Christian anarchism

Part of a series on
Anarchism
History Outline
Schools of thought Feminist Green Primitivist Social ecology Total liberation Individualist Egoist Free-market Naturist Philosophical Mutualism Postcolonial African Black Queer Religious Christian Jewish Social Collectivist Parecon Communist Magonism Without adjectives Methodology Agorism Illegalism Insurrectionary Communization Expropriative Pacifist Platformism Especifismo Relationship Syndicalist Synthesis
Theory Practice Anarchy Anarchist Black Cross Anarchist criminology Anationalism Anti-authoritarianism Anti-capitalism Anti-militarism Affinity group Autonomous social center Black bloc Classless society Class struggle Consensus decision-making Conscientious objector Critique of work Decentralization Deep ecology Direct action Free association Free love Freethought Horizontalidad Individualism Isocracy Law Mutual aid Participatory politics Permanent autonomous zone Prefigurative politics Proletarian internationalism Propaganda of the deed Refusal of work Revolution Revolutionary spontaneity Rewilding Security culture Self-ownership Social ecology Sociocracy Somatherapy Spontaneous order Squatting Temporary autonomous zone Union of egoists Voluntary association Workers' council
People Armand Ba Bakunin Berkman Bonanno Bookchin Chomsky Cleyre Day Durruti Ellul Ervin Faure Ferrer Feyerabend Godwin Goldman González Prada Graeber Guillaume He-Yin Kanno Kōtoku Kropotkin Landauer Liu Magón Makhno Malatesta Michel Most Parsons Pi Pouget Proudhon Rocker Santillán Spooner Stirner Thoreau Tolstoy Tucker Volin Ward Warren Zerzan
Issues Animal rights Capitalism Education Love and sex Nationalism Religion Violence
History Paris Commune Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA Cantonal rebellion Hague Congress International Conference of Rome Trial of the Thirty Haymarket affair May Day Congress of Amsterdam Tragic Week High Treason Incident Manifesto of the Sixteen Individualist anarchism in the United States 1919 United States bombings Biennio Rosso German Revolution of 1918–1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic Kronstadt rebellion Makhnovshchina Amakasu Incident Escuela Moderna Individualist anarchism in Europe Spanish Revolution of 1936 Barcelona May Days Red inverted triangle Labadie Collection May 1968 Provo LIP Kate Sharpley Library Australian Anarchist Centenary Carnival Against Capital 1999 Seattle WTO protests Really Really Free Market Occupy movement
Culture A las Barricadas Anarchist bookfair Anarcho-punk Arts Culture jamming DIY ethic Films Freeganism Glossary Infoshop Independent Media Center The Internationale Jewish anarchism Lifestylism " No gods, no masters " Popular education "Property is theft!" Radical cheerleading Radical environmentalism Squatting Symbolism
Economics Communization Cooperative Cost the limit of price General strike Gift economy Give-away shop Free association Labour voucher Market abolitionism Mutual aid Mutual credit Participatory economics Social ownership Wage slavery Workers' self-management
By region Africa Albania Algeria Andorra Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bangladesh Belarus Belgium Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Brazil Bulgaria Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic East Timor Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Finland France French Guiana Georgia Germany Greece Guatemala Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Ireland Israel Italy Japan Korea Latvia Malaysia Mexico Monaco Mongolia Morocco Netherlands New Zealand Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Romania Russia Serbia Singapore South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tunisia Turkey Ukraine United Kingdom United States Uruguay Venezuela Vietnam
Lists Anarcho-punk bands Books Communities Fictional characters Films Jewish anarchists Musicians Periodicals
Related topics Anti-corporatism Anti-consumerism Anti-fascism Anti-globalization Anti-statism Anti-war movement Autarchism Autonomism Communism Counter-economics Definition of anarchism and libertarianism Labour movement Left communism Left-libertarianism Libertarianism Libertarian Marxism Libertarian socialism Marxism Situationist International Socialism Spontaneous order Voluntaryism
Anarchism portal Politics portal
v t e

