Christian anarchism
Christian anarchism is a Christian movement in political theology that claims anarchism is inherent in Christianity and the Gospels. It is grounded in the belief that there is only one source of authority to which Christians are ultimately answerable—the authority of God as embodied in the teachings of Jesus. It therefore rejects the idea that human governments have ultimate authority over human societies. Christian anarchists denounce the state, believing it is violent, deceitful and idolatrous.
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 or authoritarian structures. Most Christian anarchists are also pacifists who reject war, militarism, and the use of violence.
More than any other Bible source, the Beatitudes are used as a basis for Christian anarchism. Leo Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You is often regarded as a key text for modern Christian anarchism.
Origins
Old Testament
, a French philosopher and Christian anarchist, notes that the final verse of the Book of Judges states that there was no king in Israel and that "everyone did as they saw fit". Subsequently, as recorded in the first Book of Samuel the people of Israel wanted a king "so as to be like other nations". The Australian Christian anarchist Dave Andrews believes that the Israelites lived in a “decentralized federation of tribes.” Ellul describes that when important decisions were made, a popular assembly was held, which had the final say. Christian anarchists claim that until Samuel the Israelites had neither king nor central government, with God as the sole authority. The Israelites had no taxes or rent and there was equal access to basic resources. Israel's rallying cry was "We have no king but Yahweh." The American anarchist Peter Gelderloos sees a strong decentralization during the monarchy, seeing the Kingdom of Israel not as a state and that its intervention was minimal, dedicated only to the battlefield and the construction of some temple.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. Much of the subsequent Old Testament chronicles the Israelites trying to live with this decision.
New Testament
More than any other Bible source, the Sermon on the Mount is used as the basis for Christian anarchism. explains that the Sermon perfectly illustrates Jesus's central teaching of love and forgiveness. Christian anarchists claim that the state, founded on violence, contravenes the Sermon and Jesus' call to love one's enemies.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. 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. Jesus refuses the temptation, choosing to serve God instead, implying that Jesus is aware of the corrupting nature of Earthly power.
Christian eschatology and various Christian anarchists, such as Jacques Ellul, have identified the state and political power as the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Frank Seaver Billings criticize Christianity and anarchism by arguing that they are the same thing.
Early Church
According to Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, several of the Church Fathers' writings suggest anarchism as God's ideal. The first Christians opposed the primacy of the state: "We must obey God as ruler rather than men" ; "Stripping the governments and the authorities bare, he exhibited them in open public as conquered, leading them in a triumphal procession by means of it.". Also, some early Christian communities appear to have practised anarchist communism, such as the Jerusalem group described in Acts, who shared their money and labour equally and fairly among the members. Roman Montero claims that using an anthropological framework, such as that of the anarchist David Graeber, one can plausibly reconstruct the communism of the early Christian communities and that the practices were widespread, long-lasting, and substantial. Christian anarchists, such as Kevin Craig, insist that the communities were centred on true love and care for one another, rather than liturgy. They also allege that the reason for the early Christians were persecuted was not that they worshipped Jesus Christ but that they refused to worship human idols claiming divine status. Since they refused to worship the Roman Emperor, they refused to swear any oath of allegiance to the Roman Empire.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."
Conversion of the Roman Empire
For Christian anarchists, the moment that epitomised the degeneration of Christianity was the conversion of Emperor Constantine after his victory at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. Christianity was then legalized under the Edict of Milan in 313, which hastened the Church's transformation from a humble bottom-up sect to an authoritarian top-down organization. Christian anarchists point out that marked the beginning of the "Constantinian shift" in which Christianity gradually came to be identified with the will of the ruling elite by becoming the state church of the Roman Empire and in some cases a religious justification for violence.Peasant revolts in the Post-Reformation era
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. For the anarchist historian George Woodcock, "Although 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, 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 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. 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."
Modern era
The 19th-century Christian abolitionists Adin Ballou and William Lloyd Garrison were critical of all human governments and believed that they would be eventually supplanted by a new order in which individuals are guided solely by their love for God. Ballou and Garrison advocated Christian nonresistance to evil, as they saw Christ as the embodiment of "passive nonresistance", or nonviolent praxis against the state. They both condemned violence against southern slave owners and advocated instead for moral suasion or consistent rebukes against the institution of slavery in efforts to persuade racist southerns and indifferent northerners to the abolitionist' cause. At the outbreak of the Civil War, however, Garrison later embraced the armed struggle for black liberation and the Lincoln administration. Ballou remained a lifelong pacifist and condemned the Civil War for fear of the eventual retaliation by white southerns on freed black Americans.Ballou's and Garrison's writings heavily influenced Leo Tolstoy, who was inspired by their lifelong commitment to abolitionism. Tolstoy wrote extensively on his burgeoning Christian anarchist principles in nonfiction books like The Kingdom of God is Within You, which is considered a key Christian anarchist text. Tolstoy sought to separate Russian Orthodox Christianity, which was merged with the state, from what he believed was the true message of Jesus as contained in the Gospels, specifically in the Sermon on the Mount. He took the viewpoint that all governments that wage war and churches that in turn support those governments, are an affront to the Christian principles of nonviolence. Although Tolstoy never actually used the term "Christian anarchism" in The Kingdom of God Is Within You, reviews of the book after its publication in 1894 appear to have coined the term.
Thomas J. Hagerty, a Marxist Catholic priest turned oculist, was a primary author of the Industrial Workers of the World Preamble. IWW members included Christian anarchists like Dorothy Day and Ammon Hennacy.
Dorothy Day was a journalist turned social activist who became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor. Alongside Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933, which espoused nonviolence and hospitality for the impoverished and the downtrodden. Day was declared Servant of God when a cause for sainthood was opened for her by Pope John Paul II. Day's distributist economic views are very similar to Proudhon's mutualism by which she was influenced. Day also named the phrase "precarious work" based on the former anarchocommunist Léonce Crenier's embrace of poverty. Peter Maurin's vision to transform the social order consisted of establishing urban houses of hospitality to care for the destitute, rural farming communities to teach city dwellers agrarianism and encourage a movement back to the land, and roundtable discussions in community centres to clarify thought and initiate action.
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. She is considered a "Christian mystic" and an "anarchist Christian".