Old Testament Jacques Ellul, a French philosopher and Christian anarchist, notes that the final verse of the
Book of Judges (
Judges 21:25) states that there was no king in Israel and that "everyone did as they saw fit." Subsequently, as recorded in the first
Book of Samuel (
1 Samuel 8) the
people of Israel wanted a king "so as to be like other nations." The Australian Christian anarchist
Dave Andrews believes that the Israelites lived in a “decentralized federation of tribes.” Ellul describes that when important decisions were made, a popular assembly was held, which had the final say. Christian anarchists claim that until
Samuel the Israelites had neither king nor central government, with God as the sole authority. The Israelites had no taxes or rent and there was equal access to basic resources. Israel's rallying cry was "We have no king but Yahweh." The American anarchist
Peter Gelderloos sees a strong decentralization during the monarchy, seeing the
Kingdom of Israel not as a state and that its intervention was minimal, dedicated only to the battlefield and the construction of some temple. God declared that the people had rejected him as their king. He warned that a human king would lead to
militarism,
conscription and punitive
taxation, and that their pleas for mercy from the king's demands would go unanswered.
Samuel passed on God's warning to the Israelites but they still demanded a king, and
Saul became their ruler. Much of the subsequent
Old Testament chronicles the Israelites trying to live with this decision.
New Testament 's depiction of the
Sermon on the Mount More than any other Bible source, the
Sermon on the Mount is considered the basis for Christian anarchism. Jesus refuses the temptation, choosing to serve God instead, implying that Jesus is aware of the corrupting nature of Earthly power.
Christian eschatology and various Christian anarchists, such as
Jacques Ellul, have identified the state and
political power as the
Beast in the
Book of Revelation.
Friedrich Nietzsche and Frank Seaver Billings criticize Christianity and anarchism by arguing that they are the same thing.
Early Church '', 1917 political cartoon by socialist cartoonist
Art Young According to Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, several of the
Church Fathers' writings suggest anarchism as God's ideal. The first Christians opposed the primacy of the state: "We must obey God as ruler rather than men" (
Acts 4:19, 5:29,
1 Corinthians 6:1-6); "Stripping the governments and the authorities bare, he exhibited them in open public as conquered, leading them in a triumphal procession by means of it." (
Colossians 2:15). Also, some early Christian communities appear to have practised
anarchist communism, such as the
Jerusalem group described in
Acts, who shared their money and labour equally and fairly among the members. Roman Montero claims that using an anthropological framework, such as that of the anarchist David Graeber, one can plausibly reconstruct the communism of the early Christian communities and that the practices were widespread, long-lasting, and substantial. Christian anarchists, such as Kevin Craig, insist that the communities were centred on true love and care for one another, rather than
liturgy. They also allege the reason
early Christians were persecuted was not that they worshipped Jesus Christ, but that they refused to worship human
idols claiming divine status (see
Imperial cult). Since they refused to worship the
Roman Emperor, they refused to swear any
oath of allegiance to the
Roman Empire. In his introduction to a translation of the
Sayings of the Desert Fathers,
Thomas Merton describes the early
monastics as "in a certain sense 'anarchists,' and it will do no harm to think of them in that light. They were men who did not believe in letting themselves be passively guided and ruled by a decadent state, and who believed that there was a way of getting along without slavish dependence on accepted, conventional values....The society they sought was one where all men were truly equal, where the only authority under God was the charismatic authority of wisdom, experience and love. Of course, they acknowledged the benevolent, hierarchical authority of their bishops: but the bishops were far away and said little about what went on in the desert until the great Origenist conflict at the end of the fourth century."