Part of a series on the
History of Christian theology
Background Christian theology Diversity in early Christian theology Adoptionism Arianism Docetism Gnosticism Marcionism Montanism Early Christianity Proto-orthodox Christianity Timeline History of Christianity Template:History of Christianity Ecclesiastical polity Trinitarianism Nontrinitarianism Christology Paterology Pneumatology Mariology Biblical canon Deuterocanon Hermeneutics Theological hermeneutics African American Asian American Philosophical theology Christian philosophy Christian apologetics Persecution and tolerance Historical theology
Ecumenical Creeds Apostles' Nicene Chalcedonian Athanasian
Patristics and Councils Great church ante-Nicene period Church Fathers Apostolic Fathers Cappadocian Fathers Desert Fathers Desert Mothers Augustine Nicaea Ephesus Chalcedon
Post-Nicene development Heresy Monophysitism Monothelitism Byzantine Iconoclasm Gregory I Alcuin Photios East–West Schism Scholasticism Aquinas Anselm Palamas
Reformation Martin Luther Theology 95 Theses John Calvin Radical Evangelicalism theology Five solae Book of Concord Arminianism English Counter- Trent Jansenism
From the Reformation to the World Wars Natural Practical wikipedia Category Pietism John Wesley Great Awakenings Holiness movement Restoration Movement Existentialism Dogmatic theology Fundamental/foundational Liberal Secular Catholic Modernism Anglo-Catholic Critical realism Political
Since the World Wars Vatican II Situational ethics Nouvelle théologie (Ressourcement) Death of God Postliberal  • Narrative Continental philosophy Radical orthodoxy Neo-orthodoxy Paleo-orthodoxy Reconciliation Open theism Analytic in Thomism Atheism Theopoetics of religions Ecumenism Digital Transmodernism Constructive Eco- Environmental Public extraterrestrial life Progressive Christianity Moderate Christianity Conservative Christianity Emerging church Confessing Movement Evangelical theology
Contextualisation and Inculturation Indigenous church mission theory Sino-Christian Feminist in the broader movement of Feminist theology Asian Womanist New Queer Liberation Black Dalit Latin American Minjung Palestinian Postcolonial
Christianity portal
v t e

Christian anarchism is a

Christian anarchists hold that the "Kingdom of God" is the proper expression of the relationship between God and humanity. Under the "Kingdom of God", human relationships would be characterized by horizontal organization, servant leadership, and universal compassion—not through the traditional structures of organized religion, which most Christian anarchists consider hierarchical and/or authoritarian structures.^[5] Most Christian anarchists are also pacifists who reject war, militarism, and the use of violence.^[3]

More than any other Bible source, the Beatitudes are used as a basis for Christian anarchism.^[6] Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You is often regarded as a key text for modern Christian anarchism.^[3][7]

Origins

Old Testament

God declared that the people had rejected him as their king. He warned that a human king would lead to militarism, conscription and punitive taxation, and that their pleas for mercy from the king's demands would go unanswered. Samuel passed on God's warning to the Israelites but they still demanded a king, and Saul became their ruler.^[13][14] Much of the subsequent Old Testament chronicles the Israelites trying to live with this decision.^[15]

New Testament

The gospels tell of Jesus's temptation in the desert. For the final temptation, Jesus is taken up to a high mountain by Satan and told that if he bows down to Satan he will give him all the kingdoms of the world.^[16] Christian anarchists use this as evidence that all Earthly kingdoms and governments are ruled by Satan, otherwise they would not be Satan's to give.^[17] Jesus refuses the temptation, choosing to serve God instead, implying that Jesus is aware of the corrupting nature of Earthly power.^[18]

Friedrich Nietzsche and Frank Seaver Billings criticize Christianity and anarchism by arguing that they are the same thing.^[21][22]

Early Church

According to Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, several of the

In his introduction to a translation of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Thomas Merton describes the early monastics as "Truly in certain sense 'anarchists', and it will do no harm to think of them as such."^[28]

During the ante-Nicene period, there were several independent sects who took a radically different approach to Christianity from that of the Proto-Orthodox Church and displayed anarchist tendencies by relying on direct revelation, rather than scripture, such as:

• Gnosticism, particularly Valentinianism (2nd to 4th centuries) – reliance on revealed knowledge from a transcendent, unknowable God, who was a distinct divinity from the Demiurge who created and oversees the material world.
• Montanism (2nd century) – relied on prophetic revelations from the Holy Spirit.

Conversion of the Roman Empire

For Christian anarchists, the moment that epitomised the

Various libertarian socialist authors have identified the written work of the English Protestant social reformer Gerrard Winstanley and the social activism of his group, the Diggers, as anticipating their line of thought.^[30][31] For the anarchist historian George Woodcock, "Although (Pierre Joseph) Proudhon was the first writer to call himself an anarchist, at least two predecessors outlined systems that contain all the basic elements of anarchism. The first was Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676), a linen draper who led the small movement of the Diggers during the Commonwealth. Winstanley and his followers protested in the name of a radical Christianity against the economic distress that followed the Civil War and against the inequality that the grandees of the New Model Army seemed intent on preserving.

