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Title: Anarchy & Religion Author: ziq Date: August 2020 Language: en Topics: religion, anarchy, anti-religion, monotheism, spirituality, anti-civ Source: https://raddle.me/wiki/anarchy_and_religion
For a long time, people have identified as "Christian-anarchists",
"Jewish-anarchists", "Muslim-anarchists", and so on. This is accepted
without question in most anarchist circles, where goals of inclusivity
tend to supersede any misgivings people might have with the inherent
top-down and patriarchal nature of most religious affiliations.
I don't think it makes any sense to try and merge anarchy with these
explicit systems of authority, and much like "anarcho-capitalism", I
think attempting to hitch anarchy's wagon to blatant forms of authority
is a misguided impulse that comes about in people who have been
thoroughly indoctrinated in authoritarian systems and are unwilling to
fully part with forms of authority they have nostalgic attachment to.
The feeling of comfort or security their religion provides them with
leads to them trying to reform their religion into something more
egalitarian when they decide they like the economic and societal ideas
presented by anarchy, but don't wish to part with their long-held
religious beliefs.
I feel I should be clear that anarchists have no right to force their
views on people that subscribe to organized religion. I simply want to
explore some of the inherently authority-based principles religious
organizations hold as sacrosanct and try to understand why religious
anarchists feel the need to essentially retcon their favored religion to
force a tenuous compatibility with anarchy.
As usual, I should also be clear I don't ascribe to the concept of an
"anarchist society", so this isn't an attempt to say religion should be
"banned" in a non-existing "anarchist society". I don't think such a
thing possible.
Anarchy is an anti-authoritarian mindset, an ongoing process we all go
through to question and overcome authority. It is not a artificially
constructed system, or a "society" to govern people by. It's not a
permanent state of affairs where authority somehow ceases to exist.
Authority will always exist, and will especially thrive within formal
systems of power and control where conformity and obedience are held up
as desirable. And if a group of people did somehow "achieve" anarchy,
and then try to forbid people from having religious beliefs, that
anarchy would of course immediately be lost in the attempt to assert
authority over others.
You can certainly be religious ("spiritual") without supporting
authority. You can believe in other-earthly beings or spirits or even
gods without needing to build hierarchies and authoritarian rituals
around them. But almost all "Big Religion" is absolutely authority-based
and was designed that way from its inception.
Monotheism was created by civilized men to accustom the peasantry to
being ruled by a great man in the sky, so they'd be equally as amenable
to being ruled by a great man in a castle (or later: a presidential
palace or a factory or an office).
The authority of monotheism was rapidly forced on the world at the point
of the sword, replacing polytheism in the vast majority of cultures.
Religious and civil leaders deemed polytheists to be "uncivilized
heathens" and slaughtered them if they refused to fall in line with the
new world order. It was no accident that monotheism and civilization
evolved side by side. Diverse polycultures replaced by a rigid global
monoculture that could be easily dominated by rulers.
Slavery was greatly assisted by several of these new monotheist
religions that directly condoned the practice, providing easy moral
justification for slave owners, and keeping slaves from resisting the
system, lest they suffer eternal damnation. The Roman church loudly
condemned slaves who escaped their masters, and refused them communion.
It's not hard to understand why religious societies were so quick to
prop up slavery when the holy books they live their lives by go out of
their way to normalize the practice:
"Cursed be Canaan! The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers" (Gn
9:25)
This is a quote from the Old Testament, where Noah condemns Canaan (Son
of Ham) to eternal slavery. Christians and some Muslims then identified
Ham's descendants as black Africans, which allowed them to morally
justify centuries of racialized slavery in their societies, constructing
the idea that certain members of the human race should live in perpetual
servitude to them. This is a recurring theme with organized religion, as
religious documents invariably build authority in the cultures that hold
them up as sacred.
The New Testament continued the tradition of telling the faithful to
accept bondage and goes further in telling slaves to accept their
slave-masters like they would a God:
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with
sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to
win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing
the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were
serving the Lord, not people. (Ephesians 6:5-7)
The Bible's legitimization of slavery was predictably taken to its
natural conclusion by religious groups throughout history. In Barbados
in 1710, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts
were granted plantations to fund their Codrington College. Several
hundred slaves were forced to work the plantations and using a red hot
iron, their chests were branded with the word "Society", to signify
their ownership by the church. To this day, religious people colonize
other lands using their holy texts to justify every atrocity they
commit. It's much easier to justify atrocities to yourself and others
when you can point to a verse in a sacred text and say "the one true God
is okay with this". Religion has a way of absolving tyrants of guilt,
shifting the blame to mystical authority figures who are beyond
reproach.
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the
right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. (Matthew 5:39)
Religions that involve forced body modification, indoctrination as an
infant or child, require deference and reverence to godly beings, idols,
texts, symbols, elders or church leaders, or simply instruct you to turn
the other cheek when you're being exploited, can't honestly be described
as being compatible with anarchy. To be an anarchist is to resist
authority in every facet of life, not to close your eyes to authority
when it's convenient to.
Circumcision is one example of a religious ceremony that has life-long
implications. Forcing children to undergo non essential surgery is not
an anarchist action, so anyone doing it can't claim to be doing anarchy
while forcibly mutilating an infant. Forcibly invading a child's bodily
autonomy means you're not practising anarchy. There's no way to pretend
that an infant can be a willing participant in such a thing.
Forcing children to participate in your religious practices before
they're old enough to make an informed voluntary decision and forcing
life-changing rituals on their bodies from infancy places authority on
them. They're too young to volunteer to circumcision or baptism or
female genital mutilation or even understand what is being done to them.
You can be a religious person and also an anarchist since most people
are born into religions and the process of freeing your mind from
authority is a lifelong pursuit with no real completion, but you can't
claim that forcing unnecessary surgery on a baby is an anarchist action.
It's just not. It's entirely anti-anarchy. The same goes for accepting
subservience to a master and telling others to be okay with
exploitation, to forgive their exploiters and to not fight back.
Organized religion is dictated from above by the church i.e. the
authority on the religion. It's a system of rulers and obeyers and has
been used to justify every atrocity under the sun. To attempt to redeem
these bloody authoritarian institutions by associating them with
anarchist ideals is to participate in a coercive and destructive lie.
Pinning a black flag to institutions that have carved a path of
unrelenting carnage across history: colonizing and slaughtering
everything they touch, does no favors for anarchy, and only helps church
authorities mask their blood soaked robes for just long enough to grab
their next victim by the neck.
Like all authority, the authority of religion will not stand still. In
times of conflict, people who refuse to conform to the favored religion
will be scapegoated, will be oppressed, will be murdered in the name of
all that is holy and good and just.
A religion is as big an authority as any other and like all authority,
its growth cannot be curtailed. Certainly not by a few advocates of more
libertarian forms of the religion. The dominant strands will always be
unapologetically authoritarian and become brutally oppressive in times
of cultural strife and warfare. All the reform-minded offshoots will do
is create justification for perpetuating the religion until the mainline
authoritarian strands can rain bloody murder down on the godless
heathens that resist the authority of the church and its invisible
almighty ruler that convenietly can never be held accountable for the
atrocities commited in his name.