Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 18:08.
Yes, it's both possible and justifiable. It would, however, be impossible to be an anarchist and a member of most churches, with a few possible exceptions (quakers, for instance). Many people believe in Christ and consider themselves Christians but do not believe in organized religion.
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 04/30/2008 - 00:08.
Sure, it's possible, Jesus died 2000 years ago for our sins and for our ultimate freedom and equality. Read Galatians, it's filled with anarchist thinking. I am an anarchist, but I honestly don't think absolute anarchy is possible without completely non-violent people.
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 03/15/2008 - 19:51.
Sure, but in name only. Tolsoy claimed to be. I'd suggest doing a lot more research into each of the philosophies and their histories. To call oneself a Christian-Anarchist exhibits a shaky understanding of both Christianity and even the most reactionary veins of Anarchist thought. Being bossed around by an imaginary friend is no less humiliating than being coerced by real people (but it's certainly more embarassing).
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 08/18/2008 - 16:14.
Are you serious? You sound like a moron. You know whats embarrasing? People like you that we have to share this world with. You make the rest of us look bad.
Submitted by Aaron blasting on Tue, 09/02/2008 - 12:37.
view of spirituality. Although I do agree with you, I think most anarchists dont understand spirituality enough to criticize it as harshly as they do. Anarchist argument against god are usually childish in nature.
There is such a thing as anarcho-monarchism, which can be taken as an alternate name for Christianity. There is also the idea that anarchy is actually a metaphor used to refer to that state of being that existed prior to the fall of man from the grace of God, aka The Fall. Christ Jesus is not a fallen man, and is therefore the most perfect anarchist. Because He is also the only true King, you have anarcho-monarchism.
Similarly, one could also say that Jesus Christ is the most perfect atheist, for He is at one with the Father and is no longer in need of other gods.
Anarcho-monarchism is also a form of Christianity that is not institutional. Its adherents do not build churches, temples, tabernacles, etc. It is, therefore, opposed, but not hostile, to St. Peter's form of Christianity, i.e. the entire Catholic Papacy, which is based on "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" from the Gospel of St. Matthew. Anarcho-monarchists prefer St. Mark's Jesus.
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 04/01/2008 - 17:47.
I, like Jesus, also have no need for a God, so what does that make me in relation to the said Jesus?? Anarcho monarchists, anarcho capitalists, anarcho christians, anarcho dictators, you seem to have missed the entire meaning behind the theories of anarchism. My dear friend there is no such things as the perfect man, perfect athiest, nor the perfect anarchist.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
You state, "I, like Jesus, also have no need for a God"...I gather that you have not read much of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life. Through all 4 of the canonized gospels Jesus is recorded as praying to God the Father. If Jesus had no need for God, why would he pray to Him? Secondly, the Gospel of John provides many instances where Jesus flat out declares his dependency on God the Father.
What is more important is that all of us are like Jesus in the fact that all of us are in need of God...
Does this detract from the ability to be an anarchist? Not necessarily, a wise person commented above that the book of Galatians (written by a pretty crazy Jewish guy) is full of anarchist thought. I would even propose that much of the early church (see Acts chapters 2-7) could be compared a loving anarchist community...
Secondly, I would say that true Christianity is meant to be detached from government life. When I say this I am saying a true separation of church and state. The devoted followers of Jesus Christ are to remove themselves from any type of political influence. Why? Jesus himself intentionally withdrew from the possiblity of rising to political power on this earth (John 6). Also, God gives the promise throughout Scripture that He will avenge. There is no need for the Christian (or the anarachist for that matter) to try to gain any type of power on earth. The Christian and anarachist that gains power of society is bound to instiutionalized messes (a prime example...look at the Roman Catholic Church, it has been downhill since Constantine!).
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 03/19/2008 - 01:47.
Someone above commented that anarchism is simply anti-government, so one can be a christian anarchist. According to that logic, the man who sexually assaulted me could be an anarchist (and he does claim to be) since he wants to smash the state. If you have a broader understanding of anarchism as anti-authoritarian then it's clear that being a member of a hierarchical church and/or subscribing to a text that calls for the subjugation of nature and women make being christian in opposition to anarchism. Fuck christianity! It's the biblical mindset of having dominion over nature that's destroying life on this fucking planet.
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 04/01/2008 - 02:25.
"It's the biblical mindset of having dominion over nature that's destroying life on this fucking planet."
i am more or less a Christian, i believe in God and Jesus and the resurrection,...etc. i don't believe in the church, or any organized religion, or any heirarchical structures or 'biblical knowledge' or 'wisdom' or whatever. (i.e. priests - laypeople...)
but i also agree with a lot of ideas in anarchist thought. i call myself an anarchist because it comes closest to my political philosophy.
i think its the selfishness of 'christians' who take dominion to mean absolute authority that is responsible for destroying life, not just christians though, or that biblical mindset, i think its a mindset of industrialization and capitalism..a mindset of acquiring as much as possible, which most likely stems from religions..as in religious wars.. but...with dominion, i believe, comes responsibility. 'christians' definitely don't act out this responsiblity. and i also believe that along with the gift of 'dominion over nature' there should be a sense of gratitute of the recipient to the giver. there should be a sense of reverence for the creator, and the gift that we have received. i think most Christians deny this, or are just ignorant to it. i grew up in church, i grew up eating bar-b-q almost every week. i think about that now and it sickens me, considering how animals are raised now. and it sickens me how little people care, especially those who profess belief in God who gave us this earth.
so that being said, i think it is possible to have both Christian and anarchist beliefs. there may be a few contradictions, as in belief in God and God's authority and power, but for the majority, based on my understanding of anarchism and christianity, they are mostly compatible.
but i could be wrong, i really have only been seriously interested in anarchism for a little under two years...so..i'm still learning.
I am a recovering Marxist, so you will have to forgive my ignorance. What do the Anarchists say about materialism? I think it bears direct relevance to our discussion. If a belief in God is an amaterialist or anti-materialist position, than I think it bears quite a bit of relevance to our discussion.
Marxism and materialism go hand-in-hand. I have read a lot of revisionist philosophy books lately that state (wrongly) that Marx deserves a place in the German "idealist" school of philosophy. I have got into (online) screaming matches with people on this point - I ASSURE YOU that Marx was not a misunderstood "Idealist" - he did not undergo some magic transformation in his later writings, etc. Any insinuation that Marx was anything but a materialist is dead wrong - his whole philosophy was an attempt to point out the errors of Idealism.
I came to reject Marxism on the grounds that I began to doubt materialism as a philosophy. Are Anarchists generally materialists? If anyone can shed light on this subject, I would greatly appreciate it.
By Lucifer
The Light of the World www.luciferia.tv
The 1000 Year Revolution of Light.
The conclusion of the debate thus far.
Materialism is essentially a form of pseudo-scientific 'belief' regarding the nature of the universe.
Materialism has it's roots in Democritus's view that the universe was probably made up of tiny pieces of matter; Marx and the 19th century materialists simply took his word for it, however they had no way to proove or disporove this theory.
In the post Enstein, post quantum world, no scientist can say with absolute certainty that the universe is entirely reducible to 'matter..
Quantum wierdness.
In the famous 'double slit experiement (see the 'Dr Quantum cartoon on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc )' physicists asked the question 'Are electrons 'tiny pieces of matter?' In 'fact' they concluded from this experiment that 'sometimes', the electron does not behave like matter at all; in fact they behave exactly like 'waves' and they form 'interference patters' which is not what pieces of matter do at all. This of course begs the question 'waves of what?' and only hoinest and irrefutable'scientific answer to this given by quantum physicists is 'we don't know yet'
E=MCsquared.
Simply put, there are three elements in the above equation, Mass, Energy and Light. When a nuclear detonation takes place the Plutonium does not simply 'produce' Energy and Light; rather the Plutonium (i.e., the Mass) converts into Energy and Light. Now, if Mass can be transformed into Energy and Light, Light and Energy should be able to be transformed back into Mass. This all begs the question of 'what is mass / matter?'
What is matter? The question of infinite causal regression.
If we claim that there is a God, then even child might ask, who created God, and who created her great grandmother (ad infinitum). The question goes on to infinity. Similarly we can ask, what is the basis of matter? In physics we learn that a piece of visible matter (say a glass of water) is mostly empty space and it is composed of tiny molecules. We then ask what is a water molecule. The physicist might say that a water molecule is just a term in language to describe three tiny atoms separated by a vast empty space. Then we ask what is an atom, and what is that made of and so forth and so forth ad infinitum. By the time the physicist starts to talk about the components (small pieces) of the atom such as quartks and leptons, the child may then ask, what are these quarks and leptons made of? Physicists are now speaking of sub quarks and sub leptons. So what are they made of? This question cannot lead to infinte causal regression, but how far we can keep asking the micro-universe 'what is this made of?' we simply do not know,
The Noble Prize.
When the materialist claims that it is a 'scientific' fact that the universe is made of small pieces of matter, all they has to do is to prove what the basic 'stuff of the universe is (i.e. what is teh sub-sub-sub (etc) lepton made of?)' and to prove that it is small pieces of matter, and a million dollars and a noble prize will be theirs, but at present all they have to go on is a pseudo-scientific 'faith.
Light and the 4th dimension.
We live in a universe of three dimensions and we ourselves are three dimesional objects. However due certain things that physicists refer to as 'quantum strangeness and inexplicable questions such as 'where does the photon come from' many physicists now 'believe' that there may be a fourth dimension to the universe which is invisible to us and that here we may find the root of matter and the photon. Some religionists have heard this argument and misunderstood this as some kind of proof of the 'spirit world' or God's existence, but it is nothing of the sort and it is not a proof of any 'thing' (the 4th dimension would contain what we three dimensional creatures would define as 'non things.' This is a theory put forward by many physicists who are atheists including Carl Sagan (Sagan on the 4th dimension:, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KT4M7kiSw )
The 'stuff of the universe'
Actually many physicists believe that since the 'stuff of the universe (the root of matter)' cannot be matter, for matter cannot be made of matter infinitely since it would lead to infinite causal regression (just like the question of God's grandmother) and that thus it must be some form of non-matter and that it may in fact not even be part of our 3 dimensional world but a fourth dimensional non-stuff.
Thus I conclude that 'materialism' is a non scientific belief system.
Where does the photon (Light) and Matter come from? From physics to metaphysics.
I conclude that the honest scientific answer is that we do not know the origin of the photon or matter. it is a mystery, but the most likely answer is that their origin is beyond our three dimesional reality, and thus it is non-physical or meta-physical, but this term should not be confused with terms such as 'spiritual' 'God,' 'God's great grandmother' or the gods and it thus has no bearing on the theist / atheist debate which is a separate issue.
So, the question is, should Anarchists have to believe in a non scientific belief system like the Marxists do, and what does a non-scientific beleif system have to do with Anarchism?
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real…….Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. Niels Bohr.
If [quantum theory] is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science. Albert Einstein.
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 22:32.
Nobody any more, except possibly the remnant of Marxists (or those having difficulty throwing off their Marxism) troubles himself with notions like "materialism" or "idealism," that is long superceded 19th century philosophy. These are categories which anarchists have no reason to try to fit themselves into. Free your head! Think outside the box! There is not one practical matter concerning which your identification as a "materialist" makes any difference at all -- is there?
