(Image source: Tony Gentile/Reuters/Aeon)

As a Pentecostal kid coming of age in the 2000s, I carried two deep, underlying fears: one, that my secret “sins” would be publicly called out at church by someone giving out prophetic words; and two, that I was not actually “saved” and would therefore fail to be raptured. The rapture is an end-times belief—and a common one across evangelical Christian circles—that born-again Christians would immediately vanish (in the physical realm; in the “spirit,” they’re in Heaven partying with Jesus), which inaugurates the official harbinger for the end-times to begin.

As such, I consumed numerous evangelical Christian apocalyptic movies, including the notable Left Behind series (starring 1980s sitcom star turned born-again evangelist Kirk Cameron). I was deeply fascinated by figures referred to as the “Antichrist”—an ominous, powerful entity who radiates goodness and charisma, yet harbors dark, devious plans to quench its thirst for power and souls. The Antichrist figure in the Left Behind series, Nicolae Carpathia, is a Romanian politician who rises to the Romanian presidency and, ultimately, to the Secretary General of the United Nations, through a non-human amalgamation of genius intellect, charismatic personality, and supernatural abilities.

In other lesser-known Christian end-times movie series I watched, like The Omega Code, the Antichrist, Stone Alexander, is President of the European Union with a vague British accent (although his nationality isn’t discussed). The Antichrist figure, Franco Macalousso, in the Apocalypse film series (featuring some notable actors like Gary Busey, Howie Mendel, and Mr. T), was also the European Union president before disbanding the United Nations to form a one-world government that controlled every country on the planet.

I noticed early on that these cinematic Antichrist figures shared similar underlying contours. For one, they garnered power—one way or another—through the United Nations or European Union. And two, they were all European. As I got older and began studying for a graduate degree in international relations, I started to see that this “Antichrist” figure today represents more than simply a single person or entity—it represents a historical evangelical fear and disdain towards Western Europe itself.

For American right-wing evangelicals, President Trump’s antagonism with Western Europe reflects not only their relationship with, and suspicions of, Europe, but also their decades-long anxiety about the future of America itself.

***

Earlier this year, Trump’s threats to annex Greenland—a semiautonomous territory of Denmark—shook up relations between the United States and Western Europe. And now, the war in Iran has led to Trump’s claims of “absolutely” leaving the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)—the defense treaty set up by Americans and Western Europeans immediately following World War II.

Since the end of World War II, Western Europe and the United States have been close allies. However, conservative voices, especially evangelical Christians, viewed Western Europe with suspicion. Even today, Europe, to the mind of many American evangelicals, serves as a cautionary tale of things to come if the United States doesn’t follow its own exceptional, godly path.

For decades, evangelicals have consumed media and messaging with an Antichrist figure that is an exaggerated caricature of a Western European—one that is deeply sophisticated, educated, and, most notably, irreligious. Coupled with ruthless ambition, sociopathic tendencies, and supernatural capabilities, you have just crafted the perfect image of the evangelical Antichrist—the antithesis to an imagined patriotic Christian American.

“The Nicolae Carpathia character is really helpful because that character is a proxy for a certain evangelical critique of cosmopolitan European culture, “said Leah Payne, Professor of American Religious History at Portland Seminary of George Fox University.

And this evangelical critique of Europe goes back to the origins of both American evangelicalism and fundamentalism itself.

When American Fundamentalists split from Mainline Protestantism in the early 1920s (and right after World War I), many of their leaders believed in a literal Antichrist who would conspire to take over the world. They distrusted the precursor to the United Nations—the League of Nations—because they saw the League as a potential seat of a one-world government for the Antichrist to rule.

Fundamentalist leaders also viewed Germany’s defeat in WWI as a casualty of its own intellectual milieu—its philosophies à la Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx, as well as for its novel interpretation of the Bible, “higher criticism,” that viewed the scriptures within historical and literary contexts and not just at face-value (which led to them splitting from Mainline American Protestantism in the first place).

