Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 14 2004 @ 06:30 PM CDT

This reminds me of the contortions some marxists go through to put the best possible spin on the founder of their church. Truth be told , there were thousands of better and clearer thinkers than christ living hundreds of years earlier in Greece and the real roots of conscious anarchism lie there as well as in the 10\'s of thousands of years we evolved without a state at all.
Most of human hirstory.
A useful basic resource for the narrative of anarchism as we know it is a book called , \' The dream of reason\' Amazon , that throws light on this \' Ariadne\'s thread\'
Christianity could probably claim loose kinship with anarchism for a few hundred years before the first Xtian emperor began slicing off the hands of gamblers in Constantinople - the lords army of Uganda keeps a xtian tradition of butchery alive today as we speak.
To hell with xtianity - it has nothing to do with us today. Like Hitler they should follow their leader. Mel Gibson has kindly shown them the way.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 14 2004 @ 09:09 PM CDT

This essay fails to address the authoritarian nature of the (imaginary) relationship between God the Father up in Heaven and his abject slaves down here upon the earth He created.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 14 2004 @ 10:37 PM CDT

It also has sinister echos in the views expressed by one Adolph Hitler...

This is an interesting summary under the heading, \'Was Hitler a Christian?\'.

http://kevin.davnet.org/essays/hitler.html

The article attempts to show that he was not. It is a strange question to ask, in my view, but I do not think it is answered in the document. In fact, I regard the question as unanswerable. However, the document remains very useful.

A tightly reasoned document taking an opposing view can be found at...

http://www.nobeliefs.com/HitlerSources.htm

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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, September 14 2004 @ 10:47 PM CDT

ive said this before. and ill say it again, its naive to adopt a turn of the century 100% anti-religious stance in 2004 and beyond. i am an athiest, but people who i know, people i wish to organize working families etc have some relgious beliefs. if you take such a hard line stance you may as well not try and organize people of colour and the working class in general. the classical anarchist stance against the church was reasonable before, good luck making it a platform today. that doesnt mean you shoudlnt despise organized religion, or even established churches, but dont start crying when you wonder why people wont join our ideal athiest/anarchist club.
why waste your time in an actual arguement with workers about abstract symbolic arguements against the heiarchy of God. God doesnt exist, fuck him, worry about organzied religion and its effects on us all in the real world. alienating people simply on their beliefs wont help us.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 06:43 AM CDT

I admit that the christian anarchist lit has focused more on christian antistatism than christian anarchism per se: It condemns state rule but does not address divine rule. I believe christian anarchism can and must present a different idea of God.

Jesus describes God as \'[i]abba[/i]\' \'daddy\' not as \'[i]adonai[/i]\' \'leader\' and certainly not as \'[i]bel[/i]\' \'ruler\' (= Punic & Canaanite \'[i]Baal[/i]\').

I agree that after Constantine the [i]official[/i] churches became tools of the state. I don\'t agree that this condemns the [i]other[/i] churches. The persecutions cetainly continued: the Byzantines [i]crucified[/i] dissident preachers into the 530s.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 07:37 AM CDT

This idea of a movement called Christian Anarchism is stupid and ridiculous. It reminds me of my feminist mom who went through the bible and crossed out every instance of \"Him\" and wrote \"Her\" over it. I asked why she did not just move to a religion that included women in their religious hierarchy. She said she had invested too much in the Jesus thing to give it up now...Okay. Whatever. Keep fighting with your church and trying to get \"She\" into bibles...but there is a whole pagan movement that would let her have female pronouns without fights...This idea of mixing Christianity with Anarchy is purely semantical. It is word games. There can be no legitimate Christian Anarchy movement in my opinion. That is like \"The KKK Against Racism\"...it is ridiculous.

The very *RACIST* nature of the bible and Christianity is enough for me. That alone says the opposite of anarchy to me. Until they quit portraying this guy out of the Middle East, Jesus, as white, I am not cool with the whole thing. Until Christianity PAYS BACK all the cultures it has raped and pillaged in its efforts to CONQUER and KILL native peoples, there can be no trusting Christians for me. And I need an explanation as to WHY CHRISTIANS NEED TO KILL NATIVE CULTURES for their religious existance. From Brazil, to Africa, to Afghanistan, to Texas, we see Christianity used as a banner for racist destruction of native culture.

Additionally, the bible is used throughout the world to oppress women. From the Pope trying to deny birth control and abortions to women, to the use of a male pronoun for god, to the whole women should never enjoy sex and should be in pain during birth to pay back for getting Adam to eat the apple or whatever the hell the myth in Genesis is, it is all borne of oppressing women. If you look in the book of Genesis and count the male names, it is this male begat that male who begat another male, as if the women never existed. And supposedly there is no one on earth but adam and eve, then they make two sons, then somehow more kids happen. So did Eve have sex with her two sons? So Christians are promoting incest for procreation or? What is the moral of that story?