In 1649–1650, the Diggers squatted on stretches of common land in southern England and attempted to set up communities based on work on the land and the sharing of goods. The communities failed following a crackdown by the English authorities, but a series of pamphlets by Winstanley survived, of which The New Law of Righteousness (1649) was the most important. Advocating a rational Christianity, Winstanley equated Christ with "the universal liberty" and declared the universally corrupting nature of authority. He saw "an equal privilege to share in the blessing of liberty" and detected an intimate link between the institution of property and the lack of freedom.^[32] For Murray Bookchin, "In the modern world, anarchism first appeared as a movement of the peasantry and yeomanry against declining feudal institutions. In Germany its foremost spokesman during the Peasant Wars was Thomas Müntzer; in England, Gerrard Winstanley, a leading participant in the Digger movement. The concepts held by Müntzer and Winstanley were superbly attuned to the needs of their time – a historical period when the majority of the population lived in the countryside and when the most militant revolutionary forces came from an agrarian world. It would be painfully academic to argue whether Müntzer and Winstanley could have achieved their ideals. What is of real importance is that they spoke to their time; their anarchist concepts followed naturally from the rural society that furnished the bands of the peasant armies in Germany and the New Model in England."^[33]

Modern era

The 19th-century Christian abolitionists

Ballou's and Garrison's writings heavily influenced

Thomas J. Hagerty, a Marxist Catholic priest turned oculist, was a primary author of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Preamble^[39] ("an injury to one is an injury to all"^[40]). IWW members included Christian anarchists like Dorothy Day^[39] and Ammon Hennacy.^[41]

Simone Weil was a French philosopher who was very early animated by a great compassion for the exploited. She was first a socialist and then an anarchist. In 1930s, she converted to "love of Christ". During her experience, she explains that she suddenly felt that Christianity was the religion of the slaves and that she, like other slaves, could not resist adhering to it.^[48] She is considered a "Christian mystic" and an "anarchist Christian".^[49]

Anarchist biblical views and practices

Church authority

With some notable exceptions such as the Catholic Worker Movement, many Christian anarchists are critical of Church dogma and rituals. Christian anarchists tend to wish that Christians were less preoccupied with performing rituals and preaching dogmatic theology, and more with following Jesus' teaching and practices.^[50] Jacques Ellul and Dave Andrews claim that Jesus did not intend to be the founder of an institutional religion, while Michael Elliot believes one of Jesus' intentions was to bypass human intermediaries and do away with priests.^[51][52][53]

Pacifism and nonviolence

Christian anarchists, such as

Many Christian anarchists practice the principles of nonviolence, nonresistance, and turning the other cheek. To illustrate how nonresistance works in practice, Alexandre Christoyannopoulos offers the following Christian anarchist response to terrorism:

The path shown by Jesus is a difficult one that can only be trod by true martyrs. A "

war on terror."^[55]

Christian anarchists such as

The most common challenge for anarchist theologians is interpreting Paul's Epistle to the Romans 13:1–7, in which Paul demanded obedience to governing authorities and described them as God's servants exacting punishment on wrongdoers.^[58][59] Romans 13:1–7 holds the most explicit reference to the state in the New Testament but other parallel texts include Titus 3:1, Hebrews 13:17 and 1 Peter 2:13-17.^{[60][61][62][63]}

Some theologians, such as

Christian anarchists and pacifists such as Jacques Ellul and Vernard Eller do not attempt to overthrow the state given Romans 13 and Jesus' command to turn the other cheek.^[67][69] As wrath and vengeance are contrary to the Christian values of kindness and forgiveness, Ellul neither supports, nor participates in, the state.^[67] Eller articulates this position by restating the passage this way:

Be clear, any of those human [authorities] are where they are only because God is allowing them to be there. They exist only at his sufferance. And if God is willing to put up with...the Roman Empire, you ought to be willing to put up with it, too. There is no indication God has called you to clear it out of the way or get it converted for him. You can't fight an Empire without becoming like the Roman Empire; so you had better leave such matters in God's hands where they belong.^[70]

Christians who interpret Romans 13 as advocating support for governing authorities are left with the difficulty of how to act under tyrants or dictators.^[65] Ernst Käsemann, in his Commentary on Romans, challenged the mainstream Christian interpretation of the passage in light of German Lutheran Churches using this passage to justify the Holocaust.^[71]

