💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › marlow-anarchism-and-christianity.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:24:16. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: Anarchism and Christianity Author: Marlow Language: en Topics: Christian, history, religion Source: Retrieved on December 21, 2009 from http://news.infoshop.org/article.php?story=04/09/14/5885651
Christendom is an effort of the human race to go back to walking on all
fours, to get rid of Christianity, to do it knavishly under the pretext
that this is Christianity, claiming that this is Christianity perfected.
In the Christianity of Christendom the cross has become something like a
child’s hobby horse and trumpet.(Kierkegaard, 1968, p260)
According to orthodox opinion, Christianity is synonymous with order,
authority and state power. Even the most casual glance at the history of
the Church reveals a reliable and systematic pattern of political
subservience; Imperialist in Rome, Monarchist in Renaissance Europe,
Stalinist in Russia, and “Democratic” in America. Clearly, Christianity
not only supports authorities, but presupposes that authorities exist.
For Calvin, even the most brutal tyrant is better than the absence of
civil authority, and Luther’s own endorsement of the bloody suppression
of the peasant rebellion is well known. It would appear any
reconciliation between Christianity and an-arche: the absence of
authority and command, is out of the question. Expounding his own brand
of Christian anarchy Leo Tolstoy complained of “a tacit but steadfast
conspiracy of silence about all such efforts.” (Tolstoy,1984,p8)
Nevertheless, from the very foundation of Christianity there has been an
undercurrent of opposition to both secular and Church authority, much
more than just incidental protests against given power abuse, but
essentially anarchistic in character. So it is my purpose here to
demonstrate the radical incompatibility between the ethics of state
power and the ethics of the gospel. This is not an attempt to construct
a sociology of Christianity, but simply an effort to isolate and analyse
its socio-political dimensions and show that anarchism is the only
“anti-political political position” in harmony with Christian thought.
This will require scrutiny of both biblical doctrine, as well as some of
the various anarchistic Christian movements throughout history. First of
all, a brief definition of anarchism is necessary.
Most basically, anarchism is the extreme scepticism of all forms of
social hierarchy and entrenched and coercive institutional authority.
Emma Goldman, in her essay “Anarchism” defines it as “the theory that
all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore not only
wrong and harmful, but also unnecessary.” (1973,p12) Anarchy is broader
than this however. It views the nature of power as essentially
malignant, and is in opposition to all coercive forms of cultural,
economic, social and political authority, i.e. those forms of authority
that which maintain obedience through violence or the threat of negative
sanctions. Thus, as Rudolph Rocker elegantly puts it, “Power operates
only destructively, bent always on forcing every manifestation of life
into the straightjacket of its laws. Its intellectual expression is dead
dogma, its physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its
objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them stupid
and brutal, even when they were originally endowed with the best of
talents. One who is constantly striving to force everything into a
mechanical order at last becomes a machine himself and loses all human
feeling.” (Pennock&Chapman,1978,p5)
So anarchy maintains that the abolition of social hierarchy is essential
in establishing a society based on equality and individual liberty.
While theories on how this society might be structured are complex and
diverse, the most common element uniting them is the replacement of
state authoritarianism with some form of non-governmental cooperation
between free individuals. Usually, this takes the form of
self-governing, decentralised, directly democratic community based
assemblies and their confederations. These flax-roots community bodies
would function on the principles of self-help, mutual-aid and voluntary
cooperation, and would be linked cooperatively through federation to
other autonomous communities from the local, to the bioregional, to the
global level. Naturally, socialisation of the major means of production
and economic self-management are primary. The aim is to replace the
pyramidal hierarchy of the modern state with an organic sphere, the true
diffusion of power. These are the fundamental principles of anarchist
thought, which will be central to this discussion.
