The Last Children of Antoine
The Last Children of Antoine
A 115-year-old religion, founded by a Belgian metal worker, refuses to explain itself.
MARCH 20, 2025
PHOTO: An Antoinist temple in Seraing, Belgium. (By the author)
The last thing a metal worker from Liège is expected to do is found a new religion. Yet that is just what Louis-Joseph Antoine did, in Jameppe-sur-Meuse, Belgium, in 1910. Antoinism, his namesake religion, is not nearly as popular today as it was in its early years — but to its latest followers, it remains as current as ever.
Bernard (not his real name) is an Antoinist healer, a sort of parish priest for the movement. He is elegant, slightly balding and quick to smile. His pseudonym is not intended to protect his identity, but to preserve the discretion about Antoinism required by his Council. Other Antoinists declined interviews, citing an unwillingness to proselytize. “Recruitment is not part of our statutes, writings, or belief system,” Bernard explained to me. “We do not wish to conquer the world or to tell people how to do better than they already are.” Antoine himself is said to have destroyed 8,000 booklets he had created to spread his word.
This attitude has helped to maintain an aura of mystery around Antoinism. But it may also have stymied its future. The insistence that the secrets and benefits of Antoinism can’t be explained, but must be experienced, does not have the same appeal today as it did at the religion’s inception. At the height of its popularity, Antoinism had 31 temples; today, only 10 are still functioning. For Bernard, the question has become: How to keep alive a faith that speaks to only a few?
The reach of Antoinism in its heyday belied its humble beginnings. Antoine was a former miner, metal worker, soldier in the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, blacksmith, doorman and greengrocer, among other professions. When he died in 1912, two years after founding Antoinism, his funeral was attended by 15,000 people.
Contemporary accounts describe Antoine as a pious person, initially committed to Catholicism, then to spiritualism. After discovering his gifts as a healer, he held up to 150 individual consultations per day, free of charge. In addition to prayer and magnetism, Antoine sometimes prescribed certain drugs or herbal teas. Since he was not a licensed healer, this was forbidden, and he was fined 78.25 Belgian francs. He then landed on faith as the only tool for healing mind and body.
At the height of its popularity, Antoinism had 31 temples; today, only 10 are still functioning. For Bernard, the question has become: How to keep alive a faith that speaks to only a few?
According to French sociologist Anne-Cécile Bégot, who wrote a doctoral thesis on Antoinism, this mysterious character with an unusually long beard combined already-existing religious doctrines with things he had learned from difficult personal experiences, including accidentally killing a friend during a war training exercise and the loss of his very young son. Antoine also suffered from chronic stomach pain and developed his own methods for treating it. “The notion of flow, which we can compare to the aura or to karma, is a type of spiritual energy,” she said, “a symbolic support system onto which the faithful can project various scenarios depending on their individual needs.”
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I met with Bernard twice; after that, his Council put a stop to our interviews. He said he understood why the Council demands discretion. Our first meeting took place in October at his mother’s house, a three-story home nestled behind three small plane trees in a working-class neighborhood outside Liège, around 5 miles from where Antoine founded his religion. There was no coffee; he offered me sparkling water.
By the time we met, Bernard had identified as an Antoinist for about 10 years. His job is to conduct services at the temple. Several times a week, he gives a reading from what he calls Antoine’s “10 foundational principles” and takes care of the “Operation,” the “release the flow,” at the temple. He also meets with about 10 followers for individual consultations. “Antoinism has allowed me to find personal balance,” he said. Until he found the religion, he’d spent much of his life searching for answers in books from all over the world. He ended up finding them just around the corner.
“Antoinism can’t really be explained,” he told me. “It must be lived.”