Paul's letter to Roman Christians declares "For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong." However Christian anarchists point out an inconsistency if this text were to be taken literally and in isolation as Jesus and Paul were both executed by the governing authorities or "rulers" even though they did "right."^[65] The content of Paul's letter to the Romans is also denied by Paul himself in the same letter's 12:2 verse: "Do not conform to this world's system of things, but change yourselves by using your own intellect, so that you shall understand by yourselves the good and perfect will of God."^[72] In his Epistle to the Ephesians, 6:12, Paul states: "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world's obscurantism".^[73]

There are also Christians anarchists such as Leo Tolstoy and Ammon Hennacy, who favor Jesuism and do not see the need to integrate Paul's teachings into their subversive way of life. Tolstoy believed Paul was instrumental in the church's "deviation" from Jesus' teaching and practices whilst Hennacy believed "Paul spoiled the message of Christ".^[74][75] In contrast to Eller, Hennacy and Ciaron O'Reilly advocate nonviolent civil disobedience to confront state oppression.^[76]

Swearing of oaths

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:33-37), Jesus tells his followers to

Some Christian anarchists resist taxes in the belief that their government is engaged in immoral, unethical or destructive activities such as war, and paying taxes inevitably funds these activities, whilst others submit to taxation.^[78][79] Adin Ballou wrote that if the act of resisting taxes requires physical force to withhold what a government tries to take, then it is important to submit to taxation. Ammon Hennacy, who, like Ballou also believed in nonresistance, eased his conscience by simply living below the income tax threshold.^[80]

Christian anarchists do not interpret the injunction in Matthew 22:21 to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" as advocating support for taxes, but as further advice to free oneself from material attachment. For example, Dorothy Day said if we were to give everything to God there will be nothing left for Caesar,^[81] and Jacques Ellul believed the passage showed that Caesar may have rights over fiat money but not things that are made by God, as he explained:^[78]

"Render unto Caesar..." in no way divides the exercise of authority into two realms....They were said in response to another matter: the payment of taxes, and the coin. The mark on the coin is that of Caesar; it is the mark of his property. Therefore give Caesar this money; it is his. It is not a question of legitimizing taxes! It means that Caesar, having created money, is its master. That's all. Let us not forget that money, for Jesus, is the domain of Mammon, a satanic domain!^[82]

Vegetarianism

Established by

Anne Klejment, professor of history at University of St. Thomas, wrote of the Catholic Worker Movement:

The Catholic Worker considered itself a Christian anarchist movement. All authority came from God; and the state, having by choice distanced itself from

Christian perfectionism, forfeited its ultimate authority over the citizen...Catholic Worker anarchism followed Christ as a model of nonviolent revolutionary behavior...He respected individual conscience. But he also preached a prophetic message, difficult for many of his contemporaries to embrace.^[91]

The Catholic Worker Movement has consistently protested against war and violence for over seven decades. Many of the leading figures in the movement have been both anarchists and pacifists, as Ammon Hennacy explains:

Christian Anarchism is based upon the answer of Jesus to the Pharisees when Jesus said that he without sin should be the first to cast the stone, and upon the Sermon on the Mount which advises the return of good for evil and the turning of the other cheek. Therefore, when we take any part in government by voting for legislative, judicial, and executive officials, we make these men our arm by which we cast a stone and deny the Sermon on the Mount. The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world.^[92]

Maurin and Day were both baptized and confirmed in the Catholic Church and believed in the institution, thus showing it is possible to be a Christian anarchist and still choose to remain within a church. After her death, Day was proposed for sainthood by the

In literature, in Michael Paraskos's 2017 novel, Rabbitman, a political satire prompted by Donald Trump's presidency, the heroine, called Angela Witney, is a member of an imagined Catholic Worker commune located in the southern English village of Ditchling, where the artist Eric Gill once lived.^[93]

Doukhobors

Online communities

Numerous Christian anarchist

Criticism

Critics of Christian anarchism include both Christians and anarchists. Christians often cite

References

Bibliography

• Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre
  (2010a). Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel. Exeter: Imprint Academic.

Further reading

19th century

• Ernest Renan (1863) The Life of Jesus.
• Leo Tolstoy (1886–94) What I Believe; and The Kingdom of God Is Within You.
• Friedrich Engels (1894) A Contribution to the History of Primitive Christianity.