So, now we will consider the other side of the coin, beginning with a
(very) limited examination of biblical data in both the New and Old
Testaments. In Samuel 1 we see Israel’s social structure as
traditionally anarchistic. After the liberation from Egypt there were no
clan princes, and families that might have been considered aristocratic
were either destroyed or vanquished. The God of Israel declared he alone
would be the head of Israel, yet this was not a theocracy, for God had
no representatives on earth and clan assemblies deliberated on community
decisions. In periods of crisis God would appoint a “judge” to a
position of leadership, but these individuals had no permanent
authority, and after they had played out their role they were said to
efface themselves and rejoin the people. Against the will of God, the
Israelites decide on a monarchy, a king for the sake of efficiency, and
to be conventional with dominant civilisations. God accepts their
demand, but gives them a warning in the form of a particularly accurate
assessment of the nature of political power:
This is what the king who reigns over you will do: He will take your
sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run
in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of
thousands and commanders of fifties, and others will plough his grounds
and reap his harvests, and still others will make weapons of war and
equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers
and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and
vineyards. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and
give it to his officials and attendants. He will take a tenth of your
flocks and you yourselves will become his slaves. (1 Samuel 8:8)
As Jacques Ellul writes, this passage boils down to 3 messages: “(1)
political power rests on distrust and rejection of God; (2) political
power is always dictatorial, excessive and unjust; (3) political power
in Israel is established through conformity, in imitation to what is
done in neighbouring kingdoms.”(1991,p46) To this I would add that it
also states the existence of social hierarchy is inseparable from
exploitation and stratification.
This is certainly a repudiation of the legitimacy of political power,
one which is regular throughout the bible. Vernard Eller points to a
systematic representation of monarchy in the Old Testament. Efficient
kings, i.e. those that exercised political power normally by enriching
their people, making conquests, consolidating rule etc are consistently
represented as idolatrous, unjust tyrannical murderers. In contrast, the
inefficient and weak kings, those who allowed their administrations to
crumble, who lost wars and the wealth of the people are historically
defined as the great kings. As Eller says, “this observation either
means that the only acceptable power in the long run is the weakest one,
or that if a political leader is faithful to god, he is necessarily a
bad political leader.”(1987,p34) In addition to this pattern, next to
every king we have the appearance of the most charismatic figure of
Christian mythology — the prophet, who is always the harshest critic of
the prevailing authorities, and is always brutally oppressed by them
(Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Elijah). All these factors manifest in a
profound way an anti-royalist and anti-statist sentiment.
Turning to the New Testament we seem to find two contradictory
tendencies. The first ostensibly favourable to political power, seen
mainly in Paul’s infamous “there is no authority but from God” (Rom.
13:1). The other, a much more pronounced and extensive hostility to
power, apparent mostly in the gospels and Revelation. Since Constantine
exegetes have based their entire theology of state on the few isolated
statements that seem to offer a divine legitimation of hierarchical
domination, most significantly Romans 13, and Jesus’ trail before
Pilate. Before considering these factors it will be useful to look at
Jesus’ own radically negative attitude to political power.
When Jesus began his public ministry the gospels tell of his temptation
by Satan. The devil tempts him 3 times, the last of which is relevant to
this discussion. The devil takes Jesus to a high mountain and shows him
all the kingdoms of the world: “I will give you all these things if you
will prostrate yourself and worship me.” (Matt. 4:8–9)
Or: “I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for
it has been given to me, and I will give it to whom I will. If you then,
will prostrate yourself before me, it shall be yours.” (Luke. 5:8–7) It
is important to emphasise, as Ellul does in his analysis, that the
gospels were probably targeted at Christian communities with a Greek
origin in view, so the reference is to political power in general, not
just Rome and the Herod dynasty. (1991,p58) The text clearly states that
the political realm is a satanic domain and we may thus say that among
Jesus’ immediate followers and the first Christian generation political
institutions — what we now recognise as the state — belonged to the
devil, and that those who held power received it from him.