This critique carried on after the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, who many viewed at the time, along with Italy’s Benito Mussolini, as potential Antichrists.

“They saw war-torn Europe as a morality tale in several different ways. One was theological or philosophical: German liberal theology was often conflated with the cultural developments that culminated in Nazism and war,” said Daniel Hummell, a scholar of American evangelicalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The destruction of Europe could be interpreted as a cautionary tale about where those ideas might lead.”

Fundamentalists’ beliefs about the apocalypse and the Antichrist colored their perception of current events—a perception that saw world affairs through the lens of good and evil, along with potential candidates for who might become the Antichrist.

After a decimated Western Europe, fundamentalists (and their theological descendants, neo-evangelicals) launched major missionary efforts, taking advantage of Europe’s fragile state to restructure its religious landscape. A young evangelist named Billy Graham held several crusades in England, France, and West Germany throughout the mid-1950s, hoping to turn the tide of Europe’s path to secularization. While his crusades were attended by the millions and featured various historical notables—including Winston Churchill—it did little to shift Europeans toward religion.

“Evangelicals were just coming into their own in the 1940s and ’50s following the fundamentalist-modernist controversy,” said Matthew Sutton, a scholar on religion and American history at Washington State University. “They were disjointed and not well-organized. The established mainline churches were the ones that had the ‘ins’ in Europe at that time.”

Secularism and communism were the two archenemies in the evangelical worldview during the Cold War era; the former merely excluded religion, and the latter was outright opposed to it. Evangelical and fundamentalist leaders saw secularism as the culprit behind the formation of the United Nations, an entity that many American evangelicals opposed from the beginning. Even though religious leaders and policymakers offered key contributions to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, many evangelical and fundamentalist leaders criticized the formation of the UN for being overtly secular. They also believed it could serve as the precursor to a “one-world government”—one in which the Antichrist sits and rules over every nation.

This fear is seen even today when segments of the MAGA evangelical world decry “globalism” as a “demonic ideology,” including individuals like controversial mega-church pastor Mark Driscoll.

“Anything labeled ‘globalism’ is seen as evil, which connects to apocalyptic ideas that the Antichrist is a global power,” said Kristen Kobes Du Mez, a Professor of History at Calvin University.

The reason why “globalism”—and associated institutions like the United Nations and European Union—are viewed as demonic is, in part, rooted in a deeper suspicion about “peace” within conservative evangelicalism itself.

***

As a kid growing up, I learned that the Antichrist’s reign—paradoxically enough—would usher in seven years of world peace. At the same time, the Antichrist would persecute and murder faithful Christians, and completely wipe out any opposition. In many iterations of these Christian end-times films, the Antichrist brings peace—usually between the state of Israel and the Palestinians, which then serves as the framework to build both global peace and an Antichrist-dominated world.

“Part of the opposition to the UN and EU is because of the reading from [the Bible]—the idea that the Antichrist will say ‘peace, peace’ while actually ushering in Armageddon,” said Payne. Payne is referring to a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures, Jeremiah 6:14, that says, in part, “‘Peace, peace, they say, when there is no peace.” Other passages throughout the Hebrew and Christian canons—especially the apocalyptic Book of Revelation, in which the author recounts a vision of seeing four horsemen, each one bringing conquest, war, famine, and death, respectively—serve as a lens for many evangelicals to view not only current affairs, but the morality of war and violence.

Conservative evangelical preachers like the late John MacArthur warned of global peace immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. More recently, when Franklin Graham spoke at the Department of “War” during its Christmas chapel service, he specifically referred to the “God of War.” To an outsider, it might seem contradictory to the message of Jesus’ teachings. But to many evangelicals, God uses war and conquest to usher in God’s own purposes. Mentions of peace are what many evangelicals hold with suspicion.

