"The One," the McCain campaign's YouTube video poking at Oprah Winfrey's reference to Barack Obama's supposed chosenness, recently topped 1 million views (making it McCain's second most viral video). You may think the ad is just needling Obama (and his fans) for some of their more chest-thumping moments (i.e. "we are the ones we have been waiting for), and the general reaction to it from the political pundits was that the ad was amusing, that mocking Obama for being messianic was a bit tough but that mostly this was evidence of the McCain campaign starting to take the gloves off. Next story, please.

Well, maybe it's worth another look. The Matthew 25 movement--a group of progressive evangelicals that runs a PAC and has endorsed Obama--is charging that the ad is actually full of coded messages meant to convince evangelical voters that Obama is actually, literally, the anti-Christ.

Posting on the One Million Strong blog, Grant of Matthew 25 writes:

...this ad was not done by some campaign volunteer with a bit of editing experience for (as McCain suggests) his supporters amusement. This was a professionally cut, edited, and produced ad full of sinister dog-whistles for evangelical ears.

At best it is suggesting supporters of Obama are idol-worshipers. At its worst it is suggesting that Sen. Obama is some kind of anti-Christ.

The McCain campaign is unquestionably targeting the 44 million+ Americans who have read the Left Behind series. The makers of the ad chose all of Obama’s quotes very carefully and filled it with image after image equating Senator Obama to the anti-Christ, and especially to Nicolae Carpathia, the anti-Christ in the popular end times novels....

The anti-Christ, in the Left Behind series, Nicolae Carpathia set up a religion called THE ONE World Religion. Carpathia started his career as a young charismatic junior Senator. He made his rise, with Satan's support, by spreading a message of unity, hope, and peace, in an anomic world in the wake of the rapture....

The title or the ad is set up to immediately remind anyone familiar with the Left Behind series of the name of the false church set up by the anti-Christ - "THE ONE World Religion."

The text and voice over are exact copies of previews for Christian Specific end-times movies.

The images and quotes the McCain camp employed all allude to symbols of the anti-Christ. If the McCain campaign were simply cutting an ad about Obama being an idol that would be offensive enough; however, there are just too many parts of this ad which make no sense, for a professional production, unless they were trying to suggest Obama is the anti-Christ.

I'm not really fit to judge Grant's charges, but they certainly seem plausible. I know religion in America is a charged subject, but there's plenty of survey data showing that a substantial portion of Americans believe in the coming of the end-times; certainly the popularity of the Left Behind books leaves little doubt that there's a huge market here.

Also, you have to wonder about the context for this particular ad, if it is indeed aimed at reaching conservative evangelicals at some deeper level. Spend a little time over on GodTube ("Broadcast Him" is its slogan), the religious alternative to YouTube, looking for videos mentioning Obama, and the top results include (which strongly suggests that he is not) and "Barack Obama Christian Atheist Radical Christian Persecution".

So, is McCain playing with fire?