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 22:34.
Nobody any more, except possibly the remnant of Marxists (or those having difficulty throwing off their Marxism) troubles himself with notions like "materialism" or "idealism," that is long superceded 19th century philosophy. These are categories which anarchists have no reason to try to fit themselves into. Free your head! Think outside the box! There is not one practical matter concerning which your identification as a "materialist" makes any difference at all -- is there?
Submitted by Petrichenko on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 01:16.
Why not? If we accept that being a Christian does not necessarily entail subservience to the dogma of Christianity, there is no reason why one might not believe that an individual by the name of Jesus H. Christ was the son of God and came down to earth from heaven to redeem all of humanity. The question is really whether the practice of Christianity is compatible with the practice of anarchism.
In order to answer that question, one must reach some sort of agreement about what anarchism is. In all practical terms, it seems fair to characterise anarchism as an ideology which is opposed to external bodies wielding power and authority over the lives of individuals without their consent. Is Christianity an external body? Tolstoy argued that the kingdom of god is within you and said "no". Jesus Christ apparently said that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and appeared to rule out the inclusion of his beliefs within the anarchist canon.
Personally, I don't see why anarchists should oppose the individual's right to believe in whatever tickles their fancy as long as its praxis does not impede on the freedom and beliefs of other people. If you want to believe that Jesus Christ was the son of god, fine. But don't try and tell me that I shouldn't use a condom or that I have to pay a tenth of my income to some ex-Nazi in Rome. the same goes for followers of the prophet Mohammed. Believe what you like, but keep it to yourselves.
Which is a fine compromise, o would be were it not for the fact that history would suggest that the idea of religion without oppression is a pipe dream. Anarchists direct their fury and resistance towards the oppression of others by the powerful. Throughout history, religion has served to keep people ignorant and in a state of oppression. As a result, anarchists in the nineteenth century worked to combat the power of superstition by building up a strong rationalist movement. I think that we do well to keep this alive. Critical thought can only ever be beneficial to humanity ("discuss.").
So, if you want to believe that Jesus is your saviour, fine. But don't bang on about it, please. Keep it to yourself and try and lead by example, rather than by preaching.
Submitted by jn1011psych on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 01:45.
I don't particularly see why someone cannot be both. Personally, I reject the Christian ideology but if you look solely into the definition of "anarchist" it does not necessarily restrict the worship of a particular god. Obviously, to be an anarchist you have to believe in the cause that you wish to perpetuate above the institution so that is identifying with something as well. Honestly, I guess it depends on what you personally believe. I've met many extremely intelligent people who claim to be anarchists but also call themselves "Christians" (however you wish to interpret the term). Many famous people from history have also called themselves Christians and have acted in ways that one could arguably label as an "anarchist." Leave it to your own interpretation.
"Our thoughts are ours, their ends none our own." -William Shakespeare
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 04/02/2008 - 20:35.
A God tends to be the boss man, he has authority or he's just another guy but invisible and lives in the sky somewhere.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 03:53.
the idea that everyone can interpret everything in their own way is a lovely, feel good idea, that doesn't seem to work out well.
the bulk of christianity has a particular trajectory - one that includes the inquisition, the witch burnings, the dark ages, etc, and includes the aggressively manichean (good/evil polarities) that are fundamental to a lot of the bad things that are going on in the world today.
to just say "well not all christians are like that" isn't that helpful.
christians don't exist in a vacuum. someone calling themselves a christian is naming themselves after something that has done horrible things for centuries. can people just pick the good things in this history and leave out whatever they don't like? what is the point of the label if it doesn't actually clarify anything (i.e. if the definition leaves out as much or more than it leaves in)?
so no, my answer would be that someone can not be a christian and be the kind of anarchist i find relevent - despite dorothy day and tolstoy.
can someone be an anarchist and believe in god? perhaps that is a different question.
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 04/06/2008 - 13:45.
What God? One without authority? Or is this anarchist quite prepared to accept "SOME" authority? Or will your God have no authority? If so what makes him a GOD?
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 04/03/2008 - 22:27.
that line about 'rendering to caesar's what is caesar's' talks about taxes. which...as far as i can tell...no one, even anarchists, are exempt. i mean...you pay taxes when you buy a book, or a computer...right?
so...in that sense, we are all still 'subservient' to the authority which we oppose.
The problem with the 'Render to Ceasar' quote is that it is probably the central quote which Capitalist Christians quote out of context and use to justify Capitalism and their support for Christian state terrorist governments.
Why is the quote out of context?
Well if you read the entire passage it firstly states?
'15Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" '
In other words it clearly states that it was a 'trick question' designed to entrap him.
Jesus responds with
'But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19Show me the coin used for paying the tax?"
Now this begs the question of why it was a trick question.
Consider also his position on monetarism?
‘Carry neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, neither two robes, neither shoes, nor yet a staff. Mt 10’
Now since he was clearly homeless, unemployed and a total anti-monetarist who stated 'do not carry money,' how on earth is he supposed to pay taxes?
I think the nature of the 'trick question' has to be understood in light of the fact that he was a public debater and that if he took a position of 'don't pay taxes,' that he would be in danger of being arrested and would no longer be able to debate in public since the Romans would probably have arrested him as a political threat. There were also of course Temple taxes,(which is probably why overturning the money-changers tables at the temple' was probably one reason why the Sadducees (the Temple priests) put such a huge reward out for his capture.
If he did not carry money and encouraged others towards anti-monetarism (anti-Capitalism), and sought to convince them to give up their professions and join his revolution against the Capitalists and religious hypocrites (the Archons of his age) clearly none of them would be able to pay their taxes.
To those Christians who use the out of context 'Render to Ceasar' one-liner to justify financing Christian state terrorism, I remind them of Jesus; first words in response to the 'tax' question, which was 'You hypocrites,' and ' why are you trying to trap me?' In other words Christians who use this saying of the anti-Capitalist martyr Jesus to justify Capitalism and state trrorism are clearly hypocrites who would pull anything out of context in order to justify their evil.
Regards
Lucifer.
____________________
The Prophet
By Lucifer
Once upon a time there was a Capitalist who was listening to a revolutionary, known for his popularity with the people, who was crying out against the tyrant oppressors of the poor, against their police and their military and against the hypocrites of religion (the priesthood) who defend them. As he listened to the man, he noticed the police came along and dragged the man away to meet his torturers.
The Capitalist thought to himself. ‘This is wonderful, this man spoke to the masses and had ideas which many seemed to agree with, but if I behaved like that, the tyrants would have me arrested and tortured as a terrorist and the priests would stone me as a heretic.’
As he walked away the man thought to himself, ‘This man was so popular with the masses that it is a shame to forget about him, after all a successful Capitalist has to have a popular product. I could turn the teachings of that revolutionary into a religion and make it palatable to the tyrants.I could build a Temple, construct an idol of the prophet, develop a systematic theology, employ a priesthood to perform elaborate rituals in the name of the prophet, and when the victims of tyranny and of the priesthood came to my temple and heard the words of the prophet, they would be so impressed by his wrath at all the evils of the world that I would soon have a large congregation offering me the fruits of their labour. I could even claim that there is only eternal salvation if one worships the prophet as God; I could take over the religious market and it would impress the rich people and the tyrants, and in time, I could even make the tyrant the honorary head of my temple. I could even take over a government and fight wars in his name and torture and exterminate all who resisted…and I could…..’
Suddenly the Devil appeared to the man and said; ‘What a wonderful idea, I will do everything in my power to assist you.’
You make a strong case in your parable of the Capitalist making a religion of the life and death of Jesus. However, I pose one question? Why would the earliest followers of Jesus, who had absolutely nothing to gain in this life by following him, be willing to die for their belief in his death and resurrection? The earliest followers, in particularly Paul, had everything to lose.
I concede that the church as institution is majorly flawed and has often been nothing but a money-making racket (i.e. the selling of indulgences in the 16th century that ticked Martin Luther of so much). However, the early church (everything prior to the conversion of Constantine in the early 4th century) gained absolutely nothing on this earth by following and believing Jesus and propogating Christianity.
Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 07/04/2008 - 03:05.
i am an atheist, and think religion, especially monotheistic Abrahamic religion, has turned out in practice to generally be a horrible, central part of the enemies of freedom.
I read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion a while a go, and i thought it was really good. it really breaks down the idea that a god could exist. i personally don't understand how in the hell one could think that.
as far as christian anarchism goes, i see one big problem, and it is the same problem Dawkins brings up in his book. even if you keep your christianity to yourself, and you don't use it at all to justify the oppression or exploitation of others (as so many christians do), but just believe in God, if you have children, and you teach them those beliefs, you are indoctrinating them into a way of looking at life that takes the power of control over one's own life and puts in into the hands of a supreme being. this takes away the concept of freedom for a child and leads inherently away from anarchist ideas. Dawkins argues it is child abuse to bring up your child in your own religion, that you should avoid indoctrinating them, and let them make up their own mind about which, if any, religion is correct once they are old enough to think for themselves. i don't see even christian anarchists getting around this problem. i think most of them would still pass on their shoddy ideas to their offspring, perpetuating the rediculous notion that their is a man in the sky or whatever by convincing a child it is so before they can discern whether it is true or not (much likw how kids believe in Santa Claus).
if you are a christian and an anarchist, the only way i can see that not being cognitively dissonant is if you thought of God as a prime mover of the universe, like he set up things and then just let it go. i can't see being an anarchist and thinking there exists a God that can control what happens on earth and in people's lives because it opposes the idea of freedom and self-organization and autonomy. So, supposing one did just beleive in a prime mover type God, what is the point? who cares if God set up the laws of physics and started the universe in motion if he does not intervene in daily life? why does it matter if God did that or if there is no God and it just *is*? the only way i can see someone being a christian anarchist is believing in a prime mover God, and that seems irrelevant, so i guess it doesn't matter one way or another. but any other idea of God i think is incompatible with anarchism and if taught to children is indoctrination in the worst sense.
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 04/03/2008 - 23:58.
God is the ultimate authority. He is omnipresent and everywhere, watching what you do and threatening you with eternal damnation. It's not possible to be Christian and Anarchist.
'God is the ultimate authority. He is omnipresent and everywhere, watching what you do and threatening you with eternal damnation.'
'The divine being is nothing more than the human being'.
From the view point of Feurbachian projection, George Bush's God is clearly the God of the Capitalists and religious hypocrites who will save them and take them to heaven and abandon the poor as unsaved Christians to hell on earth (poverty and war) and hell in eternity (the tortures of Hell). Bush will of course be taken up to heaven with other born again Capitalists such as Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Pinochet, Franco, Raztinger, Elizabeth Windsor, the various popes and so forth.
However their definitions of the state terrorist God are only their own definitions out of an infinite number of possible definitions, such as Jesus 'anti-Capitalist God.'.
My God for example, from the point of view of 'projection' would have to be a 'black lesbian Anarchist.' She is also a bastard and an orphan since she has no parents, since they clearly were not married. I don't know who the black Lesbian Anarchist God's great, great (ad infinitum) grandmother was, but I do know that the God whom you define above is only one possible definition.