Another saying by Jesus on political authorities is found in a
discussion in Matthew 20:20–25. The disciples are accompanying him to
Jerusalem where some believed he would seize power and establish a
sovereign Jewish kingdom. The wife of a man named Zebedee presents her
sons to Jesus; James and John, and requests that they should be seated
on the right and left hands of him in heaven — in other words, that they
be promoted to positions of leadership and authority. Jesus first tells
his disciples that they have no understanding, and then says:
You know the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and those in high
positions enslave them. It should not be so among you; but whoever
should be great among you must be the servant, and whoever wants to be
first must be your slave — just as the son of man did not come to be
served, but to serve. (Matt. 20.20)
The passage speaks for itself, and should be compared with the quote
from Rocker above. There is no distinction made here, all political
regimes lord it over their subjects — there can be no political power
without tyranny.
This is of course only a rudimentary synthesis of Jesus’ various sayings
on political power. There are other, equally forceful negations, most
significantly his trail before Roman law. Here we see an almost mocking
distain for both the Roman state and the temple priests (nascent
Christendom). There are differences between the four gospels, but as
Ellul comments, “the attitude is always the same whether it takes the
form of silence, of accusation of the authorities, or of deliberate
provocation — a refusal to accept any authority other that that of God”.
(1991,p61) Some theologians such as Karl Barth contend that since Jesus
did not rebel against the verdict of the authorities he regarded the
jurisdiction as legitimate, and thus we find the basis for state power.
(Eller,1987,p124) This understanding is derived mainly from the
statement of Jesus: “You would not have the least power over me unless
it had been given to you from above, therefore he who delivered me to
you is more guilty that you.” (John 19:10–11) Unless we totally isolate
this statement from every other biblically recorded statement Jesus made
on political power it is obvious he is saying Pilate has received his
power from Satan, not from God as is the popular interpretation.
Furthermore, this is congruent with an earlier statement Jesus makes,
commenting that the powers of darkness are at work in his trial. (Luke
22:52–53) Indeed, every text relating to Jesus’ encounters with
political and religious authority find subtle mockery, irony,
non-cooperation, indifference and challenge. Jesus was certainly no
guerrilla, he was a non-violent resistor, an anarchist of purely
Tolstoian character.
The political refusal is constant throughout the bible, and finds its
most violent expression in Revelations. While this is a contentious book
subject to a diverse variety of interpretations, among Christian
theologians there is little dispute that it is a prophetic
representation of the apocalypse. Without engaging in a lengthy analysis
it is enough to say that Revelation is concerned with the inevitable
self-destruction of the human race brought on by the nature of political
power — represented first by the red horse with the sword (whose sole
function is making war, exercising power, and causing human beings to
perish), and in the end by Babylon, the focus of political power, the
power of money, and the structure of civilisation. (Morris,1987,pp45-62)
We thus find a systematic pattern of biblical negations of political
power, of witness to its lack of validity and legitimacy. It is in this
context we must put the very few isolated passages, such as Romans 13,
which Christendom has consistently reified as a basis for hierarchy and
political domination.
“There is no authority but from God” (Rom 13) should be reduced to its
real meaning rather that giving us the last word on political authority
— it seeks to apply love in circumstances where Christians were brutally
suppressed by the ruling powers.
Essentially then, both the new and old testaments consistently reject
political power. No power can claim legitimacy in itself, and by
character they will always contradict the morality of God. Therefore
Christians must always deny, challenge and object to this power. Without
doubt, Christendom has incessantly sought to subvert this teaching, to
obscure the distinction between service and power and deny the radical
antagonism between gospel and state. Nevertheless, throughout Church
history movements have sporadically arisen that can be defined as
anarchistic in the sense they have radically reaffirmed the illegitimacy
of coercive authority. Murray Bookchin admits the origins of anarchist
thinking can be found in Christianity, (Bookchin,1971,p67) and George
Woodcock traces the roots of anarchism back to the heretical millenarian
Christian sects of the fourteenth century. (Woodcock,1972,pp30-33)
These millenarian movements arose during the reformation period, and
spread throughout Europe as the feudal system disintegrated and the
lowest classes became increasingly rebellious against the imposition of
serfdom. Millenarian Christianity can be broadly described as
apocalyptic communalist movements which directly challenge the power of
both state and Church and strove to create a society based on the
community of the apostles. As Kenneth Rexroth states, “We should think
of this great wave of spirituality not as something new, but as the
rediscovery of something old; not as a body of doctrinal, mystical
theology, and least of all in terms of the sensational episodes of the
history of its struggle against the Pope and the Church, but as a way of
life.” (1974,p44) The roots of these sects are found in the thinking of
individuals such as Saint Francis and John Ball, The Free Spirit
Brethren and the Hussite Wars, but here I will focus on 3 specifically
anarchistic movements: the Anabaptists, the Diggers and the Doukhobors.
