The Armageddon Club

I've written for many years about Christian Zionism, the turbocharged force in American evangelicalism that has one foot firmly in US foreign policy and the other enmeshed in apocalyptic fantasies about the Second Coming of Jesus. In the premillennialist telling of the end-times, one wants to join the club—that is, become a Christian—because at some point, on God's timing, he's going to rapture all the Christians to heaven as a temporary safe space from the tribulation. The tribulation is a seven-year period during which the Antichrist, a "false prophet," will control humanity with his "one-world government," and require everyone to take the "mark of the beast" in submission to him. Jesus's vanquishing of the Antichrist (and all nonbelievers) in the final battle at Armageddon will violently conclude that terrible period, and trigger a millennium of Jesus's rule over a Christian world from Jerusalem.

Understanding how Christian Zionism has pervaded American evangelicalism is essential for understanding MAGA. The hype and disappointments of Christian Zionism inform Christian nationalism, and in particular its adoration of Trump.

It's not just that Trump was Christian Zionists' favorite American president, for backing out of the Iran nuclear deal, moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, embracing Israel's far right, and generally being a despicable Islamophobe.

A core belief of Christian nationalism is that God ordained America to be a Christian nation. God has a plan for America. God is watching out for America—but only if it behaves itself. To the Christian right, America has not behaved itself. Abortion, LGBTQ rights, and secularization more broadly are the evidence. Or, to put it in more MAGA terms, "gender ideology," "LGBTQ indoctrination," "gender confusion," "the woke mob," "illegals" who are "poisoning the blood of our country," and "the Biden crime family."

The Christian right used to have other names for these supposed enemies, including "the homosexual agenda," "political correctness," and "the Clinton body count," a preposterous 1990s conspiracy theory that Bill and Hillary Clinton had a hand in murdering a lot of people. When Barack Obama was president, it was not unusual to hear speculation that he might be the Antichrist. Trump was the chief promoter of the conspiracy theory that Obama was a secret Muslim not born in America.

These and countless other conspiracy theories about America's internal godless enemies have long been in circulation. But Trump is the first Republican president to use them as the entire basis for his politics. That's because he understands the Armageddon club.

You see, there's been so much anticipation of Jesus coming back. So many hours of televangelism, books, movies, sermons, and bible study. So many years of close scrutiny of "signs of the times," and of scouring the news and Facebook feeds for evidence of incremental fulfillments of biblical prophecy. If you're in the Armageddon club, you might feel like you've been missing some real action, or, worse, you might fear falling into a crisis of faith. Something has to happen in the real world to match the spectacle you've been primed to anticipate.

Perhaps if you secretly fret that Jesus is not coming back in your lifetime to save the world, you can save America instead—through Trump.

Jeff Sharlet has been reporting on Trump rallies on his Substack in a way you'll not see elsewhere. His most recent entry covers Trump's rally in Sin City. He details Trump's many warm-up acts, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. "Both hands raise, she points with each at the blank Vegas sky," Sharlet writes of her performance as she mocks anyone concerned about Trump's felony convictions. She proclaims, "'The man I worship is also a convicted felon!' Beat. 'And he was murdered on a Roman cross!'" (At least she didn't blame the Jews this time.)

In the Armageddon club, Trump is persecuted yet superhuman. He will rise again, and tame the chaos of demonic enemies. He will punish them and thus restore order and even bliss.

As a member of the Armageddon club, you're accustomed to expecting some destruction along the way. So it's okay if in a second term Trump gives power to Russell Vought, a veteran of his first term and a self-described Christian nationalist, to carry out a "post-Constitutional" agenda, as the Washington Post recently reported. The enemies of America have ruined the Constitution, so Trump's disciples will write a new one to give him more power and control.

In the Armageddon club, the American flag can be turned upside-down, and another will beseech God to right America's wrongs, including a stolen election. If elections are stolen, they shouldn't determine leaders. A true leader might be speaking in incomprehensible tongues, but you can't trust the news media to interpret him. A true leader is one who rips the mask off the deep state and shows America another way through his own judgment, retribution, and restoration. That's the kind of leader, in Trump, that the Armageddon club wants for America.