20th century

• Elbert Hubbard (1910) Jesus Was An Anarchist (originally titled The Better Part).
• ISBN 978-1608990535
• Archie Penner (1959) The Christian, The State, and the New Testament (reprinted in 2000 as The New Testament, the Christian, and the State).
• Ruth Gilmore (1970) The Christian Anarchists: Ruskin and Tolstoy, and a Consideration of Their Influence on Gandhi.
• Niels Kjaer (1972) Kristendom og Anarkisme (translated as Christianity and Anarchism).
• Mary Segers (1977) Equality and Christian Anarchism: The Political and Social Ideas of the Catholic Worker Movement.
• ISBN 978-1579102227
• Linda H. Damico (1987) The Anarchist Dimension of Liberation Theology.
  ISBN 978-1620323441
• ISBN 978-1606089712
• Patrick Coy, et al. (1988) A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker Archived 2015-11-20 at the
  ISBN 978-0865712621
• Michael C. Elliott (1990) Freedom, Justice and Christian Counter-Culture.
  ISBN 978-1620328576
• George Tarleton (1993) Birth of a Christian Anarchist.
• ISBN 978-1610978521

21st century

• Frederick G. Boehrer (2001) Christian Anarchism and the Catholic Worker Movement: Roman Catholic Authority and Identity in the United States.
• ISBN 978-1842273487
• Ted Lewis ed. (2008) Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting
  ISBN 978-1556352270
• ISBN 978-0310278429
• ISBN 978-1556356858
• ISBN 978-1893729773
• ISBN 978-1845402471
• Ronald E. Osborn (2010) Anarchy and Apocalypse: Essays on Faith, Violence, and Theodicy.
  ISBN 978-1606089620
• Keith Hebden (2011–13) Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism.
  ISBN 978-1-78099-688-2
• Tom O'Golo (2011) Christ? No! Jesus? Yes!: A Radical Reappraisal of a Very Important Life.
  ISBN 978-0953252008
• Jacques de Guillebon and Falk van Gaver (2012) L'anarchisme chrétien (translated as Christian anarchism).
  ISBN 978-2356310613
• Mark Van Steenwyk (2012–13) That Holy Anarchist: Reflections on Christianity & Anarchism.
  ISBN 978-0830836550
• Noel Moules (2012) Fingerprints of Fire, Footprints of Peace: A Spiritual Manifesto from a Jesus Perspective.
  ISBN 978-1-84694-612-7
• Davor Džalto (2016) Anarchism and Orthodoxy [1] Archived 2016-10-11 at the Wayback Machine.
• Davor Džalto (2021) Anarchy and the Kingdom of God: From Eschatology to Orthodox Political Theology and Back [2] Archived 2021-01-15 at the Wayback Machine.
• Montero, Roman A. 2017. All Things in Common: The Economic Practices of the Early Christians. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock.
  ISBN 9781532607912
• Beno Profetyk (2017) Christocrate, la logique de l'anarchisme chrétien
  ISBN 978-2839918466
• Beno Profetyk (2020) Credo du Christocrate – Christocrat's creed (Bilingual French-English edition)

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Christian anarchism.

• Works on Christian anarchism at Internet Archive
• Books on Christian anarchism at the Open Library
• "Union Square Speech", Dorothy Day, November 6, 1965
• Commentary: John 18:33-38, Ollie Harrison,
  Third Way Magazine
  , February 1996
• Christian Anarchism: A Revolutionary Reading of the Bible,
  Alexandre Christoyannopoulos
  , World International Studies Conference (WISC), July 23–26, 2008
• Jesus Is an Anarchist, James Redford, Social Science Research Network (SSRN), October 17, 2009
• Was Jesus an anarchist? - interview with Alexandre Christoyannopoulos by William Crawley, BBC Northern Ireland, May 2011
• Jesus Radicals - A webzine exploring Christianity and anarchism
• Compassionistas - A resource for Spiritual Activism with some Christian Anarchist material
• Christianarchism Archived 2013-05-26 at the Wayback Machine - An interpretation of Christian Anarchism
• Beno Hasopher Archived 2022-09-07 at the Wayback Machine - Webpage of Beno Hasopher, christian anarchist theologian (in French)
• Maurin, Day, the Catholic Worker, and Anarcho-Distributism by Nicholas Evans 2018
• Pantarchy: Voluntary State and a New Catholic Church: Brief Overview of the Views of the Individualist Anarchist Stephen Pearl Andrews by Nicholas Evans 2018
• Catholic Freedom: Why Confession To A Priest Is Not Necessary To Have Sins Forgiven A Brief History of Confession from a Cafeteria Catholic Anarchist perspective by Nicholas Evans
• Jesus was an anarchist! - interview with Alexandre Christoyannopoulos by Matt Archer, June 2021