In the early 1500’s small conventicles of Anabaptist communal groups
were springing all around North and West Germany. Anabaptism was an
attack on the authority of the established Church to dictate such things
as the rites of baptism and transubstantiation. In 1534 the town of
Munster became an Anabaptist commune, Catholics and Lutherans ejected
from the city and quickly replaced by incoming Anabaptists seeking
refuge from persecution in the feudal provinces. The economic structure
of Munster was communist, a community of goods was implemented and all
wealth in money, jewellery and precious metals was brought into a common
fund. Communism of production was also introduced, a kind of anarchistic
“gift economy” where guild members whose work was essential to the life
of the community were ordered to work without wages and contribute their
products to a common pool of goods, from which all could take freely
according to their needs. While the self-appointed leader of Munster,
Jan Bockelson preached equality amongst the brethren, the commune
quickly became a chiliast theocracy, Bockelson implementing a strict set
of laws and displaying a fetish for executions by decapitation. Munster
was eventually crushed by an army of unified feudal princes and most of
the population slaughtered. While the internal power structures of
Munster were authoritarian, its relation to the Church and state
authorities was undoubtedly anarchistic. The goal of Munster was total
political, economic and religious autonomy, an ethic intensified in
following Anabaptist movements.
After Munster the movement was largely divided into three parts:
pacifists who refused oaths, public office and military service, but who
rejected communism; those who were both pacifists and communists; and
militant chiliasts who literally became extinct under relentless
persecution. For years after Muster the Anabaptists were hunted pariahs,
and it was difficult to practice any form of communalism. Many Hutterite
and Mennonite groups were able to find sanctuary in Moravia under the
patronage of sympathetic nobility and were able to maintain outlying
colonies in Slovakia and Bohemia. By the standards of the day,
communities were organised in an astoundingly equalitarian fashion and
perceived the state and Church as “morbid growths on the normal body of
oeconomia” (Rexroth, 1974, p ix) In Austerlitz, historically the longest
lived communalist society, both communism of production and communism of
consumption were successful. They established their own schools
(although higher education was rejected), socialised childcare and
public health, and generated substantial surpluses from their systems of
production and distribution. The Anabaptists’ refusal of imperial and
Church hegemony ultimately lead to their expulsion from Moravia in 1622,
and they were scattered throughout Eastern Europe and Russia.
Eventually, many emigrated to the United States and Canada and formed
sundry contemporary anarcho-communalist sects such as the Quakers,
Mennonites and to a lesser extent, the Amish.
These movements had important long-term consequences in uniting
religious and political dissent, an ethic closely paralleled in the
anarchistic Christian movements of the English Civil War Period. It was
in these conditions of class struggle that, among a whole cluster of
radical groups such as the Fifth Monarchy Men, the Levellers and the
Ranters, there emerged perhaps the first real proto-anarchists, the
Diggers, who like the classical 19^(th) century anarchists identified
political and economic power and who believed that a social, rather than
political revolution was necessary for the establishment of justice.
