“This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.” 1 John 4:3
Several commentators have made scathing observations about the recent opening of Canterbury Cathedral to stage a silent disco where ravers could dance to profane music from the ‘90’s, energised by copious amounts of alcohol. But how do we understand the ‘rave in the nave’? Was it just a way of getting young people into church, and a clever fundraising strategy as the dean and archbishop say? Or possibly merely an error of judgement on the part of church leaders which will in time be forgotten as other pressing and urgent matters arise to confront the church?
Or – does it signify something far deeper and more profound that is taking place in the church and the culture – a window that has opened a crack, revealing an approaching darkness and chaos that will take most people by surprise? This question becomes even more pressing when we are informed that at least six other Church of England Cathedrals intend to copy Canterbury’s experiment in the coming weeks.
British Cathedrals are complex in their significance. They are landmarks, signifying both the faith of the worshipping community that surrounds them and the sovereignty of God over their affairs. They are awe-inspiring sacred spaces, set apart for worship but also symbolizing the spiritual authority of the bishop whose cathedral it is. Even more significant is Canterbury, seat of the archbishop and mother church of global Anglicanism.
Many have posited a relationship (psychological and theological) between cathedral and people. God has created man to be a ‘sacred space’ for his own possession through the Holy Spirit, and cathedrals are also ‘sacred spaces’ set apart for the purpose of inviting God’s presence in worship. Because we as humans have a relationship with the architecture and function of our buildings, it is reasonable to assume that a change in the understanding of what it means to be a human will also affect how we see cathedrals – there will be some sort of symbiosis.
Carl Trueman is quite clear in his assertion that a major part of the transformations in our understanding of what it means to be human must be expressed in the theological concept of desecration.
“One need not be a Christian or even a theist to grasp that these transformations have theological significance. Both Marx and Nietzsche connect their understandings of the modern world to desecration. In the same passage that pronounces that all that is solid melts into air, the Communist Manifesto declares that all that is holy is profaned. And Nietzsche’s madman makes very clear that God has not simply ceased to exist in the moral imagination, but is dead—more than that, we have killed him. This slaying of God is surely the ultimate act of active desecration.”[i]
This desecration of man is really a desecration of the image of God. In Christian belief our humanity can only be understood in relation to our creator. What it means to be fully human is to be a temple of the Holy Spirit[ii]. We are soul spirit and body meant to reflect the divine image, and as believers to be personally filled with the Holy Spirit.
In contemporary culture, this desecration manifests in a number of different ways. We desecrate this image through abortion, pornography, more recently through the surgical assaults on children – emasculation of young boys and the mutilation of womanhood in young girls. We parody holy matrimony by a parade of ‘alternate pairings’ that we call ‘marriage’. We offer assisted suicide to the weak, elderly, and vulnerable and call it ‘compassionate’ and ‘dying with dignity’ – forgetting that murder and suicide are an assault on the very image of God that imparts human dignity.
This desecration of the human person must influence the way we relate to and use our holy places. Our desecration of cathedrals and churches is related to the desecration of ourselves[iii]. Moreover, it is a process, and to understand this process we turn to scripture and history for help.
The apostle Paul reveals much about this desecration of the holy. In his second epistle to the Thessalonians, he outlines a progression – which is a pattern found in several other places including the books of Daniel, Maccabees, and Revelation.
“The rebellion comes first, then the man of lawlessness …exalts himself above all objects of worship and takes his seat in the temple of God proclaiming himself to be God.” 2 Thessalonians 2:3,4.
Paul outlines a trajectory here with several stages – rebellion, desecration, then a mimesis when the spirit of antichrist imitates the divine. The author Luke Burgis, notes that in a post secular culture,
“(there are) people or things that appear to mimic Christ, but that do so in fraudulent and seductive ways. For instance, the broader secular culture bills itself (sic) as “more Christian than Christianity” in its concern for victims, and it stands on this to justify things as vile as state-sanctioned euthanasia. It is always sold as compassion. The secular culture is oddly in a mimetic rivalry with Christianity, or with Christ himself. The antichrist is the one who mimics Christ as closely as possible to the point where people who are unformed and not in relationship with Christ begin to be confused about who is who.”[iv]
In Paul’s time, as in John’s, the mystery of lawlessness was already at work. To help his community understand the process Paul draws on the Old Testament book of Daniel. Daniel describes the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes who ruled the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC, during which time the Maccabean revolt occurred.[v]
The historical circumstances of the Maccabean revolt are recorded in the books of the Maccabees. They describe how the leaders of Judaism had become corrupt, both in terms of abandoning the tenets of Mosaic faith and in immoral behaviour. Greek cultural influence had led to the formation of a Hellenising party within Judaism who were keen to spread their influence. During the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the citadel was occupied by a particularly rebellious and violent group of Hellenists who caused civil unrest. According to Maccabees they even shed innocent blood, defiling the sanctuary[vi].
