Christians who oppose face masks have ‘spirit of antichrist:’ AME elder, Columbia prof. claims
Obery M. Hendricks Jr., an ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and an adjunct professor of religion at Columbia University in New York City, accused Christians who oppose wearing face masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic of having the “spirit of antichrist.”
Hendricks, a self-described democratic socialist and author of the book, Christians Against Christianity: How Right-Wing Evangelicals Are Destroying Our Nation and Our Faith, in which he criticizes conservative Evangelicals, including Franklin Graham and Pastor Robert Jeffress, is also a member of the Democratic National Committee's Faith Advisory Council.
The Christian scholar made his comments about masking during a Feb. 8 interview with Alfred Street Baptist Church Pastor Howard-John Wesley on his YouTube show “Can I Push It?” days before the progressive state of California lifted its mask mandate for vaccinated adults.
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During the interview, Hendricks also argued that Evangelicals had distorted and exploited Christianity, helped promote white supremacy, and claimed that the Bible is silent on homosexuality.
"These folk are not fulfilling their Gospel responsibility. They're violating it," Hendricks said. "They're spitting in the face of it. It's anti-biblical. It's anti-Christian. And I'll go farther. … What we see reflected in their attitudes and their actions and their pronouncements is what 1 John calls the spirit of antichrist."
"[W]hen we look again at these conservatives, these right-wingers that talk about 'You're infringing on my freedom by having me wear a mask' … they don't understand that they are violating the biblical principle of responsibility for our brothers and sisters," he insisted.
Hendricks' comments come as several states, including those with Democratic governors, and municipalities across the United States, including some major cities, have announced their intentions to lift indoor mask mandates by the end of February or early March.
On Wednesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said that the agency is examining the possibility of relaxing its masking guidance. Reports indicate that the CDC could lift its masking guidance by as early as next week and that municipalities could relax their COVID restrictions based on certain factors that include ICU bed capacity.
In the podcast, Hendricks further claimed that the Bible doesn’t offer a conclusive position on whether homosexuality and abortion are sins.
“They [Evangelicals] say that unequivocally, according to the Bible, same-gender emotional and physical intimacy is a sin and these folks should be cast out. But when you read the passages about homosexuality, there are only a handful of them and the Bible talks more about bestiality than it talks about same-gender loving people,” Hendricks said.
“But the few places where it mentions same-gender loving people, you put them in a cultural, historical context and translate them correctly, either they are like in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, they’re dealing with circumstances at the moment to try to keep the Hebrew people from going over into the Canaanite religion for instance,” he continued.
“So it mentions not [to] lie with men. But it doesn’t really. It says that men should not become holy ones into the Hebrew. ... What does that mean? You should not get involved into the Canaanite Temple cult, a fertility cult in which men become, essentially try to become women. They dress like women. Act like women. They even have their private parts excised so they can fulfill this role of women in order to worship a feminine God."
Hendricks clarified his opinion and biblical interpretation, adding that he wasn't saying "men dressing like women in itself is bad."
"It’s bad because they are not acting as Hebrews. They are acting according to someone else’s religion. And when you go up through Paul, Paul is saying when you translate it through the Greek, some of it is just not clear. My point is, no matter what one’s opinion is, we cannot say conclusively that the Bible is saying that those people who romantically love members of their own gender are sinning because the Bible does not clearly say that," Hendricks argued.
"And that is clear, and we don’t need to get into the fact that Jesus says to love each other. What that says to me is as long as you love somebody, you’re in good shape, and you’re trying to love in the name of God."
The AME denomination allows LGBT-identified individuals to serve as pastors and in other leadership positions, but prohibits clergy from performing same-sex marriages, a rule approved unanimously in 2004.
The Bible is clear about homosexuality. Leviticus says that God finds the act of men having sex with men as detestable to the Lord. Meanwhile, Romas 1:26 describes homosexual acts as "shameful."
While some argue that Old Testament law has no relevance for New Testament believers, cultural apologist and author Jim Denison argues that "basic rule of biblical interpretation is that any Old Testament teaching repeated in the New Testament carries the weight of command to the Christian church and faith."
"[I]t is claimed that the Leviticus passage expresses a worship code, not a moral standard. The logic is that Leviticus is written with regard to the Levitical priests and their duties of worship preparation and leadership and does not apply as such to the larger family of faith. However, the chapter in question begins, 'The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the Israelites and say to them ...' (18:1)."
"Nothing in the chapter limits its application or significance to the Levites," he continued. "Rather, the chapter exhorts all Israel to “keep my decrees and laws, for the man who obeys them will live by them” (v. 4). It proceeds to forbid incestuous relationships, child sacrifice, and bestiality — standards I presume critics of Leviticus 18:22 would consider universal."
Focus on the Family, a Christian advocacy organization, also noted that claims that the Bible is not conclusive about the issue of homosexuality are a distortion of Scripture.
“Some claim Jesus never said anything about homosexuality and therefore is neutral on the topic. Not true. Jesus was unequivocal in saying that to understand marriage and the sexual union, we must go back to the beginning and see how God created humanity and to what end. (See Matthew 19 and Mark 10.),” the organization states on its website.
“Jesus holds up the creation story in Genesis not as a quaint Sunday school lesson, but as authoritative — reminding us that God created each of us male and female, each for the other. And the sexual union that God created and ordains is for husband and wife to come together in physical union, one flesh.”
The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association maintains in a 2017 handbook that homosexuality can't simply be dismissed as an "alternate lifestyle" and maintains that "such behavior is a "departure from the natural order of His creation."
"God’s Word shows us the dual purpose of the sexual relationship: It seals the marriage bond between a man and a woman, and it perpetuates the human race," the handbook, "Biblical Answers for a Broken World" states, citing Genesis 2:24 and Genesis 9:7.
"A person’s sexuality should only be expressed within this context. God created man and woman as unique biological persons made to complete each other. He instituted monogamous marriage between male and female as the foundation of the family and the basic structure of society."
Hendricks also elaborated on his view that abortion is not a sin — a position that a majority of Evangelicals disagree with.
“The Bible never says abortion is a sin,” he said. “Both these areas, homosexuality and abortion, were determined during a meeting of right-wing Evangelicals around 1980. Randall Balmer documents this in his book, Thy Kingdom Come. He was there. They got together and they tried to decide what wedge issues can we come up with that we can use to get the people behind us so we can dominate society.”