Do also bear in mind that the people whom Jesus constantly cursed to Hell were the Capitalists and religious hypocrites. That seems to be what most Anarchists seem to do.
Further the prophecies of Armageddon in the Book of Revelations predict that the 'rich nations' would be subjected to nuclear holocaust and that there would follow a 1000 year agricultural revolution where there would be no more poverty and war (swords to agricultural impliments),' Those who are desribed as being 'dammned in this life and in eternity are the 'worshippers of material wealth and the idolaters (i.e., the Christians). It is a very Communist prophecy.
I don't think that Jesus' Communist, anti-monetarist God' or my black lesbian Anarchist God will be condemning too many Anarchists to Hell. There are of course the Anarcho-Capitalists, and some Christian Anarchists who have yet to abandon organised religion, however; 1000 years of torture in Hell might actually be good for them..
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 15:37.
George Woodcock, among others, did include the anarchist stream within Christianity in works on anarchist history. It has both practical expressions, such as the Catholic Worker movement,
and theological expressions, of which Tolstoi is the most well known proponent.
A personal reflection piece I did a few years ago for an SCM publication,can be found on my blog:
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 04/08/2008 - 10:10.
The line of thought that seems to attract anarchists to Christianity is the human element and can be found in lots philosophies but what sets the Christians apart from anarchists is the fact that they belierve in Christ and that to me seems a step to far for any anarchist. To cherry pick the bits and pieces of Christianity and claim to be a Christian anarchist is to denigh the basic principle of both groups, 1 anarchists, there is no higher authority than man himself. 2 Christians, God is the ultimate authority. How do you square that circle. Much better to forget all that hocus pocus of gods and higher authorities and stick with the belief that all our philosophies are man made and therefore fallible and open to change as new problems emerge and new evidence comes forward. We don't need the airy fairy to help us to solve the problems we face, it only clouds the vision and helps to divide.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Personally I am an evangelical anti-Christian, but I do accept the arguments of the Anarchist Christians to the extent that that the Jesus of the 4 Gospels clearly stands out as an anti-monetarist, anti-propertyist, anti-religionist (as in 'organised religion') whose main enemies appeared to have been the political and religious authorites (archons) of his age.
An earlier essay on this subject.
____________________
On the Revolutionary Jesus. An Anarchist perspective
A Christian is, by default allegedly a 'Christ-like' person who looks to the Jesus of history as a mentor and who claims to believe in his teachings as ‘the word of God.’
Consider that the historical Jesus appears to have been a person who fits the following description.
Ten Tenets of the Historical Jesus.
1: Anti-Monetarism / Anti-Capitalism
He did not believe in any form of monetarism (do not carry money.... do not receive money, only food); he was a homeless (he had nowhere to lay his head), unemployed ( he called upon those with him to give up their professions), anti-propertyist who propagated not Capitalism (Capital = money) but proto-Communism (Fr. Communare: to share. Communism: to share all property in common)
.
‘Carry neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, neither two robes, neither shoes, nor yet a staff. Mt 10’
2: Anti-materialism; anti-Consumerism.
Do not worship mammon (Aramaic: Material possessions / clothing / money). Consider Solomon in all his glory?
3: He cried out against the rich and the religious hypocrites.
Woe to you brood of vipers… hypocrites…serpents.. in the name of the prophets you would have stoned the prophets, etc., etc.
4: He did not sell salvation for Capitalist coin.
5: He told the rich to devote their wealth to the poor.
6: He built no Temples (in fact he cursed the Temple); he clearly despised the proponentws of organised religion of his age. And spoke out against any form of priesthood.
‘Be not called Rabbi (teacher)… and call no man your father upon the earth…neither be called masters……and whoever exalts himself shall be abased. (Mt.38)’
7: He was tortured and executed for his rebellion against the religious establishment, at their request, and allegedly as a political criminal; he did not support the corrupt government and the Solomonic priesthood (the Sadducees).
8: He was not an idolater, he never referred to himself as 'Creator;' indeed he cried out to the Creator at times and referred constantly to the Creator in the Third person.
9: He told his followers, 'Do not pray in public in the streets and the Temples.'
‘And when you pray, you must not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the temples and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when thou pray, enter into your room, and when you have shut the door, pray in secret; and your God which hears in secret shall answer you. And when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. (Mt. 6)’
10: The revolutionary militant (terrorist) Jesus.
"Do not suppose that I come to bring peace to the earth: I
did not come to bring peace but a sword."
Consider that at one point he asks his followers to sell their robes if they have to and buy swords. There Are two interpretations of the answer, one being 'we have two swords,' and another being 'we have two swords each.' The Judean siccari (Swordsmen or 'terrorists’ to the Romans) commonly carried two swords, as opposed to the sword and shield of the Romans.
'Cohort' (L. a tenth of a Legion).
It clearly states that a cohort of Romans arrested Jesus. A legion was a minimum of 5000 men plus cavalry. Thus a minimum of 500 armed soldiers (plus the Temple guard, who were also armed) arrested Jesus in Gethsemane where an armed fight broke out; outnumbered his followers fled. This begs the question of why 500 armed soldiers would arrest an alleged unarmed pacifists. It simply does not make sense.
Etc., etc., etc.
Now compare this man to modern day Christians in general. Are they really Christ-like? Do they really believe in all of the above.
Two types of Christians; the hypnotists of the 'Jesus Business' and the hypnotised innocents.
I do not believe that the hypnotists of the Jesus business who claim to be 'experts' on the sayings of Jesus can possibly justify their business by the teachings of Jesus. Those who have vested interests in 'Capital' and earn a living from the Jesus business cannot be expected to agree with the tenets above. If they are offended; so too it must be stated that they ‘give offence’ to the students of the historical Jesus and to all liberation theologians and Christian Anarchists.
Consider also that the two major state terrorist countries in the world have Christian heads of state (George Bush and Elizabeth Windsor) and that they are totally committed to militant world Capitalist revolution, the holocaust of all militant enemies and the economic enslavement of humanity.
The hypnotised innocents; the proletariat.
Clearly many Christians are simply hypnotised, and it is they who need to be woken up; that simply requires education.
If the teachings of Jesus are offensive to Christians, then equally so it could be argued that propagating the anti-thesis (opposite idea) of the such teachings in the name of Jesus would have been offensive to the historical Jesus. It is quite fair to judge the Christians by the teachings of the person whom they claim to represent.
Jesus was a very offensive person; he ranted and raged at the injustices of his society and crying out 'Woe to you hypocrites.' If he had been diplomatic and did not give offence it is unlikely that the priesthood would have placed a reward for his arrest.. The prophets have always been very extreme and outspoken people
Today in the name of Jesus, all manner of religious hypocrisy is propagated in his name, Capitalist Revolution, the selling of salvation for coin, the construction of elaborate Temples while billions suffer in dire poverty.
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 04/12/2008 - 00:46.
You still can't get round the fact to be a Christain of any label you have to accept that Jesus was the son of god, born of a virgin birth and was resurrected three days after dying and ascended to "heaven". I would say that these fundamental beliefs exclude you from believing in anarchisty philosophy. You cannot cherry pick your religion, keeping the bits you like and discarding the bits you don't. To do so would totally undermine the Christian beliefs and to embrace them contradicts anarchist philosophy. Why not just be an anarchist or a Christian?
You still can't get round the fact to be a Christain of any label you have to accept that Jesus was the son of god, born of a virgin birth ......etc
Yes almost all Christians worship Jesus as an object of idolatry and many of their beliefs come from a much earlier period in history where the majority of our ancestors were illiterate, uneducated, superstitious and would believe almost any old myth that was fed to them by the priesthood,
However I really don't find a shred of evidence from any of the sayings of Jesus that he considered himself to be A: The Creator of the Uniiverse, B: a Tri-theist (Tinitarian) C: a person born of virgin birth (in fact his family considered him to be 'beside himself (i.e., insane)) C: A person who had any type of organised religion at all (in fact he attacked organised religion), etc., etc; I just don't really find him to be person who believed in Christian theology.
He was accused of worshipping the Devil ('possessed by the Prince of demons'), he appears to have been bi-sexual (the Greek text refers to him being 'in love with' several men and women), he was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard, he seemed to enjoy hanging out in bars (with publicans), he violated and opposed numerous aspects of Moses 613 laws, and in all he generally does not come across as the Christian theologians would have their victims believe.
I concede that 'some' Anarchist Christians do accept much of the traditional Christian theology handed down by the priesthood, such as the Nicean creed and so forth, Since with 'all' Christians that I come accross I do go out of my way to give the impression that I am an avowed enemy of their God (i.e., a Satanist), thus it is not for me to defend Christianity; I merely wish to point out the proto Anarchist Communist nature of the Jesus who appears in the Gospels.
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 04/13/2008 - 22:19.
The Christian religion did not come into being until jesus died, he was a jew, his followers became the Christians. So he could not have believed in the Christain faith while alive.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 04/16/2008 - 01:51.
There is a long tradition of Christian Anarchism. Consider Dorthy Day and the Catholic Workers.
I think that it is obvious that(the Christian) God would be an authority. I think as anarchists the question we have to ask to determine whether this is compatible is whether God is a legitimate authority. Christian teaching says that God is all good, incapable of evil, and the source of all good. Using this reasoning it can be understood that his authority would be legitimate, especially considering that he knows everything.
Now it can be debated whether he is actually good or not if you believe that he exists as the bible depicts. The point is, one of the premises of Christianity is that God is all knowing, and completely good. This places him in a different category than human beings who are by never all-knowing or the source of all goodness.
In Christianity God also allows people free choice. He could supposedly control all of our minds and force us to obey him, but our free will is allowed. Now, I know many would say the threat of an afterlife is coercion but I have met many Christians that don't see hell as a punishment, just as a place that one would naturally not want to go to upon becoming a Christian.
So with that mindset, I believe it is possible to be a Christian anarchist, and following Jesus' message it would be particularly easy to be any type of libertarian socialist. I think my point is essentially that anarchism opposes not so much authority as illegitimate authority, which is naturally all human authority that can act in any way without being accountable to those it acts for or against.
Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 04/17/2008 - 11:18.
They are playing with words and labels. You can't believe in a God, a higher authority and claim to be an anarchist. That is some sort of delusion, there is no room what so ever in anarchist theory for any God, man is the only authority we can deal with, anything else is just fogging the issues. We have to look at the prblems and we have to solve them in conjuction with each other, there is no point in appealing to some airy-fairy being somewhere up in the sky or where ever he/she is supposed to reside.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
You can't believe in a God, a higher authority and claim to be an anarchist.
Proudhon’s ‘God is evil’ vs the Marxist’s ‘God does not exist’
By Lucifer
Enemy of God.
Dear Radical Glasgow.
I myself am also a Glaswegian (originally) and I do believe in the existance of Capitalist and Religionist Archons (rulers, leaders, tyrants, monarchs, economic slavemasters, usuryists etc.). I do not reject their existance, I simply take an anti-archon position. Similarly with the Capitalist ‘God’ of the Christian state terrorists. I do not take an atheist position, but rather an anti-theist position. In daclaring myself the enemy of God, as with Proudhon, this cannot be taken as an atheist position. By ‘God’ however I do not refer to the old white bearded man sitting on a cloud in the sky. There are many Satanists who are evangelically anti-God, but who are not atheists. For example many Pagans over here in the UK define themselves as political Anarchists, as do some Christians, but even the Christian Anarchists consider themselves the enemy of the God of the Christian state terrorists.
