THE SET-UP: The Christian Broadcasting Network is worried about a troubling new take on their man in the White House. Here’s how their news division headlined a February 27, 2025 story on CBN News’s website:
“These 4 Men Are Most Cited in Online Searches About the Antichrist - Here's What the Bible Says”
First of all … that headline is the ultimate clickbait for Evangelicals. End Times eschatology is incredibly popular and, let’s be honest, it’s fun! Think of it as a supernaturally souped-up Science Fiction action movie. But unlike a movie, this is reality … and instead of being a voyeur, you are an active participant in an unfolding, Earth-shaking drama peppered with demonic forces and divine “signs.” Your everlasting soul is a central character in God’s script and you can even discern the fate of the world from its plot twists.
In a fundamental sense, End Times eschatology is a supernatural conspiracy theory that’s coded into the past, playing out in the present and indicative of the future. It also turn the news—particularly bad news—into an endless opportunity to speculate about red heifers and wars and rumored wars and natural disasters. It’s all fodder for figuring out the identity of the Antichrist.
That’s God’s “big reveal” and its revealing that Donald Trump is, along with Elon Musk, King Charles III, and Emmanuel Macron, among the “most frequently cited candidates in recent online searches and discussions about the identity of the Antichrist.”
The problem for CBN is clear … it’s been a key advocate for Trump and for Trump’s agenda. From his culture wars to his foreign and economic policies … you name it, they’ve promoted and peddled it to their audience. So, it might be a bit awkward if it turns out they’ve been promoting the Antichrist.
That’s why I suspect they wanted to get ahead of the understandable rise in speculation that Trump could be the Antichrist. Amazingly, they only mention his name once in the piece … which isn’t just burying the lede … it’s cremating it and scattering the ashes in a windstorm.
Instead of debunking the idea out of hand, they caution against speculation:
The fascination with identifying the Antichrist reveals more about our human nature than about prophetic fulfillment. We're drawn to solving mysteries and finding patterns. We're drawn to solving mysteries and finding patterns. Yet Scripture's detailed criteria remind us that God has already provided all we need to know for this season.
And rather than trying to unmask the identity of humankind’s all-time greatest supervillain, CBN reminds us that ignorance is next to godliness:
True believers living before God recalls them to Heaven won't know the Antichrist's identity with certainty. The apostle Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 2:7–8 that believers will be caught up with the Lord before that happens.
Well, there you have it … the best way to ensure you’ve got a spot on Jesus’s Rapture Ride is to not know the Antichrist’s identity. Just say no to knowing. And that’s woefully on-brand for Evangelicals who’ve embraced American history’s most profuse liar and turned him into political demigod. - jp
TITLE: Speaker Mike Johnson Is Living in a D.C. House That Is the Center of a Pastor’s Secretive Influence Campaign
https://www.propublica.org/article/mike-johnson-evangelical-pastor-steve-berger-roommates
EXCERPTS: In 2021, Steve Berger, an evangelical pastor who has attacked the separation of church and state as “a delusional lie” and called multinational institutions “demonic,” set off on an ambitious project. His stated goal: minister to members of Congress so that what “they learn is then translated into policy.” His base of operations would be a six-bedroom, $3.7 million townhouse blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
Recently, the pastor scored a remarkable coup for a political influence project that has until now managed to avoid public scrutiny. He got a new roommate.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has been staying at the home since around the beginning of this year, according to interviews and videos obtained by ProPublica.
The house is owned by a major Republican donor and Tennessee car magnate who has joined Berger in advocating for and against multiple bills before Congress.
Over the past four years, Berger and his wife, Sarah Berger, have dedicated themselves to what they call their D.C. “ministry center.” In addition to Johnson, who is an evangelical conservative, the pastor has built close relationships with several other influential conservative politicians. Dan Bishop, now nominated for a powerful post in the Trump White House, seems to have also lived in the home last year while he was still a congressman, according to three people.
A spokesperson for Johnson said that the speaker “pays fair market value in monthly rent for the portion of the Washington, D.C. townhome that he occupies.” He did not answer a question about how much Johnson is paying. House ethics rules allow members of Congress to live anywhere, as long as they are paying fair-market rent.
The spokesperson added that Johnson “has never once spoken to Mr. Berger about any piece of legislation or any matter of public policy.” Berger and Bishop did not respond to requests for comment.
