Naming the Antichrist: The History of an American Obsession

The Antichrist, though mentioned a mere four times in the Bible, and then only obscurely, has exercised a tight hold on popular imagination throughout history. In Naming the Antichrist, Fuller takes us on a fascinating journey through the dark side of the American religious psyche, from the earliest American colonists right up to contemporary fundamentalists such as Pat Robertson and Hal Lindsey.Fuller begins by offering a brief history of the idea of the Antichrist and its origins in the apocalyptic thought in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and traces the eventual migration of the Antichrist legend across the Atlantic. He shows how the colonists saw Antichrist personified in everyone from native Americans to the Church of England. He looks at the Second Great Awakening in the early nineteenth century, showing how such prominent Americans as Yale president Timothy Dwight saw the work of the Antichrist in phenomena ranging from the French Revolution to Masonry. In the twentieth century, Fuller finds a startling array of hate-mongers, such as the Ku Klux Klan, who drew on apocalyptic imagery in their attacks on Jews, Catholics, blacks, socialists, and others. Finally, he considers contemporary fundamentalist writers such as Hal Lindsey and a host of others who have found Antichrist in the sinister guise of the European Economic Community, feminism, and even supermarket barcodes and fibre optics.