I feel this Iraq war IS a race war. I feel it is a religious war. Our fearless leader GWBush swells with pride under the Christian banner. I understand that in some cultures that things like Christianity are part of the community fabric, part of a social heritage and part of local art, music, etc. But those cultures are also simultaneously oppressed most often by those calling themselves Christians. So there are some serious problems here...

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 08:30 AM CDT

we all know the child-critiques of the bible and they are fun to point out, but at some point there\'s a grown up version (which most christians aren\'t even interested in, but still exists nonetheless), erich fromm has written some great stuff in books like \"the dogma of christ\" and \"you shall be as gods - a radical interpretation of the old testament\" that are definitely worth checking out...

too often it seems we fall into the trap of the fundamentalists and essentially agree with them that their reading of the bible is the only way,

its funny because the quote at the top comes from a christian challenging everyone, but most of all other christians, as the what the true meaning of christianity is,

and i totally agree with Mexican, try preaching atheism to \"the average person\" and see how far it gets you, in fact the reason that so many working class people are so galvanized by the right is that they feel that their religion and the values that stem from it are under attack by atheists trying to rid the country of christianity,

and i\'m sorry but paganism appeals to a very small activist/hippy/etc crowd, if thats what you\'re into that\'s totally cool but most people i would say think its fucking lame...

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 09:11 AM CDT

thanks to Mexican and unnamed for giving us some reality on this question. It\'s like considering everyday people have false consciousness if they don\'t eat tofu burgers. People approach the conclusions of anarchism through their own philosophies of life and social relations. In a real movement situation, even if we hope anarchism will be influential, you certainly aren\'t gonna see hundreds of thousands of anarchist zombies chanting no gods no masters good nite. And that\'s a good thing from my perspective because that certainly isn\'t my culture. People should engage religious thinking and and draw out the libertarian themes. It\'s been done all the time by others in Islam, Hinduism, Christianity etc., why shouldn\'t anarchists, especially those who think of themselves as religious or sympathetic? Most anarchist organizing isn\'t gonna do this. but that\'s why there are a lot of different anarchist orientations.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 10:37 AM CDT

Christianity and anarchism is not a new thing. There are certainly organizations and individuals who were anarchist/anarchistic. Here\'s just a few examples.

Father Haggerty, an ordained minister who was a founding member of the IWW.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_J_Haggerty

The Doukhobors, a radical Christian sect exiled to Canada (Saskatchewan and British Columbia) that performed nude protests against the Church and the State.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doukhobors

The Catholic Worker Movement, provided houses of hospitality for homeless people, including the Joe Hill House in Salt Lake City run by Catholic Anarchist Ammon Hannacy. Also at one point, one of the largest anarchist/anarchistic organizations in the U.S. http://catholicworker.org/

As an atheist and an anarchist, I agree with the folks above who have pointed out that alienating religious working class people, people of colour, etc. will do nothing to further the cause of anarchist organizing, and it is useful to draw out libertarian elements and themes within various religious traditions. Being elitist and purist will get us nowhere.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 10:56 AM CDT

For the record, I no longer limit myself to the spiritual title \"Christian.\" For a while, I did consider myself a Christian Anarchist, and in all honesty have only given up the title \"Christian\" because most people can\'t get past the \"Christianity\" of \"the Church.\"

It\'s like arguing the whole \"he\'s a cracker, not a hacker; that\'s not what hacking really is about\" deal. Most people have made up their minds what the term means, and no matter how you explain what you mean, if you use the term, they\'ll wig out and refuse to hear anything that contradicts their pre-determined understanding. But, occasionally it is good to point out the limitations and flaws in the labelling and packaging.

\"Everybody\" knows that \"Christian Anarchism is stupid and ridiculous\" by default, so we shouldn\'t bother thinking beyond that. \"Everybody\" also knows that anarchists just like to fuck shit up, and want the freedom to do all that is vile in this world, knowing that nobody will be there to stop them. So there\'s no point in thinking beyond that.

Wait, when I put it that way, it just sounds stupid.

I know from my own experience that when I began to really study the Bible, to analyze it and look at it in context, I found an extremely anarchistic pattern. Contrary to what I\'m sure many would think possible, it was my biblical studies that lead me to anarchism in the first place. Orthodox \"Christianity\" is fucked up, and much has been done in the name of Christ in order to oppress, murder, enslave, etc.

Of course, all we have to do is read a couple of stories on this news kiosk and we can see that the same is done in the name of freedom, liberty, truth and justice. If we can spare the time to point out the inherent contradictions of the Church of Freedom and Democracy and their actions versus the concepts and ideals they supposedly stand for, then why is it so stupid to do the same regarding the Church of Christianty?