To explain the Antoinist doctrine, Bernard pulled out pen and paper. He warned me that he is no great artist, and that the religion does not work miracles. “But it can soothe the soul,” he said. “Human illnesses develop because of our way of life.” While talking, he doodled circles traversed by arrows. “Individuals evolve through flow, which I define as energy or thought, like fish in water. If they use flow to be less affected by what touches them, all the better. If they can come up with a selfless thought, they’ll be able to leave their environment and reach an even more detached state, where they will no longer be affected at all.” Bernard, who has a passion for martial arts, mentioned the Belgian martial arts champion and actor Jean-Claude Van Damme. “He’s a clown, but also an international champion; so I think he’s not totally wrong when he says you have to live in the moment and let things come to you rather than try to change them.” Antoinism, then, encourages people to evolve spiritually through illness to reach a sort of salvation. How exactly? Bernard does not know. “Antoinism can’t really be explained,” he told me. “It must be lived.”
For a long time, Bernard forged his own way, without following any particular path. He wanted to give meaning to his life, get out from under the yoke of an overbearing father and come to terms with disturbing experiences from his past. At his father’s deathbed, he told me he sensed three entities ready to carry away the dying man. Previously, when he was about 20 years old, he’d felt a sudden pain in his back, as if someone had plunged a sword into it. For six months, no one could find the source of this strange pain. “Then I realized that if I convinced myself that an aspirin could help, I’d be back on my feet within 20 minutes. But if I took the aspirin while angry or in a hurry, nothing happened, even if I took a whole bottle. What mattered was my acceptance of a situation and my ability to modify what pain is.” He said this attitude toward illness saved him several decades later, when he was diagnosed with cancer. Initially, he’d been so angry he’d wanted to kill his doctor. But then he opened himself up to acceptance. “Somehow, I was already thinking the same way I am now. It’s as if I’d always been an Antoinist without knowing it.”
“There was no exam, level to reach, or obligation to go to Rome on bended knee. I thought I needed a diploma at least, but the brother told me to just follow my thoughts.”
He didn’t encounter Antoinism until the early 2000s, when he experienced the triple shock of a breakup, a move and a change in jobs. Then, after surviving another bout of cancer, Bernard started to look for new ways of thinking. He took long walks and one day, he passed an Antoinist temple. It was open, so he went in. “No one was there, I didn’t understand anything, but I liked the place and felt good there.” Without really knowing why, he went back the following day. “Little by little, I started to feel reassured, especially about my breakup,” he said.
One night, just before 7 p.m., a brother invited him to take over the reading in the service. Bernard had no idea what to do, but there was only a handful of people in the congregation, so he stepped up to the dais. That’s where he had a revelation. “Suddenly, I found myself on a cloud, which is another type of flow. It was extraordinary.” Everything took off from there. Bernard received a frock (a sort of black cassock), though he was not required to wear it. He agreed to lead the Operation and consult with the faithful. “There was no exam, level to reach, or obligation to go to Rome on bended knee. I thought I needed a diploma at least, but the brother told me to just follow my thoughts.”
After Antoine had his revelation of the founding principles of the religion in 1906, Jemeppe-sur-Meuse became a sort of Antoinist Vatican. The temple there is a building in the neo-classical style, with touches of Art Nouveau. At the back of the large main room, the words “Antoinist cult” are inscribed on the black wall, along with the schedule of readings and Operations and a lecture on faith as the only means of salvation, all in the same typeface as Hergé’s Tintin comic books.
One Sunday morning, as I pushed open the door, I saw about two dozen faithful — a far cry from the 300,000 followers in Belgium that the religion gained in its early years. The few 30-somethings at the service weren’t doing much to bring down the average age. Bernard stepped forward and began to recite the “10 principles of the Father,” which include the idea that charity is a duty, and that people ought to love their enemies in preparation for future lives (reincarnation is part of the Antoinist belief system). More generally, the cult invites everyone to focus on themselves and to accept what may come by avoiding materialism as much as possible. As Bernard explained, this can be done by “being a responsible citizen able to resist the temptation of consumerism”; by meditating, which is “a free, communal process that runs counter to our fast-moving culture”; and by adopting vegetarianism, “a healthy diet in a time of climate change.”
