Most people would hesitate to teach theology in Rome if they lacked the requisite qualifications and degrees. That hasn’t stopped Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor and Republican mega-donor, whose lectures on the antichrist have been the hottest heretical ticket in the city for months, held at the Palazzo Taverna in Rome, just a stone’s throw from the Vatican.
His sold-out lectures are not only about garnering attention to his ideas, but also drawing others outside of the technocratic and political worlds into embracing his philosophy. These lectures have been reported on widely by many international publications, and were even lampooned on an episode of “South Park” last October.
And according to multiple reports, that includes the belief that the people who strive for peace, work for justice and want to embrace diversity are to blame for western civilization’s supposed ongoing collapse.
Thiel’s religious beliefs are a mishmash of his political and personal beliefs about technology, civilization, race and democracy. And his views on the antichrist range from the disturbing to the nonsensical.
For example, he has said that he believes the antichrist will push the world toward peace using the fear of war. He also thinks the antichrist would use peace to slow down or even stop technological advances. He’s said it’s possible that climate change activist Greta Thunberg and other critics could be “legionnaires of the Antichrist.”
It’s a belief structure built on fear — and Thiel’s fear appears to be that western civilization will be crushed by a myriad of people and forces that don’t adhere to his interpretation of technocratic Christian beliefs.
There are some things that a billionaire can’t buy. An understanding of theology without rigorous study is one of them. The man who made his fortune with PayPal and is building an even greater fortune by bringing artificial intelligence to government surveillance with Palantir isn’t obsessed with the antichrist in the “Exorcist” sense. His interests are instead an esoteric mashup of teachings from the late French academic Rene Girard’s mimetic theory and the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, who argued that modern thought is a secular belief rather than a religious complex.
But this is not what the antichrist is in Christian theology.
Well-trained theologians and the Catholic Church itself have discounted his interpretation of the antichrist. The Italian theologian Father Paolo Benanti called Thiel’s teaching “a sustained act of heresy.” The Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro describes Thiel’s antichrist teachings as a person’s way of being in the world, rather than an actual figure: “The Antichrist, rather than a theological figure, is a concrete, identifiable historical possibility. This is the point at which the Gospel is transformed into an instrument of geopolitical analysis.” The next time Thiel embarks on his lecture tour to tout his teachings about the antichrist, remember that his lectures are the musings of a man who wants technology to overtake the emotional connections that humans have. The New York Times’ Ross Douthat asked Thiel in a June 2025 interview, “I think you would prefer the human race to endure, right?” After a long hesitation, Thiel replied, “There’s so many questions implicit in this,” before eventually offering a “Yes.” That should give us all pause. Thiel’s evangelism is another example of how the right has strategically co-opted Christian religious teachings to provide support for their autocratic tendencies, as well as their fears about technology being limited through “woke” beliefs.
Anthea Butler is a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. 