Just as one does not need to reject the existance of George Bush to define oneself as an Anarchist, one merely needs to consider him an ‘enemy,’ similarly with the God of the Christian state terrorists, one does not need to reject the existance of this Capitalist demon, one merely needs to consider him to be an ‘enemy,’ and actively resist his hypnotists (priests) and hypnotised devoteees (victims).
Materialism vs. Spiritualism.
Unfortunately one cannot have physical proof of the non physical; and thus ‘spiritualism’ cannot be proven or disproven, and although materialism can be disproven (see my essay above on materialism), this is matter of the language of quantum physics and not a proof of ‘spiritualism.’
I have never understood materialism / atheism really; I simply have had too many personal subjective experiences which to me are clearly ‘spiritual experiences’; I should say that my spiritualist position is an experiental (in terms of subjective experiences) one as a consequence of my huge psychoactive habit over many years, necromancy (ritual magick), sex magick, etc., and generally many things that are to the devotees of the God of Christian state terrorism defined as ‘Satanism.’ My own spiritualism has much more in common with Alisteir Crowley’s than the spiritualism of the Christian Capitalists however.
In Summary it is my position that many Anarchists and Satanists can and do believe in the existance of the God of the Christian state terrorists, we merely choose to devote our energy to attacking and ridiculing his followers / hypnotic victims.
‘Love is the Law. Love under will,’ and ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’
I think you might be confusuing belief in the Christian State terrorist God with submitting one’s will to the will of his Capitalist priesthood and their hypocritical morality and so forth. The God of the Christian state terrorists is simply a ‘higher authority’ whose presence needs to be cast out of the earth, along with his devoteees; believing in the existance of such a Capitalist demon does not necessitate subjecting oneself to the authority of his cultists and their laws.
Clearly opposition to all forms of organised religion (mass hypnosis) is presupposed by all Anarchists, so I would conclude that the Christian Anarchists who have yet to totally abandon abd resist all forms of organised religion (such as the Catholic Worker movement) fall outside of a classical definitin of Anarchism, however ‘atheism’ is just another metaphysical belief; the insistance on atheism/materialism is just another form of authoritarianism, and a rather dangerous one, since if Anarchism becomes confused with atheism, rather than merely anti-religion, it will alienate Anarchists from the masses who are mostly non-atheists .
Lucifer.
Against all the gods and masters of heaven and earth (while not denying their existance).
No mercy on they who deserve none. http://www.myspace.com/luciferhorusmithras
Submitted by Harlequin Columbine on Sat, 04/26/2008 - 12:55.
I've thought about this a lot. The problem I think comes when considering 'God', spirituality, etc. as something separate from ourselves. A higher dimensional reality than the 4-D one we normally inhabit is probably the unseen background of what we see around us. And it is constantly giving birth to this universe. I can't call it "God". It is not higher than us - in the sense that a King is 'higher' than us. It is us, but an us we rarely encounter. It is, if you like, the oneness of everything. Christianity and indeed all the Religions of the Book are ill-adapted to such an idea. Hinduism gets closer, especially in its more philosophical aspects. The point is that this 'God' is spread out; there's nothing hierarchical here, each part is the equal - if not the same - as each other part. None are priveleged in relation to either the whole or to other parts. There's no King or Slaveowner here. Couldn't we call it an anarchist 'God', that is a 'God' who inhabits us all equally. I don't think this calls for any religion. Religion, as Fredy Perlman said,
is a domesticated degeneration of this spiritual impulse. This degeneration occured when spirituality itself migrated from the forests and wide open spaces - ie. the Wilderness - to the restricted precincts of the temple, and priesthoods emerged. The 'God' I'm talking about is more akin to The Great Spirit of the Native Americans than God the Father, Jehovah or Allah. We don't have to accept the Materialist philosophy any more than the Idealist. They are both aspects of Dualism which attempt to suppress the other aspect. Something more along the lines of Quantum Mechanics' Wave/Particle duality is more I think to the point. Anyway, they're just my thoughts on this subject. I don't pretend to have all the answers.
Yes I would think that 'all' Anarchists would have a problem with the concept of God as the transcendent (above us) homophobic, infanticidal, genocidal, sexually repressed, Capitalist, omnipotent father God of the Anglo-American Christian state terrorists (i.e., Bush and Windsor's God) and of the Catholic Church and the Christian Right.
It is a hideous God, but then there are other ways to consider God, Einstein's God of physics and so forth, and then as you point out, the 'Great Spirit' of animist Indians and the Hindu 'Brahman' who is actually 'Om' or everything or totally immanent (within physics).
A few things can be said about the Christian God; firstly 'He (the Christian God is at least two thirds male)' is omnipotent (all powerful), and further he is some kind of transcendent (outside of our existence). metaphysical (above physics as opposed to the animist / Deist position of 'within physics), unknowable mystery on the one hand and on the other hand he is 'unchanging' and an actual 'man' who lives in the spiritual world (afterlife / ancestral world) and whom Christians suppose they can sit and eat with and converse with in the afterlife; further He is an intercessory being (whom being omnipotent can intercede in the affairs of humanity and create miracles etc.) who has the power to incarnate on earth and to directly speak to humanity as fully human, and allegedly he will do so at the 'Second Coming,' where he will also 'rapture' the Capitalists and religious hypocrites' who believe in him; however the last time he incarnated, this 'unchanging' God (of rather one Third of the Christian God) appeared as a Communist / anti-propertyist / anti-monetarist individual who built no temples / churches and who seemed to spend his time attacking the Capitalists and established religionists of his age for their hypocrisy (which begs the question of why, if he is unchanging he would have anything other than wrath for he Christians today), and who despite being all-powerful, was subjected to constant abuse, persecuted by the religionists and elites of his age, brutally tortured (flagellated), murdered and with his last breath, allegedly considered himself to be forsaken by God (though if Jesus is God, how he can forsake himself I am not sure).
All this is, in my judgement a tortuous theological argument which makes very little sense to human reason and obviously I reject this disctator God and his cultists and I reject the Christian Christ with all my heart.
I personally come from a background where 'spirituality' and theism are defined more in Kabbalistic, neo-Pagan, Satanist, experiential (psychoactive experiences) terms.
The Kabbalistic God, which seems to me to be more in accord with Jesus' God, and this is a God who incarnates in we who are all created in Her divine image, male and female and who is not omnipotent (If we have free will, God cannot be omnipotent, you can only have one or the other).
Thus it is only be the power of our true will (thelema), unchained by all the laws of the nations and religionists of the Aeons that we can hope in time to liberate humanity from those people who by the power of Capital and organised religion have enslaved humanity.
Only with the utter defeat of the Christian state terrorists (the Capitalists and Religious hypocrites) in apocalyptic war, can the 1000 year agricultural revolution begin, and only then is their any possibility of swords to ploughshares and peace on earth. To dispute this of course is blasphemy.
Lucifer
My sacred and true will be done on earth as it is heaven.
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 04/27/2008 - 17:22.
I think the idea that anarchists (again the homogenized whole many people think actually exists!) are against "authority" as a totalizing concept is just careless and it shows a spun out dead-end thread of anarchist (blogging mostly). To argue against religion and anarchism coexisting based on the idea that God is an authority and thus incongruous with anarchism is simply weak and AGAIN shows a real lack of appreciation for how people define "god" for themselves. Once you take 1/2 a second to scratch below the mainstream conventional understandings of God (bearded MALE in the sky) and touch on any mystic tradition, you will see that God is often defined (to the extent that people are willing to do so) as something far less anthropomorphic and much more like weather. Weather has authority over you. To the person who commented that anarchism puts authority solely in "man" [sic] I feel like that's a really slippery slope. Rain has an authority over you. Death has an authority over you. Dogs have an authority over you. A gorilla has authority over you to the extent that I define authority as the ability to facilitate an experience for you (good or bad). Authority as a grand super narrative concept is A. impossible to trap, and B. not really the enemy. (I'm purposefully using a broad and less charged definition of "authority" here).
I can be an authority on fixing a rear flat on my bike while my friend can be an authority on urban foraging. I don't have to feel threatened by this. Sometimes my sexual partner is QUITE an authority over me in the bed o' fun! The only issue is when the design of our relationship (the way we ARE towards one another) is legislated by either a person or State who emposes a law on us. The legislated and fixed authority of the human over another human is what's at issue here. Not that someone believes there are forces greater than humanity and calls these manifestations "god."
Submitted by Anonymous on Sun, 04/27/2008 - 17:03.
These questions are more often than not red herrings. You're basically asking "What can a person be?" which always leads to any number of so-called "free thinkers" telling people what they can and can not *be.* It makes for really ugly discussion, since there's really no way to *answer* this question without confining people to scripted roles and identities:
A person can't be a Christian and an anarchist because belief in Jesus means (this) and belief in anarchism means (that).
It's bogus, never leads to bridge-building, and ALWAYS ends with people having to defend *who they are* to someone else trying to tell them who they should be. And it doesn't matter. A person's chosen identity is their own and has no baring on another person. What matters is how that person relates to and treats other human beings--what that person wants for another.
All the rest is got-nothing-better-to-do-'cause-the-opposition-is-an-abstract-monolith-that-I-can't-really-percieve-and-subvert-so-I-simply-undercut-comrades-all-around-me- name calling...
Arguing about what Christiany does or means or how it treats women or animals is just poor critique and shows a real lack of scope of the Christian tradition (or any other religious tradition for that matter). As usual, it wrongly assumes a homogenous conglomerate of practitioners, which is the exact same mentality used by any media outlet you're interested in looking at and how they manufacture "enemies" and dissent.
A much more interetsing question for me is how can self-proclaimed anarchists work with self-proclaimed Christians towards stateless societies.
But a MUCH more interesting non-question would be to simply show where people are already doing that.
Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 04/29/2008 - 10:36.
The Christian religion exists in the real world, it has dynamics that interact with our lives, to wear the label is an acceptance of those dynamics, it is a power structure and a hierarchical system. Anarchism is neither a power structure nor a hierarchical system. Cheese is not chalk and chalk is not cheese no matter how we try to claim they are similar..
Re: Christianity and Anarchism
Sure, it's possible. The question is, really, is it justifiable? In my view, no, but i'd be interested in hearing your arguments, if you have any.
Re: Re: Christianity and Anarchism
I don't see why not religion doesnt change the fact that you think that no government is the correct course of action. all i got to say is this.
FUCK ALL FORMS OF GOVERNMENT
TIME TO RISE TO ANARCHY
Yeah your right down with
Yeah your right down with big brother
Yes, it's both possible and
Yes, it's both possible and justifiable. It would, however, be impossible to be an anarchist and a member of most churches, with a few possible exceptions (quakers, for instance). Many people believe in Christ and consider themselves Christians but do not believe in organized religion.
Oh come on!
No. God is a dictator and he reads your thoughts and hates it when you masterbate.
So you believe in him
So you believe in him then?
Not your friend
yeah
oh God hates us more than we could ever imagine. The good news is we don't need him.
