Kill the Anti-Christ Cliche

When I first watched John McCain's political ad "The One," in which Barack Obama is parodied for being a self-proclaimed messiah, my response was immediate and visceral. I grew up in a very conservative Southern Baptist church; my childhood was steeped in evangelical Christian eschatology. Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth was the text of one Bible class; in another we read Revelation as if it were a text for current world events, the teacher interpreting every image and metaphor literally as if they were headlines in The Houston Post, my family's newspaper of choice. I lay in bed at night expecting the Second Coming of Christ at any moment, like a "thief in the night." As my parents' Little Ben alarm wound down every morning, I would be petrified that my mother and father had been caught up in The Rapture overnight while I slept, and, for whatever childish sins I had committed, I had been left behind.

According to that End Times world view, any movement toward peace in the Middle East was the first warning drum roll for the end of the world. Communist Russia was the Great Beast--or maybe it was the Catholic Church, depending on the particular proclivities of the teacher or church leader. Any number of political leaders could be the anti-Christ. The more peaceful or charismatic they seemed, the more likely they were to be the great deceiver, the bearer of the number 666, the anti-messiah.

I've left behind that particular part of my past as if it were a drug-induced nightmare. What remains is an antipathy toward any organization, religious or political, that governs, teaches, or leads by fear, intimidation, and paranoia--and antibodies against the use of religious clichés in political ads or rhetoric. When in his January 2003 State of the Union address George Bush praised the "power, wonder-working power in the goodness and idealism and the faith of the American people," I knew just whom the President was addressing and just whose heart strings those phrases would pluck like the hands of harp-playing angels. I can still recite verses from that song: "There is power, power, wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb. There is power, power, wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb." And equating the American public with the Lamb of God did nothing for me. Sounded more like blasphemy, if anything.

So when I watched that ad about Barack Obama, my heart grew cold. The images--that orange glow like the reflected glow of the flames of hell rather than the bright white light of righteousness--and words of the authoritative male voice-over equate Barack Obama with the anti-Messiah, the anti-Christ. Hundreds of thousands of people have read the Left Behind series. John McCain's ad taps into the fear and paranoia of those evangelical Christians who believe in those novels as if they are templates for the near future. Any lingering respect I had for John McCain (and I once had quite a lot), began to dissipate at that moment. The Republican Party is using the world views of people like Hal Lindsey to get people to vote out of fear rather than out of respect for democracy and all it represents.

It's time to kill the anti-Christ cliché in American politics, time to kill it with derisive laughter or even the righteous anger of believers--whatever works. The metaphor has been used for over two thousand years to demonize any number of leaders and world powers. Why does it still have such power? Why do we continue to give in to its siren call of fear and paranoia? So Barack Obama is the anti-Christ? Well, so is John McCain, say biblical scholars with the True Bible Society. What do we have here: two anti-Christs glaring at one another across the political landscape? P-l-eaze!