his analysis, Fuller resists the temptation to sit in judgment but takes the role of historical analysis seriously. He provides a framework for understanding how American Protestantism achieved its distinctive elements and how this affected the country's history. For those seeking to understand the American tendency to see itself as a land of destiny and to see all of its conflicts - both foreign and domestic - in apocalyptic terms, Naming the Antichrist is essential reading.