Sure, it's possible, Jesus
Sure, it's possible, Jesus died 2000 years ago for our sins and for our ultimate freedom and equality. Read Galatians, it's filled with anarchist thinking. I am an anarchist, but I honestly don't think absolute anarchy is possible without completely non-violent people.
No Way
If you believe in any kinda of religion then you have to follow there rules and laws which would go against the principles of being an anarchist
Sure, but in name only.
Sure, but in name only. Tolsoy claimed to be. I'd suggest doing a lot more research into each of the philosophies and their histories. To call oneself a Christian-Anarchist exhibits a shaky understanding of both Christianity and even the most reactionary veins of Anarchist thought. Being bossed around by an imaginary friend is no less humiliating than being coerced by real people (but it's certainly more embarassing).
Ellul
Jacques Ellul would disagree with you.
http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/ellul/aac.html
Imaginary?
Are you serious? You sound like a moron. You know whats embarrasing? People like you that we have to share this world with. You make the rest of us look bad.
Thats a simplistic
view of spirituality. Although I do agree with you, I think most anarchists dont understand spirituality enough to criticize it as harshly as they do. Anarchist argument against god are usually childish in nature.
Not your friend
Christian Anarchism = Anarcho-Monarchism
Yes.
There is such a thing as anarcho-monarchism, which can be taken as an alternate name for Christianity. There is also the idea that anarchy is actually a metaphor used to refer to that state of being that existed prior to the fall of man from the grace of God, aka The Fall. Christ Jesus is not a fallen man, and is therefore the most perfect anarchist. Because He is also the only true King, you have anarcho-monarchism.
Similarly, one could also say that Jesus Christ is the most perfect atheist, for He is at one with the Father and is no longer in need of other gods.
Anarcho-monarchism is also a form of Christianity that is not institutional. Its adherents do not build churches, temples, tabernacles, etc. It is, therefore, opposed, but not hostile, to St. Peter's form of Christianity, i.e. the entire Catholic Papacy, which is based on "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" from the Gospel of St. Matthew. Anarcho-monarchists prefer St. Mark's Jesus.
Jesus.
I, like Jesus, also have no need for a God, so what does that make me in relation to the said Jesus?? Anarcho monarchists, anarcho capitalists, anarcho christians, anarcho dictators, you seem to have missed the entire meaning behind the theories of anarchism. My dear friend there is no such things as the perfect man, perfect athiest, nor the perfect anarchist.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
The Need for God...
You state, "I, like Jesus, also have no need for a God"...I gather that you have not read much of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' life. Through all 4 of the canonized gospels Jesus is recorded as praying to God the Father. If Jesus had no need for God, why would he pray to Him? Secondly, the Gospel of John provides many instances where Jesus flat out declares his dependency on God the Father.
What is more important is that all of us are like Jesus in the fact that all of us are in need of God...
Does this detract from the ability to be an anarchist? Not necessarily, a wise person commented above that the book of Galatians (written by a pretty crazy Jewish guy) is full of anarchist thought. I would even propose that much of the early church (see Acts chapters 2-7) could be compared a loving anarchist community...
Secondly, I would say that true Christianity is meant to be detached from government life. When I say this I am saying a true separation of church and state. The devoted followers of Jesus Christ are to remove themselves from any type of political influence. Why? Jesus himself intentionally withdrew from the possiblity of rising to political power on this earth (John 6). Also, God gives the promise throughout Scripture that He will avenge. There is no need for the Christian (or the anarachist for that matter) to try to gain any type of power on earth. The Christian and anarachist that gains power of society is bound to instiutionalized messes (a prime example...look at the Roman Catholic Church, it has been downhill since Constantine!).
Uh.
Someone above commented that anarchism is simply anti-government, so one can be a christian anarchist. According to that logic, the man who sexually assaulted me could be an anarchist (and he does claim to be) since he wants to smash the state. If you have a broader understanding of anarchism as anti-authoritarian then it's clear that being a member of a hierarchical church and/or subscribing to a text that calls for the subjugation of nature and women make being christian in opposition to anarchism. Fuck christianity! It's the biblical mindset of having dominion over nature that's destroying life on this fucking planet.
maybe
"It's the biblical mindset of having dominion over nature that's destroying life on this fucking planet."
i am more or less a Christian, i believe in God and Jesus and the resurrection,...etc. i don't believe in the church, or any organized religion, or any heirarchical structures or 'biblical knowledge' or 'wisdom' or whatever. (i.e. priests - laypeople...)
but i also agree with a lot of ideas in anarchist thought. i call myself an anarchist because it comes closest to my political philosophy.
i think its the selfishness of 'christians' who take dominion to mean absolute authority that is responsible for destroying life, not just christians though, or that biblical mindset, i think its a mindset of industrialization and capitalism..a mindset of acquiring as much as possible, which most likely stems from religions..as in religious wars.. but...with dominion, i believe, comes responsibility. 'christians' definitely don't act out this responsiblity. and i also believe that along with the gift of 'dominion over nature' there should be a sense of gratitute of the recipient to the giver. there should be a sense of reverence for the creator, and the gift that we have received. i think most Christians deny this, or are just ignorant to it. i grew up in church, i grew up eating bar-b-q almost every week. i think about that now and it sickens me, considering how animals are raised now. and it sickens me how little people care, especially those who profess belief in God who gave us this earth.
so that being said, i think it is possible to have both Christian and anarchist beliefs. there may be a few contradictions, as in belief in God and God's authority and power, but for the majority, based on my understanding of anarchism and christianity, they are mostly compatible.
but i could be wrong, i really have only been seriously interested in anarchism for a little under two years...so..i'm still learning.
Anarchism and God
I am a recovering Marxist, so you will have to forgive my ignorance. What do the Anarchists say about materialism? I think it bears direct relevance to our discussion. If a belief in God is an amaterialist or anti-materialist position, than I think it bears quite a bit of relevance to our discussion.
Marxism and materialism go hand-in-hand. I have read a lot of revisionist philosophy books lately that state (wrongly) that Marx deserves a place in the German "idealist" school of philosophy. I have got into (online) screaming matches with people on this point - I ASSURE YOU that Marx was not a misunderstood "Idealist" - he did not undergo some magic transformation in his later writings, etc. Any insinuation that Marx was anything but a materialist is dead wrong - his whole philosophy was an attempt to point out the errors of Idealism.
I came to reject Marxism on the grounds that I began to doubt materialism as a philosophy. Are Anarchists generally materialists? If anyone can shed light on this subject, I would greatly appreciate it.
CK the Dub Organizer
Materialism vs. Quantum Physics 101
Materialism vs. Quantum Physics 101
By Lucifer
The Light of the World
www.luciferia.tv
The 1000 Year Revolution of Light.
The conclusion of the debate thus far.
Materialism is essentially a form of pseudo-scientific 'belief' regarding the nature of the universe.
Materialism has it's roots in Democritus's view that the universe was probably made up of tiny pieces of matter; Marx and the 19th century materialists simply took his word for it, however they had no way to proove or disporove this theory.
In the post Enstein, post quantum world, no scientist can say with absolute certainty that the universe is entirely reducible to 'matter..
Quantum wierdness.
In the famous 'double slit experiement (see the 'Dr Quantum cartoon on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfPeprQ7oGc )' physicists asked the question 'Are electrons 'tiny pieces of matter?' In 'fact' they concluded from this experiment that 'sometimes', the electron does not behave like matter at all; in fact they behave exactly like 'waves' and they form 'interference patters' which is not what pieces of matter do at all. This of course begs the question 'waves of what?' and only hoinest and irrefutable'scientific answer to this given by quantum physicists is 'we don't know yet'
E=MCsquared.
Simply put, there are three elements in the above equation, Mass, Energy and Light. When a nuclear detonation takes place the Plutonium does not simply 'produce' Energy and Light; rather the Plutonium (i.e., the Mass) converts into Energy and Light. Now, if Mass can be transformed into Energy and Light, Light and Energy should be able to be transformed back into Mass. This all begs the question of 'what is mass / matter?'
What is matter? The question of infinite causal regression.
If we claim that there is a God, then even child might ask, who created God, and who created her great grandmother (ad infinitum). The question goes on to infinity. Similarly we can ask, what is the basis of matter? In physics we learn that a piece of visible matter (say a glass of water) is mostly empty space and it is composed of tiny molecules. We then ask what is a water molecule. The physicist might say that a water molecule is just a term in language to describe three tiny atoms separated by a vast empty space. Then we ask what is an atom, and what is that made of and so forth and so forth ad infinitum. By the time the physicist starts to talk about the components (small pieces) of the atom such as quartks and leptons, the child may then ask, what are these quarks and leptons made of? Physicists are now speaking of sub quarks and sub leptons. So what are they made of? This question cannot lead to infinte causal regression, but how far we can keep asking the micro-universe 'what is this made of?' we simply do not know,
The Noble Prize.
When the materialist claims that it is a 'scientific' fact that the universe is made of small pieces of matter, all they has to do is to prove what the basic 'stuff of the universe is (i.e. what is teh sub-sub-sub (etc) lepton made of?)' and to prove that it is small pieces of matter, and a million dollars and a noble prize will be theirs, but at present all they have to go on is a pseudo-scientific 'faith.
Light and the 4th dimension.
We live in a universe of three dimensions and we ourselves are three dimesional objects. However due certain things that physicists refer to as 'quantum strangeness and inexplicable questions such as 'where does the photon come from' many physicists now 'believe' that there may be a fourth dimension to the universe which is invisible to us and that here we may find the root of matter and the photon. Some religionists have heard this argument and misunderstood this as some kind of proof of the 'spirit world' or God's existence, but it is nothing of the sort and it is not a proof of any 'thing' (the 4th dimension would contain what we three dimensional creatures would define as 'non things.' This is a theory put forward by many physicists who are atheists including Carl Sagan (Sagan on the 4th dimension:, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9KT4M7kiSw )
The 'stuff of the universe'
Actually many physicists believe that since the 'stuff of the universe (the root of matter)' cannot be matter, for matter cannot be made of matter infinitely since it would lead to infinite causal regression (just like the question of God's grandmother) and that thus it must be some form of non-matter and that it may in fact not even be part of our 3 dimensional world but a fourth dimensional non-stuff.
Thus I conclude that 'materialism' is a non scientific belief system.
Where does the photon (Light) and Matter come from? From physics to metaphysics.
I conclude that the honest scientific answer is that we do not know the origin of the photon or matter. it is a mystery, but the most likely answer is that their origin is beyond our three dimesional reality, and thus it is non-physical or meta-physical, but this term should not be confused with terms such as 'spiritual' 'God,' 'God's great grandmother' or the gods and it thus has no bearing on the theist / atheist debate which is a separate issue.
So, the question is, should Anarchists have to believe in a non scientific belief system like the Marxists do, and what does a non-scientific beleif system have to do with Anarchism?
Love and Light
Lucifer.
www.luciferia.tv
Lux e tenebris
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real…….Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it. Niels Bohr.
If [quantum theory] is correct, it signifies the end of physics as a science. Albert Einstein.
An introduction to quantum physics: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-7549858969748447007&q=what+th...