Gerrard Winstanley, the Diggers’ leader, made an identification with the
word of God and the principle of reason, an equivalent philosophy to
that found in Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. In fact, it
seems likely Tolstoy took much of his own inspiration from Winstanley:
Where does that reason dwell? He dwells in every creature according to
the nature and being of that creature, but supremely in man. Therefore
man is called a rational creature. This is the kingdom of God within
man. Let reason rule the man and he dares not trespass against his
fellow creatures, but does as he would be done unto. For reason tells
him — is thy neighbour hungry and naked today? Do thou feed him and
cloth him; it maybe thy case tomorrow and then he will be ready to help
thee. (Woodcock, 1972,p31)
For Winstanley private property (especially land, in an agricultural
economy “the major means of production”) was the source of all wealth
and therefore, “the cause of all wars, bloodshed, theft and enslaving
laws that hold people under misery.” (Rexroth,1974,p145) Private
property divides humans, nations, and incubates the conditions of
perpetual war on which the state thrives. Winstanley declared that not
only masters and magistrates, but also husbands and fathers “do carry
themselves like oppressing lords over such that are under them — not
knowing that these have an equal privilege with them to share the
blessings of liberty.” (Rexroth,1974,p141) He sketched out a vision of
free society based on the teachings of Christ whom he gives the name
Universal Liberty. It seems Winstanley envisioned something akin to the
polity of the ancient Israelites in which the state would have power
only as a court of final appeal. Some of his passages come remarkably
close to the works of the great 19^(th) century anarchists and their
projections of social liberty:
When this universal equity rises upon every man and woman, then none
shall lay claim to any creature and say, This is mine and that is yours.
This is my work, that is yours. But everyone shall put their hands to
till the earth and bring up cattle, and the blessing of earth shall be
common to all; when a man hath need of corn or cattle, he shall take
from the next store house he meets with. There shall be no buying or
selling, no fairs and markets. And all shall cheerfully put their hands
to make those things that are needful, one helping another. There shall
be none lords over others, but everyone shall be lord of himself,
subject to the law of righteousness, reason and equity, which shall
dwell and rule in him, which is the Lord. (Wookcock,1972,p33)
Winstanley was an extreme pacifist and seems to have believed he could
achieve social transformation through peaceful example. If only the
Diggers were able to implement an equalitarian community and cultivate
commons and wastelands, the community of love would naturally
interpenetrate all aspects of English society, eventually encompassing
both rich and poor. The Diggers used a kind of direct action, squatting
on unused land throughout southern England and farming it for their own
sustenance. The local land owners and the state authorities went into
alliance against this subversive little company, and the Diggers
practised passive resistance for as long as they could endure, and were
eventually violently dispersed. Indeed, the movement was a trivial and
insignificant event at the time, but the erudition and sophistication of
Winstanley’s writings has meant that the Diggers are now claimed by both
contemporary socialists and anarchists.
Parallel to Winstanley, perhaps the most influential Christian
anarcho-communalist, more influential as an individual than any populist
group, was Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy’s works on Christian anarchy or
“non-resistance” (non-violent resistance) are only a small part of
Russia’s rich history of religious dissent, anchored in cultural and
philosophical traditions revolving around ideas of justice, beauty
(especially spiritual beauty), goodness and service to universal values.
Perceiving all power as an evil, Tolstoy arrived at an unconditional
rejection of all violence. Believing that the state and civil law rested
on violence, Tolstoy refused its authority and held that the abolition
of all coercive institutions must be brought about through peaceful
means, by members of society freely abstaining from and avoiding
participation in state exigencies. Tolstoy was an “essential disputer”,
and his denial of state authority was in line with the statements of
Jesus, “And so a Christian cannot promise to do another person’s will
without knowing what will be required of him, nor can he submit to
transitory human laws or promise to do or abstain from doing any
specified thing at any given time, for he cannot know what may be
required of him at any time by that Christian law of love, obedience to
which constitutes the purpose of his life. A Christian, by promising
unconditional obedience to the laws of men in advance, would indicate by
that promise that the inner law of God does not constitute the sole law
of his life.” (Tolstoy,1984,p143)
So the Tolstoian communes were aimed at an abrogation of power and the
establishment of an organic community of non-coercive human relations.
