by ALEXANDRE CHRISTOYANNOUPOULOS
In The Kingdom of God is Within You, Leo Tolstoy wrote that: “Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified.”[1] This illustrates the main idea behind Christian anarchism, which is that when it comes to politics, “anarchism” is what follows (or is supposed to follow) from “Christianity”. “Anarchism” here can mean, for example, a denunciation of the state (because through it we are violent, we commit idolatry, and so on), the envisioning of a stateless society, and/or the enacting of an inclusive, bottom-up kind of community life. And “Christianity” can be understood, for example, in the very rationalistic way Leo Tolstoy interprets it, through the Catholic framework Dorothy Day approaches it, or through the various Protestant eyes of people like Jacques Ellul, Vernard Eller, Dave Andrews or Michael Elliott. There can therefore be many ways “Christianity” is interpreted, and equally there are many facets to this “anarchism”. But one way or the other, Christian anarchists hold the view that, properly understood, what Jesus implicitly calls us to in today’s political sphere is some form of anarchism.
There are many scriptures from the New Testament which provide the foundation for such a view, and I can only mention the main ones here (I’ve tried to cover all those commented on by Christian anarchists in my book). Arguably, all those passages that touch on politics point to facets of anarchism. The most famous must be the Sermon on the Mount, but much of its content is repeated in the many passages in which Jesus, James, Peter or Paul talk of forgiveness, of being servants or of not judging one another – the state does not do that (or rather we don’t do that through it), and if we did it then the state would anyway become redundant. There is also the third temptation in the desert, a prety clear condemnation of state idolatry. Or the Temple Cleansing, where Jesus’ direct action clearly implies a denunciation of the concentration and abuses of religious, political and economic power (and most Christian anarchists insist the action was nonviolent, by the way). Then there are all the bitter criticisms of the Pharisees as hypocrites in their application of divine law, criticisms that don’t seem that inapplicable to some church authorities today. Jesus’ arrest and trial also exemplify his attitude with respect to political authorities, and his crucifixion embodies both his condemnation of state violence and his forgiving alternative to overcome it. Then there is the Book of Acts, the many Epistles, and of course the Apocalypse – all of which one can find convincing Christian anarchist exegeses on. In other words, according to quite a few passages in the New Testament, Jesus’ teaching and example tend towards anarchism broadly defined.
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