Materialism
Nobody any more, except possibly the remnant of Marxists (or those having difficulty throwing off their Marxism) troubles himself with notions like "materialism" or "idealism," that is long superceded 19th century philosophy. These are categories which anarchists have no reason to try to fit themselves into. Free your head! Think outside the box! There is not one practical matter concerning which your identification as a "materialist" makes any difference at all -- is there?
Bob Black
Materialism
Nobody any more, except possibly the remnant of Marxists (or those having difficulty throwing off their Marxism) troubles himself with notions like "materialism" or "idealism," that is long superceded 19th century philosophy. These are categories which anarchists have no reason to try to fit themselves into. Free your head! Think outside the box! There is not one practical matter concerning which your identification as a "materialist" makes any difference at all -- is there?
Bob Black
Anarchy and Religion
Why not? If we accept that being a Christian does not necessarily entail subservience to the dogma of Christianity, there is no reason why one might not believe that an individual by the name of Jesus H. Christ was the son of God and came down to earth from heaven to redeem all of humanity. The question is really whether the practice of Christianity is compatible with the practice of anarchism.
In order to answer that question, one must reach some sort of agreement about what anarchism is. In all practical terms, it seems fair to characterise anarchism as an ideology which is opposed to external bodies wielding power and authority over the lives of individuals without their consent. Is Christianity an external body? Tolstoy argued that the kingdom of god is within you and said "no". Jesus Christ apparently said that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and appeared to rule out the inclusion of his beliefs within the anarchist canon.
Personally, I don't see why anarchists should oppose the individual's right to believe in whatever tickles their fancy as long as its praxis does not impede on the freedom and beliefs of other people. If you want to believe that Jesus Christ was the son of god, fine. But don't try and tell me that I shouldn't use a condom or that I have to pay a tenth of my income to some ex-Nazi in Rome. the same goes for followers of the prophet Mohammed. Believe what you like, but keep it to yourselves.
Which is a fine compromise, o would be were it not for the fact that history would suggest that the idea of religion without oppression is a pipe dream. Anarchists direct their fury and resistance towards the oppression of others by the powerful. Throughout history, religion has served to keep people ignorant and in a state of oppression. As a result, anarchists in the nineteenth century worked to combat the power of superstition by building up a strong rationalist movement. I think that we do well to keep this alive. Critical thought can only ever be beneficial to humanity ("discuss.").
So, if you want to believe that Jesus is your saviour, fine. But don't bang on about it, please. Keep it to yourself and try and lead by example, rather than by preaching.
That's what I think, anyway.
Christians and Anarchists, One in the Same?
I don't particularly see why someone cannot be both. Personally, I reject the Christian ideology but if you look solely into the definition of "anarchist" it does not necessarily restrict the worship of a particular god. Obviously, to be an anarchist you have to believe in the cause that you wish to perpetuate above the institution so that is identifying with something as well. Honestly, I guess it depends on what you personally believe. I've met many extremely intelligent people who claim to be anarchists but also call themselves "Christians" (however you wish to interpret the term). Many famous people from history have also called themselves Christians and have acted in ways that one could arguably label as an "anarchist." Leave it to your own interpretation.
"Our thoughts are ours, their ends none our own." -William Shakespeare
A God tends to be the boss
A God tends to be the boss man, he has authority or he's just another guy but invisible and lives in the sky somewhere.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
it's all good? no it aint
the idea that everyone can interpret everything in their own way is a lovely, feel good idea, that doesn't seem to work out well.
the bulk of christianity has a particular trajectory - one that includes the inquisition, the witch burnings, the dark ages, etc, and includes the aggressively manichean (good/evil polarities) that are fundamental to a lot of the bad things that are going on in the world today.
to just say "well not all christians are like that" isn't that helpful.
christians don't exist in a vacuum. someone calling themselves a christian is naming themselves after something that has done horrible things for centuries. can people just pick the good things in this history and leave out whatever they don't like? what is the point of the label if it doesn't actually clarify anything (i.e. if the definition leaves out as much or more than it leaves in)?
so no, my answer would be that someone can not be a christian and be the kind of anarchist i find relevent - despite dorothy day and tolstoy.
can someone be an anarchist and believe in god? perhaps that is a different question.
What God? One without
What God? One without authority? Or is this anarchist quite prepared to accept "SOME" authority? Or will your God have no authority? If so what makes him a GOD?
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
You still take you values
You still take you values from the big guy in the sky who doesn't even talk to everybody with the same message.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
that line about 'rendering
that line about 'rendering to caesar's what is caesar's' talks about taxes. which...as far as i can tell...no one, even anarchists, are exempt. i mean...you pay taxes when you buy a book, or a computer...right?
so...in that sense, we are all still 'subservient' to the authority which we oppose.
Trick question
The problem with the 'Render to Ceasar' quote is that it is probably the central quote which Capitalist Christians quote out of context and use to justify Capitalism and their support for Christian state terrorist governments.
Why is the quote out of context?
Well if you read the entire passage it firstly states?
'15Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?" '
In other words it clearly states that it was a 'trick question' designed to entrap him.
Jesus responds with
'But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19Show me the coin used for paying the tax?"
Now this begs the question of why it was a trick question.
Consider also his position on monetarism?
‘Carry neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, neither two robes, neither shoes, nor yet a staff. Mt 10’
Now since he was clearly homeless, unemployed and a total anti-monetarist who stated 'do not carry money,' how on earth is he supposed to pay taxes?
I think the nature of the 'trick question' has to be understood in light of the fact that he was a public debater and that if he took a position of 'don't pay taxes,' that he would be in danger of being arrested and would no longer be able to debate in public since the Romans would probably have arrested him as a political threat. There were also of course Temple taxes,(which is probably why overturning the money-changers tables at the temple' was probably one reason why the Sadducees (the Temple priests) put such a huge reward out for his capture.
If he did not carry money and encouraged others towards anti-monetarism (anti-Capitalism), and sought to convince them to give up their professions and join his revolution against the Capitalists and religious hypocrites (the Archons of his age) clearly none of them would be able to pay their taxes.
To those Christians who use the out of context 'Render to Ceasar' one-liner to justify financing Christian state terrorism, I remind them of Jesus; first words in response to the 'tax' question, which was 'You hypocrites,' and ' why are you trying to trap me?' In other words Christians who use this saying of the anti-Capitalist martyr Jesus to justify Capitalism and state trrorism are clearly hypocrites who would pull anything out of context in order to justify their evil.
Regards
Lucifer.
____________________
The Prophet
By Lucifer
Once upon a time there was a Capitalist who was listening to a revolutionary, known for his popularity with the people, who was crying out against the tyrant oppressors of the poor, against their police and their military and against the hypocrites of religion (the priesthood) who defend them. As he listened to the man, he noticed the police came along and dragged the man away to meet his torturers.
The Capitalist thought to himself. ‘This is wonderful, this man spoke to the masses and had ideas which many seemed to agree with, but if I behaved like that, the tyrants would have me arrested and tortured as a terrorist and the priests would stone me as a heretic.’
As he walked away the man thought to himself, ‘This man was so popular with the masses that it is a shame to forget about him, after all a successful Capitalist has to have a popular product. I could turn the teachings of that revolutionary into a religion and make it palatable to the tyrants.I could build a Temple, construct an idol of the prophet, develop a systematic theology, employ a priesthood to perform elaborate rituals in the name of the prophet, and when the victims of tyranny and of the priesthood came to my temple and heard the words of the prophet, they would be so impressed by his wrath at all the evils of the world that I would soon have a large congregation offering me the fruits of their labour. I could even claim that there is only eternal salvation if one worships the prophet as God; I could take over the religious market and it would impress the rich people and the tyrants, and in time, I could even make the tyrant the honorary head of my temple. I could even take over a government and fight wars in his name and torture and exterminate all who resisted…and I could…..’
Suddenly the Devil appeared to the man and said; ‘What a wonderful idea, I will do everything in my power to assist you.’
Lucifer
Words are the weapons of mass hypnosis.
Parable of the Capitalist
You make a strong case in your parable of the Capitalist making a religion of the life and death of Jesus. However, I pose one question? Why would the earliest followers of Jesus, who had absolutely nothing to gain in this life by following him, be willing to die for their belief in his death and resurrection? The earliest followers, in particularly Paul, had everything to lose.
I concede that the church as institution is majorly flawed and has often been nothing but a money-making racket (i.e. the selling of indulgences in the 16th century that ticked Martin Luther of so much). However, the early church (everything prior to the conversion of Constantine in the early 4th century) gained absolutely nothing on this earth by following and believing Jesus and propogating Christianity.
but, the children...
i am an atheist, and think religion, especially monotheistic Abrahamic religion, has turned out in practice to generally be a horrible, central part of the enemies of freedom.
I read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion a while a go, and i thought it was really good. it really breaks down the idea that a god could exist. i personally don't understand how in the hell one could think that.
as far as christian anarchism goes, i see one big problem, and it is the same problem Dawkins brings up in his book. even if you keep your christianity to yourself, and you don't use it at all to justify the oppression or exploitation of others (as so many christians do), but just believe in God, if you have children, and you teach them those beliefs, you are indoctrinating them into a way of looking at life that takes the power of control over one's own life and puts in into the hands of a supreme being. this takes away the concept of freedom for a child and leads inherently away from anarchist ideas. Dawkins argues it is child abuse to bring up your child in your own religion, that you should avoid indoctrinating them, and let them make up their own mind about which, if any, religion is correct once they are old enough to think for themselves. i don't see even christian anarchists getting around this problem. i think most of them would still pass on their shoddy ideas to their offspring, perpetuating the rediculous notion that their is a man in the sky or whatever by convincing a child it is so before they can discern whether it is true or not (much likw how kids believe in Santa Claus).
if you are a christian and an anarchist, the only way i can see that not being cognitively dissonant is if you thought of God as a prime mover of the universe, like he set up things and then just let it go. i can't see being an anarchist and thinking there exists a God that can control what happens on earth and in people's lives because it opposes the idea of freedom and self-organization and autonomy. So, supposing one did just beleive in a prime mover type God, what is the point? who cares if God set up the laws of physics and started the universe in motion if he does not intervene in daily life? why does it matter if God did that or if there is no God and it just *is*? the only way i can see someone being a christian anarchist is believing in a prime mover God, and that seems irrelevant, so i guess it doesn't matter one way or another. but any other idea of God i think is incompatible with anarchism and if taught to children is indoctrination in the worst sense.
for more on why it is VERY unlikely that a God exists:
www.richarddawkins.net
god
God is the ultimate authority. He is omnipresent and everywhere, watching what you do and threatening you with eternal damnation. It's not possible to be Christian and Anarchist.
The black Lesbian Anarchist God.
'God is the ultimate authority. He is omnipresent and everywhere, watching what you do and threatening you with eternal damnation.'
'The divine being is nothing more than the human being'.
From the view point of Feurbachian projection, George Bush's God is clearly the God of the Capitalists and religious hypocrites who will save them and take them to heaven and abandon the poor as unsaved Christians to hell on earth (poverty and war) and hell in eternity (the tortures of Hell). Bush will of course be taken up to heaven with other born again Capitalists such as Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Pinochet, Franco, Raztinger, Elizabeth Windsor, the various popes and so forth.
