Shining a light on an antichrist

By Shay Totten | Vermont Guardian
photo by Jessica K. Kell

posted March 24, 2006

Mike Luoma, a former altar boy and Eucharistic minister, is no missionary, but he is a man on a mission.

Luoma has set out to show that preachers like Pat Robertson are not the followers of Christ’s teachings that they claim to be. Instead, Luoma argues in Holy Shit: Pat Robertson is the Anti- Christ, that Robertson and his ilk are bad for Christianity and share little with Christ’s teachings.

Anyone who has ever read Elaine Pagel’s The Gnostic Gospels, or the Secret Teachings of Christ, will find similar tracts in Luoma’s creation, and he uses the first part of the book to give readers a basic history of Christ and Christianity.

Using rough-edged, often comical, ink drawings, Luoma guides readers from Jesus’ original teachings to the rise of an institutional church and eventually to the fundamentalist movement, which has become the dominant sect in the United States and influences both culture and politics.

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