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 12:04 PM CDT

Not to offend you Kirsten, but:

The bible makes it fairly clear that Jesus was Palestinian. For obvious reasons, medieval European painters showed Jesus like most people they met: \'White\'. This made sense in its time, with people showing a \'White\' Jesus in Italy or a \'Black\' Jesus in Ethiopia. That some churches are racist, and other churches are tradition-bound to the point they forget the bible, says everything about the [i]corruption[/i] of Christianity and nothing about any original Christianity.

The athiest-anarchist, pagan-anarchist, etc. critiques of Christianity have their merits. But only the Christian-anarchist critique of Christianity can really say: \"Christianity isn\'t Christianity!\" church is church and Jesus is Jesus and ...

The \'gendered\' pronouns have everything to do with Indo-European linguistics and nothing to do with theology. Replacing every \'He\' with \'She\' or even \'It\' makes perfect sense. The Pope\'s no-birth-control policies don\'t come from the bible but come from the combination of Augustine (who, as part of his doctrine of inherited original sin, argues that the reproductive act creates the soul) with medieval metaphysics.

Now why should I become a pagan or an athiest? I believe Christianity.

I could theoretically change [i]what I believe[/i] over arguments, but I cannot change what I believe over convenience or representation of X Y or Z or anything but a solid argument. Or a vision, that would do.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 04:42 PM CDT

I\'m in an ongoing spiritual journey and I can get behind the whole idea that a lot of people are going to seek out liberatory tendencies in their religious beliefs, but I think anarchists who are atheists have every right to be a little touchy about this. Religion in general has been used to subjigate people and in the west it has been the Christian church that has been steam rolling it.

It is that subtle sense that \"hey, christian anarchism, sounds nice, but .....\" The fact of the matter is the bible is filled with authoritarianism and a good bit of it is ordained by Yaweh in the old testament and in the new testament this bullying is transformed by threats concerning the afterlife.

Let me put it this way, I\'ll feel a lot better when all the theocrats like Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell give up their war agains gays, abortion and fucking fun, give away all their wealth and get with the program. while you\'re at it, visit the pope and see if he\'s interested in these ideas.....see spiritualy is cool, but the organized christian church, for the most part, is a brainwashing facsist fuck fest and people should continue to be critical of it.

Solidarity,
Wart

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, September 15 2004 @ 04:49 PM CDT

Furthermore St. Francis of Assissi\'s recognition of tthe interconnectedness of all things has been born out by the research of Cleve Backster in his work with lie detectors on plants. While it fails repeatability in the scientific method (the plants go into a shock when tortured and seem to know when torture is coming). Throwing any variant of anarchism away without investigating it for revolutionary praxis and relevance seems immature and unintelligent.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 16 2004 @ 08:09 AM CDT

Before shit-talking Christianity, it might be useful to actually reflect on history, and realize that Christianity is not one thing but many things open to differing interpretations.

While finding it useless myself, it has often provided a language used by various revolutionaries to challenge the status quo, from St. Francis to Father Berrigan.

The book \"Many Headed Hydra\" by Linebaugh and Rediker has many examples of revolutionary Christianity. Antinomianism accords very much with anarchism. Mike Davis also had an article in the New Left Review of the anticapitalist nature of many evangelical churches in the Latin American megaslums a few months back.

Anarchists talk about using all available tools. Christian language used a certain way might just be another tool.

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Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, September 16 2004 @ 08:28 AM CDT

We do recognize that anarcho-communism and state communism are two different things. There are peripheral similarities (class struggle, opposition to capitalism, opposition to private ownership of the means of production, etc.) and there are deep differences (community vs. bureaucratic decisions, voluntary vs. coerced participation, etc.).

So why can\'t we recognize that anarchist Christianity and state Christiandom are two different things? Even Swift and Kierkegaard, neither noted for anarchist views, observed the contrast between the early church and the established church. (As you might guess, Swift suggested a persecution would revive Christianity).

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Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, September 17 2004 @ 01:30 AM CDT

many anarchists have an attitude towards religion that\'s just frankly intolerable in my opinion. it\'s like some kind of rationalist imperialism. it\'s a secular vision of the world that wants to impose itself on everyone just the way certain fundamentalist interpretations of religion do.

look: people who want power will use whatever they can to get it. the fact that traditionally, people have been very successful at achieving and maintaining power by using a religious discourse doesn\'t say anything *fundamental* about that discourse, except this: it\'s EFFECTIVE IN CONVINCING PEOPLE. which is more than i can say for \"no gods no masters\".

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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, October 27 2004 @ 09:37 AM CDT

\"\"Everybody\" knows that \"Christian Anarchism is stupid and ridiculous\" by default, so we shouldn\'t bother thinking beyond that. \"Everybody\" also knows that anarchists just like to fuck shit up, and want the freedom to do all that is vile in this world, knowing that nobody will be there to stop them. So there\'s no point in thinking beyond that. \"

Bravo.

None of the statements made in this thread against Christianity (and claiming it\'s racist) cite any sources in the Bible and just rely on hearsay. Interesting.

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