However their definitions of the state terrorist God are only their own definitions out of an infinite number of possible definitions, such as Jesus 'anti-Capitalist God.'.
My God for example, from the point of view of 'projection' would have to be a 'black lesbian Anarchist.' She is also a bastard and an orphan since she has no parents, since they clearly were not married. I don't know who the black Lesbian Anarchist God's great, great (ad infinitum) grandmother was, but I do know that the God whom you define above is only one possible definition.
Do also bear in mind that the people whom Jesus constantly cursed to Hell were the Capitalists and religious hypocrites. That seems to be what most Anarchists seem to do.
Further the prophecies of Armageddon in the Book of Revelations predict that the 'rich nations' would be subjected to nuclear holocaust and that there would follow a 1000 year agricultural revolution where there would be no more poverty and war (swords to agricultural impliments),' Those who are desribed as being 'dammned in this life and in eternity are the 'worshippers of material wealth and the idolaters (i.e., the Christians). It is a very Communist prophecy.
I don't think that Jesus' Communist, anti-monetarist God' or my black lesbian Anarchist God will be condemning too many Anarchists to Hell. There are of course the Anarcho-Capitalists, and some Christian Anarchists who have yet to abandon organised religion, however; 1000 years of torture in Hell might actually be good for them..
Lucifer.
christian principles and anarchist thought
George Woodcock, among others, did include the anarchist stream within Christianity in works on anarchist history. It has both practical expressions, such as the Catholic Worker movement,
and theological expressions, of which Tolstoi is the most well known proponent.
A personal reflection piece I did a few years ago for an SCM publication,can be found on my blog:
http://morecoherent.wordpress.com/2007/04/16/hello-world/
Brian
The line of thought that
The line of thought that seems to attract anarchists to Christianity is the human element and can be found in lots philosophies but what sets the Christians apart from anarchists is the fact that they belierve in Christ and that to me seems a step to far for any anarchist. To cherry pick the bits and pieces of Christianity and claim to be a Christian anarchist is to denigh the basic principle of both groups, 1 anarchists, there is no higher authority than man himself. 2 Christians, God is the ultimate authority. How do you square that circle. Much better to forget all that hocus pocus of gods and higher authorities and stick with the belief that all our philosophies are man made and therefore fallible and open to change as new problems emerge and new evidence comes forward. We don't need the airy fairy to help us to solve the problems we face, it only clouds the vision and helps to divide.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Anarchist Jesus
Personally I am an evangelical anti-Christian, but I do accept the arguments of the Anarchist Christians to the extent that that the Jesus of the 4 Gospels clearly stands out as an anti-monetarist, anti-propertyist, anti-religionist (as in 'organised religion') whose main enemies appeared to have been the political and religious authorites (archons) of his age.
An earlier essay on this subject.
____________________
On the Revolutionary Jesus. An Anarchist perspective
By Lucifer
http://www.luciferia.tv
A Christian is, by default allegedly a 'Christ-like' person who looks to the Jesus of history as a mentor and who claims to believe in his teachings as ‘the word of God.’
Consider that the historical Jesus appears to have been a person who fits the following description.
Ten Tenets of the Historical Jesus.
1: Anti-Monetarism / Anti-Capitalism
He did not believe in any form of monetarism (do not carry money.... do not receive money, only food); he was a homeless (he had nowhere to lay his head), unemployed ( he called upon those with him to give up their professions), anti-propertyist who propagated not Capitalism (Capital = money) but proto-Communism (Fr. Communare: to share. Communism: to share all property in common)
.
‘Carry neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, neither two robes, neither shoes, nor yet a staff. Mt 10’
2: Anti-materialism; anti-Consumerism.
Do not worship mammon (Aramaic: Material possessions / clothing / money). Consider Solomon in all his glory?
3: He cried out against the rich and the religious hypocrites.
Woe to you brood of vipers… hypocrites…serpents.. in the name of the prophets you would have stoned the prophets, etc., etc.
4: He did not sell salvation for Capitalist coin.
5: He told the rich to devote their wealth to the poor.
6: He built no Temples (in fact he cursed the Temple); he clearly despised the proponentws of organised religion of his age. And spoke out against any form of priesthood.
‘Be not called Rabbi (teacher)… and call no man your father upon the earth…neither be called masters……and whoever exalts himself shall be abased. (Mt.38)’
7: He was tortured and executed for his rebellion against the religious establishment, at their request, and allegedly as a political criminal; he did not support the corrupt government and the Solomonic priesthood (the Sadducees).
8: He was not an idolater, he never referred to himself as 'Creator;' indeed he cried out to the Creator at times and referred constantly to the Creator in the Third person.
9: He told his followers, 'Do not pray in public in the streets and the Temples.'
‘And when you pray, you must not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the temples and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when thou pray, enter into your room, and when you have shut the door, pray in secret; and your God which hears in secret shall answer you. And when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. (Mt. 6)’
10: The revolutionary militant (terrorist) Jesus.
"Do not suppose that I come to bring peace to the earth: I
did not come to bring peace but a sword."
Consider that at one point he asks his followers to sell their robes if they have to and buy swords. There Are two interpretations of the answer, one being 'we have two swords,' and another being 'we have two swords each.' The Judean siccari (Swordsmen or 'terrorists’ to the Romans) commonly carried two swords, as opposed to the sword and shield of the Romans.
'Cohort' (L. a tenth of a Legion).
It clearly states that a cohort of Romans arrested Jesus. A legion was a minimum of 5000 men plus cavalry. Thus a minimum of 500 armed soldiers (plus the Temple guard, who were also armed) arrested Jesus in Gethsemane where an armed fight broke out; outnumbered his followers fled. This begs the question of why 500 armed soldiers would arrest an alleged unarmed pacifists. It simply does not make sense.
Etc., etc., etc.
Now compare this man to modern day Christians in general. Are they really Christ-like? Do they really believe in all of the above.
Two types of Christians; the hypnotists of the 'Jesus Business' and the hypnotised innocents.
I do not believe that the hypnotists of the Jesus business who claim to be 'experts' on the sayings of Jesus can possibly justify their business by the teachings of Jesus. Those who have vested interests in 'Capital' and earn a living from the Jesus business cannot be expected to agree with the tenets above. If they are offended; so too it must be stated that they ‘give offence’ to the students of the historical Jesus and to all liberation theologians and Christian Anarchists.
Consider also that the two major state terrorist countries in the world have Christian heads of state (George Bush and Elizabeth Windsor) and that they are totally committed to militant world Capitalist revolution, the holocaust of all militant enemies and the economic enslavement of humanity.
The hypnotised innocents; the proletariat.
Clearly many Christians are simply hypnotised, and it is they who need to be woken up; that simply requires education.
If the teachings of Jesus are offensive to Christians, then equally so it could be argued that propagating the anti-thesis (opposite idea) of the such teachings in the name of Jesus would have been offensive to the historical Jesus. It is quite fair to judge the Christians by the teachings of the person whom they claim to represent.
Jesus was a very offensive person; he ranted and raged at the injustices of his society and crying out 'Woe to you hypocrites.' If he had been diplomatic and did not give offence it is unlikely that the priesthood would have placed a reward for his arrest.. The prophets have always been very extreme and outspoken people
Today in the name of Jesus, all manner of religious hypocrisy is propagated in his name, Capitalist Revolution, the selling of salvation for coin, the construction of elaborate Temples while billions suffer in dire poverty.
Shame.
Lucifer
You still can't get round
You still can't get round the fact to be a Christain of any label you have to accept that Jesus was the son of god, born of a virgin birth and was resurrected three days after dying and ascended to "heaven". I would say that these fundamental beliefs exclude you from believing in anarchisty philosophy. You cannot cherry pick your religion, keeping the bits you like and discarding the bits you don't. To do so would totally undermine the Christian beliefs and to embrace them contradicts anarchist philosophy. Why not just be an anarchist or a Christian?
Enemy of God.
You still can't get round the fact to be a Christain of any label you have to accept that Jesus was the son of god, born of a virgin birth ......etc
Yes almost all Christians worship Jesus as an object of idolatry and many of their beliefs come from a much earlier period in history where the majority of our ancestors were illiterate, uneducated, superstitious and would believe almost any old myth that was fed to them by the priesthood,
However I really don't find a shred of evidence from any of the sayings of Jesus that he considered himself to be A: The Creator of the Uniiverse, B: a Tri-theist (Tinitarian) C: a person born of virgin birth (in fact his family considered him to be 'beside himself (i.e., insane)) C: A person who had any type of organised religion at all (in fact he attacked organised religion), etc., etc; I just don't really find him to be person who believed in Christian theology.
He was accused of worshipping the Devil ('possessed by the Prince of demons'), he appears to have been bi-sexual (the Greek text refers to him being 'in love with' several men and women), he was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard, he seemed to enjoy hanging out in bars (with publicans), he violated and opposed numerous aspects of Moses 613 laws, and in all he generally does not come across as the Christian theologians would have their victims believe.
I concede that 'some' Anarchist Christians do accept much of the traditional Christian theology handed down by the priesthood, such as the Nicean creed and so forth, Since with 'all' Christians that I come accross I do go out of my way to give the impression that I am an avowed enemy of their God (i.e., a Satanist), thus it is not for me to defend Christianity; I merely wish to point out the proto Anarchist Communist nature of the Jesus who appears in the Gospels.
Regards
Lucifer
Enemy of God.
The Christian religion did
The Christian religion did not come into being until jesus died, he was a jew, his followers became the Christians. So he could not have believed in the Christain faith while alive.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
There is a long tradition of
There is a long tradition of Christian Anarchism. Consider Dorthy Day and the Catholic Workers.
I think that it is obvious that(the Christian) God would be an authority. I think as anarchists the question we have to ask to determine whether this is compatible is whether God is a legitimate authority. Christian teaching says that God is all good, incapable of evil, and the source of all good. Using this reasoning it can be understood that his authority would be legitimate, especially considering that he knows everything.
Now it can be debated whether he is actually good or not if you believe that he exists as the bible depicts. The point is, one of the premises of Christianity is that God is all knowing, and completely good. This places him in a different category than human beings who are by never all-knowing or the source of all goodness.
In Christianity God also allows people free choice. He could supposedly control all of our minds and force us to obey him, but our free will is allowed. Now, I know many would say the threat of an afterlife is coercion but I have met many Christians that don't see hell as a punishment, just as a place that one would naturally not want to go to upon becoming a Christian.
So with that mindset, I believe it is possible to be a Christian anarchist, and following Jesus' message it would be particularly easy to be any type of libertarian socialist. I think my point is essentially that anarchism opposes not so much authority as illegitimate authority, which is naturally all human authority that can act in any way without being accountable to those it acts for or against.
They are playing with words
They are playing with words and labels. You can't believe in a God, a higher authority and claim to be an anarchist. That is some sort of delusion, there is no room what so ever in anarchist theory for any God, man is the only authority we can deal with, anything else is just fogging the issues. We have to look at the prblems and we have to solve them in conjuction with each other, there is no point in appealing to some airy-fairy being somewhere up in the sky or where ever he/she is supposed to reside.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Proudhon’s ‘God is evil’ vs the Marxist’s ‘God does not exist’
You can't believe in a God, a higher authority and claim to be an anarchist.