In sermons and on social media, Berger has mentioned some of the topics he’s discussed with Johnson and other members of Congress. Last year, Berger, a passionate supporter of the Israeli right-wing, said he’d had “a great conversation” with the speaker about Israel.
Recently, Johnson has described his conversations with Trump to the pastor, according to Berger. After Russia invaded Ukraine, Berger said in a sermon that he’d advised “some congressmen” to see the conflict through the lens of Ezekiel 38 and 39, parts of the Bible some see as prophesying a great war before the Second Coming. He did not specify what that meant from a policy perspective.
An energetic 60-year-old with a white goatee and penchant for preaching in sneakers and jeans, Berger has strong views on a wide range of issues, including economic policy and public health. He is vehemently opposed to the World Health Organization, which Trump moved to withdraw the U.S. from last month, and recently predicted that COVID-19 vaccines will result in “young people dropping dead all over the place.” He attacked the World Economic Forum at length in a recent sermon, accusing it of “taking advantage” of COVID-19 “to implement their satanic plot.”
Berger is also against same-sex marriage, saying “it opens the door to all manner of sexual depravity and wickedness” — though he has said he has “friends who are practicing homosexuals, people I care about.” He opposes homosexuality and “heterosexual sin” in equal measures, he’s said, referring to acts like watching pornography and sex between unmarried adults.
Berger’s interests extend beyond his staunch social conservatism. He and the donor who owns the house, Lee Beaman, have publicly advocated together for numerous specific policy changes, including a bill that would make it easier to fire federal employees and a regulation that would reduce fuel efficiency standards for the automotive industry. After the 2020 election, they both signed a letter declaring that President Donald Trump was the rightful winner and calling for Congress to overturn the results.
Berger’s operation is organized as a nonprofit called Ambassador Services International, which runs on a budget of around $1 million per year, according to tax filings. The home where it is registered in Washington — and where Johnson has been staying — was purchased in early 2021. Once the home of abolitionist Frederick Douglass and later housing the Smithsonian Museum of African Art, it was advertised at the time as a “four-level Second Empire-style townhouse of impeccable elegance and exceptional scale,” offering “bespoke tranquility in a coveted location.”
The buyer was Crockett Ventures LLC. Corporate filings show its sole owner is Beaman, the donor and businessman, who built a fortune on a chain of car dealerships started by his father. He has given millions to Republican political groups, including large donations to the Trump campaign and political committees for the Heritage Foundation and the House Freedom Caucus. He’s also served as the treasurer of a congressional campaign.
Beaman was once so fed up with the restrictions that came with owning a home on a “government-controlled lake” that he bought a sprawling property with a 50-acre private lake of its own, according to a profile in an architecture book. He became a fixture of Nashville media in recent years because of sordid allegations made by his fourth wife during their divorce, including that he made her watch what he called “training films” of him having sex with a prostitute. Beaman’s lawyers wrote at the time that his wife’s filing contained “impertinent and scandalous matter only meant to harass Mr. Beaman.”
Beaman has attended a Tennessee church that Berger founded, but it’s not clear what role, if any, he plays in the pastor’s influence project in Washington. It’s also unclear whether the pastor’s nonprofit pays for the use of the Capitol Hill townhouse.
Berger came to prominence in his home state as the longtime pastor of Grace Chapel, a large church outside Nashville whose members have included the current governor of the state. In 2021, Berger left the church and he and his wife launched their project in Washington.
He soon began Bible study sessions with senators, representatives and congressional aides, according to the Bergers. Meanwhile, Sarah Berger spent her time “in relationship with and pouring into the lives of congressional wives,” tax filings say.
TITLE: What is the new ‘Judea and Samaria Caucus’ in Congress all about?https://forward.com/fast-forward/699931/judea-and-samaria-caucus-israel-annexation-gop/
EXCERPTS: As negotiations over a permanent ceasefire in Gaza continue, the Republican-controlled Congress is seeking to reshape the narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Republican leaders have reintroduced legislation and submitted memos urging that government spokespeople and documents refer to the occupied West Bank by its biblical names, Judea and Samaria. And last month, a New York Republican who is Presbyterian launched the “Friends of Judea and Samaria Caucus,” which promotes Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank territories it seized from Jordan in the 1967 War.