Some communes were successful and lasted for many years, but most, as
Rethrox states, “were tragi-comic stories where landowners turned their
estates into communes, invited their bohemian friends from the city, and
urged ‘their’ peasants to share in the building of a new society in the
womb of the old,” and were suppressed in short order by the official
Church and Tsarist authorities. (1974,p169)
Another such group that was active during this period in Russia were the
primitivist and anarchistic Doukhobors, or “Spirit Wrestlers”. As a sect
they arose in opposition to reforms in the Orthodox Church under
Catherine the Great, but the movement was galvanised in 1895 when they
refused conscription into the Tsar’s military. Non-violence was the core
of the Doukhobor philosophy and, in their estimation, the Tsar and by
association the Orthodox Church were illegitimate in the eyes of God.
While the Doukhobors preceded Tolstoy, his works formed a central part
in the movement’s intellectual development, he even personally paid a
part of their costs to emigrate to Canada to escape state persecution.
Once in Canada, the Doukhobors split into three groups: the
independents, who chose to accept the requirement of citizenship and the
ownership of private property, the communalists, and the radical “Sons
of Freedom.” The communalists enjoyed a season of remarkable prosperity
under the de-facto leadership of Peter Veregin, and their communalist
economic system generated considerable wealth. Their communal structure
dissipated gradually during the depression era however, exacerbated by
continual relocation brought on by a refusal to swear allegiance to the
king.
The most radical splinter of the Doukhobor people, the “Sons of Freedom”
rallied around extreme expressions of Veregin’s anti-state and
vegetarian doctrine. He wrote that an earthly paradise would only be
possible with a return to “primitive conditions, and a spiritual state
lost by Adam and Eve.” (Momonova,1995,p6) Vergin was largely deified
inside a cultural context of traditional muzhik mysticism, and the Sons
of Freedom’s subsequent fame for nudity and arson is not something
happily discussed by contemporary Doukhobors. Although Doukhobors no
longer live in communal structures, their Church still remains
non-hierarchical and anti-authoritarian.
So, from this very limited analysis of biblical text and various
sociological manifestations of Christian anarchism, it seems that not
only is Christianity and anarchy mutually reinforcing, but that the
theoretical base of rationalistic anarchism is deeply rooted within the
history of Christian dissent. The often repeated truism, “power
corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely” is a central tenant of
both. The purpose of this essay was to formulate a reconciliation, but I
have completely ignored anarchy’s sometimes rabid enmity to all
religion, best summed up in Bakunin’s well known inversion of Voltaire,
“If God did exist, it would be necessary to abolish him.”
(Pennock&Chapman,1978,p113) Indeed, many anarchists, almost all the
classics, view God as the supreme arche on which all other forms of
authority find their justification, and unless the individual can learn
to raise the ego to the position of the religious God, they will remain
a slave. This would require a whole other discussion on the nature of
divine authority as represented in the bible, and I think Jacques Ellul
has persuasively argued the compatibility between “No Gods — No Masters”
and “I believe in God the Father Almighty” in his essay “Jesus and
Marx”. Suffice to say, Christianity’s historical perversion was to
recognise the state, and I think that fundamentally, it was the
character of this perversion and its many destructive consequences that
the early anarchists were attacking.
An articulation between intellectual strands of Christian anarchy and
rationalistic anarchy could prove seminal. Christianity’s conception of
human nature could act as a counter-balance to anarchism’s more utopian
tendencies, the prospect of a total eradication of societal power
relations for example. Likewise, rational anarchism could provide a
springboard for transcending the orthodox doctrine of the fall as a
negation of the transformation of society. However, the possibility of
any such dialectic will rest on anarchism’s realisation that
Christianity does not necessarily presuppose established and rigorously
maintained political power structures, and Christianity’s recognition
that anarchy is the only political position in accord with scripture.
Only then can Christians take their place beside anarchists.