Proudhon’s ‘God is evil’ vs the Marxist’s ‘God does not exist’
By Lucifer
Enemy of God.
Dear Radical Glasgow.
I myself am also a Glaswegian (originally) and I do believe in the existance of Capitalist and Religionist Archons (rulers, leaders, tyrants, monarchs, economic slavemasters, usuryists etc.). I do not reject their existance, I simply take an anti-archon position. Similarly with the Capitalist ‘God’ of the Christian state terrorists. I do not take an atheist position, but rather an anti-theist position. In daclaring myself the enemy of God, as with Proudhon, this cannot be taken as an atheist position. By ‘God’ however I do not refer to the old white bearded man sitting on a cloud in the sky. There are many Satanists who are evangelically anti-God, but who are not atheists. For example many Pagans over here in the UK define themselves as political Anarchists, as do some Christians, but even the Christian Anarchists consider themselves the enemy of the God of the Christian state terrorists.
Just as one does not need to reject the existance of George Bush to define oneself as an Anarchist, one merely needs to consider him an ‘enemy,’ similarly with the God of the Christian state terrorists, one does not need to reject the existance of this Capitalist demon, one merely needs to consider him to be an ‘enemy,’ and actively resist his hypnotists (priests) and hypnotised devoteees (victims).
Materialism vs. Spiritualism.
Unfortunately one cannot have physical proof of the non physical; and thus ‘spiritualism’ cannot be proven or disproven, and although materialism can be disproven (see my essay above on materialism), this is matter of the language of quantum physics and not a proof of ‘spiritualism.’
I have never understood materialism / atheism really; I simply have had too many personal subjective experiences which to me are clearly ‘spiritual experiences’; I should say that my spiritualist position is an experiental (in terms of subjective experiences) one as a consequence of my huge psychoactive habit over many years, necromancy (ritual magick), sex magick, etc., and generally many things that are to the devotees of the God of Christian state terrorism defined as ‘Satanism.’ My own spiritualism has much more in common with Alisteir Crowley’s than the spiritualism of the Christian Capitalists however.
In Summary it is my position that many Anarchists and Satanists can and do believe in the existance of the God of the Christian state terrorists, we merely choose to devote our energy to attacking and ridiculing his followers / hypnotic victims.
‘Love is the Law. Love under will,’ and ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law.’
I think you might be confusuing belief in the Christian State terrorist God with submitting one’s will to the will of his Capitalist priesthood and their hypocritical morality and so forth. The God of the Christian state terrorists is simply a ‘higher authority’ whose presence needs to be cast out of the earth, along with his devoteees; believing in the existance of such a Capitalist demon does not necessitate subjecting oneself to the authority of his cultists and their laws.
Clearly opposition to all forms of organised religion (mass hypnosis) is presupposed by all Anarchists, so I would conclude that the Christian Anarchists who have yet to totally abandon abd resist all forms of organised religion (such as the Catholic Worker movement) fall outside of a classical definitin of Anarchism, however ‘atheism’ is just another metaphysical belief; the insistance on atheism/materialism is just another form of authoritarianism, and a rather dangerous one, since if Anarchism becomes confused with atheism, rather than merely anti-religion, it will alienate Anarchists from the masses who are mostly non-atheists .
Lucifer.
Against all the gods and masters of heaven and earth (while not denying their existance).
No mercy on they who deserve none.
http://www.myspace.com/luciferhorusmithras
God?
I've thought about this a lot. The problem I think comes when considering 'God', spirituality, etc. as something separate from ourselves. A higher dimensional reality than the 4-D one we normally inhabit is probably the unseen background of what we see around us. And it is constantly giving birth to this universe. I can't call it "God". It is not higher than us - in the sense that a King is 'higher' than us. It is us, but an us we rarely encounter. It is, if you like, the oneness of everything. Christianity and indeed all the Religions of the Book are ill-adapted to such an idea. Hinduism gets closer, especially in its more philosophical aspects. The point is that this 'God' is spread out; there's nothing hierarchical here, each part is the equal - if not the same - as each other part. None are priveleged in relation to either the whole or to other parts. There's no King or Slaveowner here. Couldn't we call it an anarchist 'God', that is a 'God' who inhabits us all equally. I don't think this calls for any religion. Religion, as Fredy Perlman said,
is a domesticated degeneration of this spiritual impulse. This degeneration occured when spirituality itself migrated from the forests and wide open spaces - ie. the Wilderness - to the restricted precincts of the temple, and priesthoods emerged. The 'God' I'm talking about is more akin to The Great Spirit of the Native Americans than God the Father, Jehovah or Allah. We don't have to accept the Materialist philosophy any more than the Idealist. They are both aspects of Dualism which attempt to suppress the other aspect. Something more along the lines of Quantum Mechanics' Wave/Particle duality is more I think to the point. Anyway, they're just my thoughts on this subject. I don't pretend to have all the answers.
I'm glad you don't pretend
I'm glad you don't pretend to have all the answers, it is those who do that worry me.
ann arky www.radicalglasgow.me.uk
Deism and anaimism
Yes I would think that 'all' Anarchists would have a problem with the concept of God as the transcendent (above us) homophobic, infanticidal, genocidal, sexually repressed, Capitalist, omnipotent father God of the Anglo-American Christian state terrorists (i.e., Bush and Windsor's God) and of the Catholic Church and the Christian Right.
It is a hideous God, but then there are other ways to consider God, Einstein's God of physics and so forth, and then as you point out, the 'Great Spirit' of animist Indians and the Hindu 'Brahman' who is actually 'Om' or everything or totally immanent (within physics).
A few things can be said about the Christian God; firstly 'He (the Christian God is at least two thirds male)' is omnipotent (all powerful), and further he is some kind of transcendent (outside of our existence). metaphysical (above physics as opposed to the animist / Deist position of 'within physics), unknowable mystery on the one hand and on the other hand he is 'unchanging' and an actual 'man' who lives in the spiritual world (afterlife / ancestral world) and whom Christians suppose they can sit and eat with and converse with in the afterlife; further He is an intercessory being (whom being omnipotent can intercede in the affairs of humanity and create miracles etc.) who has the power to incarnate on earth and to directly speak to humanity as fully human, and allegedly he will do so at the 'Second Coming,' where he will also 'rapture' the Capitalists and religious hypocrites' who believe in him; however the last time he incarnated, this 'unchanging' God (of rather one Third of the Christian God) appeared as a Communist / anti-propertyist / anti-monetarist individual who built no temples / churches and who seemed to spend his time attacking the Capitalists and established religionists of his age for their hypocrisy (which begs the question of why, if he is unchanging he would have anything other than wrath for he Christians today), and who despite being all-powerful, was subjected to constant abuse, persecuted by the religionists and elites of his age, brutally tortured (flagellated), murdered and with his last breath, allegedly considered himself to be forsaken by God (though if Jesus is God, how he can forsake himself I am not sure).
All this is, in my judgement a tortuous theological argument which makes very little sense to human reason and obviously I reject this disctator God and his cultists and I reject the Christian Christ with all my heart.
I personally come from a background where 'spirituality' and theism are defined more in Kabbalistic, neo-Pagan, Satanist, experiential (psychoactive experiences) terms.
The Kabbalistic God, which seems to me to be more in accord with Jesus' God, and this is a God who incarnates in we who are all created in Her divine image, male and female and who is not omnipotent (If we have free will, God cannot be omnipotent, you can only have one or the other).
Thus it is only be the power of our true will (thelema), unchained by all the laws of the nations and religionists of the Aeons that we can hope in time to liberate humanity from those people who by the power of Capital and organised religion have enslaved humanity.
Only with the utter defeat of the Christian state terrorists (the Capitalists and Religious hypocrites) in apocalyptic war, can the 1000 year agricultural revolution begin, and only then is their any possibility of swords to ploughshares and peace on earth. To dispute this of course is blasphemy.
Lucifer
My sacred and true will be done on earth as it is heaven.
Anarchists and authority
I think the idea that anarchists (again the homogenized whole many people think actually exists!) are against "authority" as a totalizing concept is just careless and it shows a spun out dead-end thread of anarchist (blogging mostly). To argue against religion and anarchism coexisting based on the idea that God is an authority and thus incongruous with anarchism is simply weak and AGAIN shows a real lack of appreciation for how people define "god" for themselves. Once you take 1/2 a second to scratch below the mainstream conventional understandings of God (bearded MALE in the sky) and touch on any mystic tradition, you will see that God is often defined (to the extent that people are willing to do so) as something far less anthropomorphic and much more like weather. Weather has authority over you. To the person who commented that anarchism puts authority solely in "man" [sic] I feel like that's a really slippery slope. Rain has an authority over you. Death has an authority over you. Dogs have an authority over you. A gorilla has authority over you to the extent that I define authority as the ability to facilitate an experience for you (good or bad). Authority as a grand super narrative concept is A. impossible to trap, and B. not really the enemy. (I'm purposefully using a broad and less charged definition of "authority" here).
I can be an authority on fixing a rear flat on my bike while my friend can be an authority on urban foraging. I don't have to feel threatened by this. Sometimes my sexual partner is QUITE an authority over me in the bed o' fun! The only issue is when the design of our relationship (the way we ARE towards one another) is legislated by either a person or State who emposes a law on us. The legislated and fixed authority of the human over another human is what's at issue here. Not that someone believes there are forces greater than humanity and calls these manifestations "god."
Come on.. we can do better.
MHM
GOD.
authority "ON" authority "OVER" or the all powerful, all seeing, all knowing, authority of a "GOD".
These type of questions...
These questions are more often than not red herrings. You're basically asking "What can a person be?" which always leads to any number of so-called "free thinkers" telling people what they can and can not *be.* It makes for really ugly discussion, since there's really no way to *answer* this question without confining people to scripted roles and identities:
A person can't be a Christian and an anarchist because belief in Jesus means (this) and belief in anarchism means (that).
It's bogus, never leads to bridge-building, and ALWAYS ends with people having to defend *who they are* to someone else trying to tell them who they should be. And it doesn't matter. A person's chosen identity is their own and has no baring on another person. What matters is how that person relates to and treats other human beings--what that person wants for another.
All the rest is got-nothing-better-to-do-'cause-the-opposition-is-an-abstract-monolith-that-I-can't-really-percieve-and-subvert-so-I-simply-undercut-comrades-all-around-me- name calling...
Arguing about what Christiany does or means or how it treats women or animals is just poor critique and shows a real lack of scope of the Christian tradition (or any other religious tradition for that matter). As usual, it wrongly assumes a homogenous conglomerate of practitioners, which is the exact same mentality used by any media outlet you're interested in looking at and how they manufacture "enemies" and dissent.
A much more interetsing question for me is how can self-proclaimed anarchists work with self-proclaimed Christians towards stateless societies.
But a MUCH more interesting non-question would be to simply show where people are already doing that.
ManyHillsMassive
The Christian religion
The Christian religion exists in the real world, it has dynamics that interact with our lives, to wear the label is an acceptance of those dynamics, it is a power structure and a hierarchical system. Anarchism is neither a power structure nor a hierarchical system. Cheese is not chalk and chalk is not cheese no matter how we try to claim they are similar..