Together, these moves mark a shift in longstanding U.S. policy and highlight the growing influence of Christian Zionism and Israel’s settler movement within the Republican Party and the Trump administration.
A spokesperson for Rep. Claudia Tenney, who founded the caucus, said invitations were extended to all House members. The 16 who joined include Rep. Randy Weber, a Baptist from Texas; and Andy Ogles, a Protestant from Tennessee; but none of the 24 Jewish members of the House, three of whom are Republicans.
Spokespeople for Reps. Max Miller of Ohio, David Kustoff of Tennessee and Craig Goldman of Texas — the three Jewish Republican House members — did not respond to inquiries about the caucus. None of them have joined the Jewish Caucus that their Democratic colleagues formalized earlier this month.
There are dozens of caucuses representing identity groups — Blacks, Asians, veterans — or certain interests, like Problem Solvers and U.S.-China relations. They have official recognition but no special power or funding.
At the inaugural meeting of the Judea and Samaria Caucus in January, Tenney said that House Speaker Mike Johnson, an evangelical Christian, had shown interest in joining, and that she hoped some Democrats would as well. The group kicked off by introducing legislation that would require all official U.S. documents to use the term “Judea and Samaria” instead of the West Bank, as Israeli settlers and their supporters often do.
In line with this initiative, Rep. Brian Mast, a Republican from Florida and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, ordered aides to the committee’s 27 Republican members to no longer call the West Bank the West Bank.
About 2.9 million Palestinians live in the West Bank, which was divided by the Oslo Accords in the 1990s into three areas whose governance is split between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli military. The territory is also home to 500,000 Israeli Jews, who live in settlements that most experts consider illegal under international law. (Some outposts are also illegal under Israeli law.)
Oslo — and subsequent peace plans — call for a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
Many Trump cabinet members are die-hard Israel supporters who oppose the creation of any Palestinian state. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, said that West Bank annexation is a possibility, reflecting a significant policy shift from Trump’s first term and decades of American presidents who preceded him.
David Friedman, who was Trump’s first ambassador to Israel, has suggested reallocating $1 billion of U.S. aid to the Palestinians to fund Israeli annexation efforts. In his recent book, Friedman wrote that U.S. support for annexation is “based first and foremost on biblical prophecies and values,” saying that the movement “hearkens back to basic Judeo-Christian values of kindness, human dignity, humility and prosperity.”
TITLE: Woe to You Who Deprive the Poor of Their Rights (A Battle of Theologies in the Age of Trump)
https://tomdispatch.com/woe-to-you-who-deprive-the-poor-of-their-rights/
EXCERPTS: The Christian nationalism, exceptionalism, and white supremacy ascendant in Trump 2.0 has evolved from a long genealogy that has enabled an elite strata of mostly white Christian men to rule society and amass enormous wealth and power throughout American history.
Such Christians have always anointed themselves with the lie of divine righteousness, while insisting that they are God’s chosen representatives on Earth. To maintain this charade, they have brandished the Bible like a cudgel, bludgeoning poor people, people of color, the Indigenous, women, LGBTQ+ people, and others with tales of their supposed sinfulness meant to distract, demean, divide, and dispossess. Therefore, if we are truly serious about confronting and countering the influence of such an authoritarian version of Christianity under Trump, Vance, Johnson, and their associates and followers, we must learn from how it’s been wielded (and challenged) in other times in history.
The roots of such idolatry reach back centuries, even before the founding of this nation, to the conquest of Indigenous lands by European invaders. In 1493, after Spain first sent its ships to islands in the Caribbean, Pope Alexander VI issued the Doctrine of Discovery, a series of papal bulls granting all newly “discovered” lands to their Christian conquerors. Those church documents asserted the supposed “godlessness” of Indigenous peoples, smoothing over the ruthless colonial campaign of extermination being waged with a veneer of moral virtue. Centuries later, the idea of “manifest destiny” drew on the same religious underpinnings as the Doctrine of Discovery, popularizing the belief that white Christians were destined by God to control and therefore redeem the lands of the West. Manifest destiny not only valorized the violence of westward expansion but sanctified and made exceptional the emerging project of American imperialism. God, the argument went, had chosen this nation to be a beacon of hope, a city upon a hill for the whole world.