After a long silence, Bernard left the room, dutifully followed by the faithful. Some lined up outside a small room, hoping for a private audience to confess some trouble or ask a question. Bernard told me he appreciates these intimate moments. “People come and tell me everything, sometimes jumbled like in a big soup. They tell their doctor about physical pain, but here it’s different. They want to be reassured. Some are hoping for a magical formula that will make them beautiful, great, rich, and strong. Others ask for the next lottery numbers. I let myself channel whatever comes to me. Then the flow emerges, and I try to transmit what I sense. That’s all I can say.”
Bernard reminds people to continue seeing their doctors, but he admitted that some still cling to the idea that sacred healers are above science. According to Anne-Cécile Bégot, Antoinism’s early popularity was due in part to episodes of unexplained healing, including the recovery of a factory worker with a stomach ache and Antoine reportedly saving a herd of cows from a mysterious death. The religion’s working-class origins also helped it succeed: “Many saw Antoinism as an escape from traditional medicine, Catholicism and their bourgeois associations,” Bégot told me.
“Today, very few followers reject conventional medicine,” Guillaume Chapheau, an Antoinist from Lille who moved to Dortmund and who blogs about the movement, told me. “Antoinists believe in the power of thought to help doctors make the correct diagnosis.” Many followers, upon falling ill or while searching for meaning, are especially eager to find moral support in Antoinist leaders. Their practice is a sort of psychoanalysis: There will always be someone at an Antoinist temple willing to listen without judgement. An outside perspective can suggest a new way to approach a question or problem.
They tell their doctor about physical pain, but here it’s different. They want to be reassured. Some are hoping for a magical formula that will make them beautiful, great, rich, and strong. Others ask for the next lottery numbers.
Standing in the temple’s entrance, his consultations over, Bernard smiled at the thought of his role as communal ear. “I love how Antoinism isn’t really a religion, but a concept of life that offers a freedom of worship and a way of constructing belief that are terribly modern,” he said. He mentioned that Antoinists don’t have to convert and be baptized if they don’t want to. And because there are no rites or rituals, there’s an “absence of exclusivity in worshipping experiences, and [a] simplicity,” he said. Another “modern” aspect of the religion is its gender equality, which was preached by Antoine himself. “Our ideas are inherently human: We don’t judge one another, we don’t moralize, we don’t claim to know the truth, and we welcome everyone, whether they are Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, gay or anything else.”
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Bernard is almost constantly surrounded by others. He only finds calm and solitude in his small workshop, at the back of his garden. It is heated by a wood-burning stove and full of all manner of oddities: an old basketball net, welding helmets, a host of electrical cords, coasters, an impressive anvil in the middle of the room. Bernard is an amateur craftsman, as was his father. A few years ago, he even created his first masterpiece, using objects found on old battlefields. As we sat before a large chest with the engraving “practice makes perfect, my son,” Bernard drew a parallel between craftsmanship and Antoinism. “If it’s made well, people will be automatically drawn to it. Silent, quality religious practice costs less and yields better results than when you tell the world you’ve found the truth.”
Even so, Antoine’s theories haven’t proved appealing to today’s more informed and educated public. “We have a slightly backward side,” Bernard admitted. “We don’t leave much room for questioning and ideological innovation. And it’s hard for people to invest in something without knowing too much about how it works. It doesn’t sell very well.”
Although the religion is recognized by the state as a foundation that provides a public good, it does not receive subsidies. Belgian law dictates that it can’t reinvest the profits from the sale of its temples — some have been reconverted into housing, others into art galleries and a mosque — into the preservation of its remaining 10 structures. The future of Antoinism seems dim. “It’s okay if the movement declines,” Bernard assured me. As Antoine said, “there may only be only one person left in the end, but from there, everything will begin anew.” Perhaps that person is Bernard.
This article was first published in the Belgian investigative outlet Médor.