This ‘diabolical peace’ isn’t limited to the political stage, but extends to the religious landscape as well. Specifically, evangelicals have expressed concerns about the growth of Western Europe’s Muslim immigration population as a trend that will further usher in the spirit of the Antichrist.

Immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Centers, President George W. Bush, a Methodist who had a ‘born-again’ experience with Billy Graham’s help, referred to combating terrorism as a “crusade,” a connotation to the medieval crusades between European Christians and Arab Muslims.

While Bush softened his language and was conciliatory toward American Muslims, he still utilized stark moral framings between the U.S. and “the axis of evil”—referring specifically to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. And throughout this period, speculations that Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were Antichrist candidates were popular in some evangelical discourses. And the post-9/11 world made the 2000s ripe for apocalyptic films to gain notoriety.

At the same time, both Western Europe and—up until recently—the United States have seen a rise of migrants, especially from the Middle East. Following the Arab Spring, the Civil War in Syria, and the formation of ISIS, Western Europe gained around 7 million migrants, most of whom are Muslim, from 2010 to 2016. At the same time, a spike in terrorist attacks during the Obama era sparked fears of immigration. In November 2015, Paris saw the deadliest terrorist attack in the European Union at that time. In the United States, the following month, an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, killed fourteen people and was the deadliest post-9/11 terrorist attack in the United States at the time. A few days later, then-presidential candidate Donald Trump introduced his notorious immigration ‘ban on Muslim countries’.

To the MAGA American, including many evangelicals, the idea of Europe as both a cautionary tale and potential harbinger of the end-times has shifted their focus from the containment of communism to the twin enemies of secularism and “Islamism.” And for many evangelicals, the spirit of the Antichrist is keen to dilute the Christian nature and so-called heritage of traditionally Christian Europe.

At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025—which, a few days prior, had experienced a car-ramming attack by a 24-year-old Afghan asylum seeker—Vice President JD Vance offered a blistering critique of European values, rattling attending European leaders about the future of the US-Europe Relationship. The following year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech was more placatory and, while still worrisome for some European observers, did receive a standing ovation. In his speech, Rubio said:

“We are part of one civilization—Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.”

“The keyword there is heritage,” said Kobes Du Mez, highlighting how the Trump administration has been antagonistic toward centrist and left-wing European leaders as of late, due, in part, to Western Europe’s policies around immigration. She argues that Rubio’s usage of “Christian heritage” is frequently a dog whistle that is connected to white nationalism.

“Inside these right-wing spaces, there is a sense that the U.S. is on the cusp of losing its identity because of immigration. When right-wing evangelical influencers talk about Europe or the UK, it is to inflame fears of immigrant violence.”

The Antichrist, for many right-wing evangelicals, is a projection of their deepest anxieties. It’s the fear of changing, uncertain times. It’s the fear of other identities and beliefs that contradict their own. It’s the fear of elites who seem to have all the power. It’s a diabolical figure, but a reassuring one that everything is going as planned. If war and genocide are taking place, and even if the “climate change hoax” is real, ultimately, Jesus is coming back. And it’s all part of the story.

***

I ended up, as a Pentecostal kid from Appalachia, studying international relations in Europe while writing about American and global religion. As I watch the news from across the Atlantic Ocean, I see the American President form his own “board of peace” to Gaza—and perhaps attempt to supersede the work of the UN and other global alliances. I see him attack a Christian leader, Pope Leo XIV, for the vicar’s criticism of the war in Iran, and I see the President himself posting and then deleting an AI-generated meme of himself, ostensibly, as Jesus Christ healing a man.

I don’t tend to surmise about potential Antichrists nowadays. But I will admit, all of this reminded me of something I saw in a movie once.

Miguel Petrosky is an essayist, writer, and journalist based in Scotland and has written for The Revealer, Sojourners, ARC Magazine, and Christianity Today. You can follow him on Bluesky @miguelpetrosky.bsky.social.