Menelaus obtained the high priesthood by bribery and was instrumental in bringing about the murder of the true high priest, Onias. He was also implicated in the theft of the holy vessels of the temple – so initiating sacrilegious acts against the temple of God. The chaos caused by the Jewish Hellenists in the environs of the temple mount disturbed the orderly functioning of the city, and Antiochus was only too eager to intervene, now in religious affairs. The Hellenists had already initiated a programme of discouraging circumcision. Antiochus passed laws forbidding the practice, also proscribing the observance of sabbaths, feasts and regular sacrifices. In a further attempt to supplant Judaism, pagan altars were built, including an altar to Zeus that was placed upon the temple altar. The Hebrew scriptures were destroyed, and anyone found in possession of them faced the death penalty. Finally, Antiochus desecrated the temple by sacrificing a pig on the altar to Zeus.
Apostasy progresses as culture influences the faith, resulting in the twisting of doctrine and the moral corruption of the clergy. Apostatizing groups then form, even desecrating the holy. Those who are apostate then encourage the intervention of the state or political power.
The desecration of the holy space precedes the sanctification of the diabolical – the values of good and evil are inverted. Fr Ripperger, the renowned Roman Catholic exorcist, describes this inversion as diabolic disorientation where moral codes are progressively oriented away from God; sin is glorified, and virtue attacked.
The antichrist spirit is transformative -it not only defiles but inverts. What was formerly held to be a good is seen as evil and vice-versa. Those who hold to true biblical values of good and evil are hated and attacked. We already see this in western culture in so many ways.
In AD 70, the Jerusalem temple was once again desecrated when the Roman general Titus’ army overpowered the defenders of Jerusalem and looted the temple. He brought back the sacred temple objects and massive amounts of gold and silver to Rome[vii] . With the proceeds of these spoils of war he built the Colosseum[viii]. This was a place of entertainment for the populace, but also a place where the emperor, the embodiment of the state, displayed his temporal and spiritual power. Eventually the Christians of Rome became the victims of these displays and were brutally put to a martyr’s death in the arena. The metaphor is repeated today, not literally but symbolically – a sacred space is exploited for purposes of entertainment. If the process is not interrupted, eventually the outright hatred for confessing bible-believing Christians will result in persecution. Caesar will claim to be God – and by that time the majority will happily accept his claim.
[i] https://www.firstthings.com/article/2024/01/the-desecration-of-man retrieved 04/03/2024.
[ii] 1 Corinthians 6:19.
[iii] Dr Cajetan Skowronski, who led a protest against ‘the rave’ writes, “I … consider the desecration of the sacred ground of our temple buildings, as both a natural consequence of the desecration of ourselves—as fleshly temples stamped through with the Imago Dei—and as a contributing factor to that same desecration of man.” See: https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/my-attempt-to-stop-the-desecration-of-canterbury-cathedral/ retrieved 04/03/2024.
[iv] Interview with Luke Burgis: Be Not Conformed—Girard and the Problem of Desire in a Postsecular Age, ThePublic Discourse. https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2024/02/92785/ retrieved 04/03/2024.
[v] Daniel Chapters 11,12.
[vi] 1 Maccabees 1:35ff.
[vii] Josephus, Jewish Wars 6:317.
[viii] The archaeologist Sean Kingsley recounts the discovery in 2001 of an inscription on a marble lintel of the Colosseum which records the order of Titus to build the amphitheatre, financed by the spoils plundered from the temple. Kingsley, Sean, God’s Gold, HarperCollins, 2007, New York, p14, 15.