Alongside the dispossession and attempted extermination of Indigenous peoples, invocations of God and the Bible were used to justify the enslavement of African peoples and their descendants. Slaveholders cherry-picked passages from the book of Ephesians — “slaves obey your earthly masters” — and lines from other epistles of the Apostle Paul to claim that slavery was ordained by God. They ripped out of the pages on the Exodus from Egypt, huge sections of the prophets, and even Jesus’s inaugural sermon praising the poor and dispossessed from the Bibles they gave to their enslaved workers. Those “Slave Bibles” would serve as evidence of just how dangerous the unadulterated gospel was to the legitimacy of the slaveholding planter class.
They also twisted theology to serve their political needs by obscuring the common interests of enslaved Black workers and poor Southern whites. Readings of the Bible that claimed God had singled out Black people for slave labor helped the Southern ruling class turn many of the region’s majority of poor whites into zealous defenders of a system that relegated them to marginal lands and poverty wages.
After the fall of the Confederacy, the Bible remained core to the new racialized divide-and-conquer system in the South. Pro-segregationist preachers, no longer able to use the Bible to defend slavery per se, turned to stories like the Tower of Babel to claim that God desired racial segregation and abhorred intermarriage across racial lines. In 1954, Baptist preacher Carey Daniel wrote a pamphlet entitled God the Original Segregationist in which he explained: “When first He separated the black race from the white and lighter skinned races He did not simply put them in different parts of town. He did not even put them in different towns or states. Nay, He did not even put them in adjoining countries.” The pamphlet was distributed widely by White Citizens’ Councils and sold more than a million copies.
Parallel to the theological justifications for the system of segregation that came to be known as Jim Crow, a national theology of industrial capitalism emerged in the late 1800s and early 1900s. During the Gilded Age, a prosperity gospel and its theology of muscular Christianity flourished among the white upper class. Amid the excesses of the Second Industrial Revolution, they celebrated their own hard work and moral rectitude and bemoaned the personal failings of the poor. When the economic bubble finally burst in 1929 with the Great Depression and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal ushered in an unprecedented era of financial regulation and labor protection, the nation’s corporate class turned once again to the church to fight back and put a stamp of approval on its free-market aspirations.
As historian Kevin Kruse writes in One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, in the 1930s and 1940s, “corporate titans enlisted conservative clergymen in an effort to promote new political arguments embodied in the phrase ‘freedom under God.’ As the private correspondence and public claims of the men leading this charge make clear, this new ideology was designed to defeat the state power its architects feared most — not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration in Washington. With ample funding from major corporations, prominent industrialists, and business lobbies such as the National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in the 1930s and 1940s, these new evangelists for free enterprise promoted a vision best characterized as ‘Christian libertarianism.’”
The phrase “freedom under God” captures the tension at the heart of the long battle over the Bible in this country in which there have always been two diametrically opposed visions of freedom: on one side, the freedom of the vast majority of the people to enjoy the fruits of their labor and live with dignity and self-determination; on the other side, the freedom of the wealthy to control society, sow division, and hoard the planet’s (and in Elon Musk’s case, the galaxy’s) abundance for themselves. Poor people, disproportionately poor people of color, have always been on the front lines of this battle, as both canaries in the coal mine and prophetic leaders. Think of it this way in the age of Trump: As their lives go, so goes the nation.
Today, while the Trump administration continues to unveil new attacks daily on what the Bible calls, “the least of these,” it’s important to remember the prophetic tradition of faith leaders of the past as well as the heroic, if often unnoticed, moral organizing happening now. I return to my colleagues Aaron Scott and Moses Hernandez-McGavin who sum up the sentiment of many people of faith in our society today: “God’s love and truth are alive whether elected officials seek to legislate them out of existence or not. God’s Word continues to call for justice and mercy for all people regardless of the distortions of the Word by religious and political leaders obsessed with the worship of their own power. They are not God. And God will not, and cannot, be stopped.“
As they conclude, offering a message of hope and encouragement in these dark and dangerous days: “God’s liberating action will break through in this world through the steadfast work and witness of people of goodwill who are beholden to a higher law, who refuse to comply with unjust executive orders, who continue to defend the vulnerable against abuses of the powerful in courtrooms and school buildings and hospitals and in the streets across the country.”
The question then is: In the second age of Donald Trump, which side will you choose?
SEE ALSO:
New Religion Titles Address Power, Politics, and the Almighty
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/religion/article/97207-new-religion-titles-address-power-politics-and-the-almighty.html