Conversion of the Roman Empire For Christian anarchists, the moment that epitomised the
degeneration of Christianity was the conversion of
Emperor Constantine after his victory at the
Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312. Christianity was then legalized under the
Edict of Milan in 313, which hastened the
Church's transformation from a humble bottom-up
sect to an authoritarian
top-down organization. Christian anarchists point out that marked the beginning of the "
Constantinian shift" in which Christianity gradually came to be identified with the will of the ruling elite by becoming the
state church of the Roman Empire and in some cases (such as the
Crusades,
Inquisition, and the
French Wars of Religion) a religious justification for violence. For the anarchist historian
George Woodcock, "Although
(Pierre Joseph) Proudhon was the first writer to call himself an anarchist, at least two predecessors outlined systems that contain all the basic elements of anarchism. The first was
Gerrard Winstanley (1609–1676), a linen draper who led the small movement of the Diggers during the Commonwealth. Winstanley and his followers protested in the name of a radical Christianity against the economic distress that followed the
Civil War and against the inequality that the grandees of the New Model Army seemed intent on preserving. In 1649–1650, the Diggers squatted on stretches of common land in southern England and attempted to set up communities based on work on the land and the sharing of goods. The communities failed following a crackdown by the English authorities, but a series of pamphlets by Winstanley survived, of which
The New Law of Righteousness (1649) was the most important. Advocating a rational Christianity, Winstanley equated Christ with 'the universal liberty' and declared the universally corrupting nature of authority. He saw 'an equal privilege to share in the blessing of liberty' and detected an intimate link between the institution of property and the lack of freedom." For
Murray Bookchin, "In the modern world, anarchism first appeared as a movement of the peasantry and yeomanry against declining feudal institutions. In Germany its foremost spokesman during the Peasant Wars was
Thomas Müntzer; in England, Gerrard Winstanley, a leading participant in the Digger movement. The concepts held by Müntzer and Winstanley were superbly attuned to the needs of their time – a historical period when the majority of the population lived in the countryside and when the most militant revolutionary forces came from an agrarian world. It would be painfully academic to argue whether Müntzer and Winstanley could have achieved their ideals. What is of real importance is that they spoke to their time; their anarchist concepts followed naturally from the rural society that furnished the bands of the peasant armies in Germany and the New Model in England."
Modern era wrote the book
The Kingdom of God Is Within You, which is considered an important Christian anarchist text. The 19th-century Christian abolitionists
Adin Ballou and
William Lloyd Garrison were critical of all human governments and believed that they would be eventually supplanted by a new order in which individuals are guided solely by their love for God. Ballou and Garrison advocated
Christian nonresistance to evil, as they saw Christ as the embodiment of "passive nonresistance" or nonviolent praxis against the state. They both condemned violence against southern slave owners and advocated instead for
moral suasion or consistent rebukes against the institution of slavery in efforts to persuade racist southerns and indifferent northerners to the abolitionist' cause. At the outbreak of the
Civil War, however, Garrison later embraced the armed struggle for black liberation and the
Lincoln administration. Ballou remained a lifelong pacifist and condemned the Civil War for fear of the eventual retaliation by white southerns on freed black Americans. Ballou's and Garrison's writings heavily influenced
Leo Tolstoy, who was inspired by their lifelong commitment to abolitionism. Tolstoy wrote extensively on his burgeoning Christian anarchist principles in nonfiction books like
The Kingdom of God is Within You, which is considered a key Christian anarchist text. Tolstoy sought to separate
Russian Orthodox Christianity, which was merged with the
state, from what he believed was the true message of Jesus as contained in the Gospels, specifically in the
Sermon on the Mount. He took the viewpoint that all governments that wage war and churches that in turn support those governments, are an affront to the Christian principles of
nonviolence. Although Tolstoy never actually used the term "Christian anarchism" in
The Kingdom of God Is Within You, reviews of the book after its publication in 1894 appear to have coined the term.
Thomas J. Hagerty, a Marxist Catholic priest turned oculist, was a primary author of the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) Preamble ("an injury to one is an injury to all"). IWW members included Christian anarchists like
Dorothy Day and
Ammon Hennacy.
Dorothy Day was a journalist turned social activist who became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor. Alongside
Peter Maurin, she founded the
Catholic Worker Movement in 1933, which espoused nonviolence and hospitality for the impoverished and the downtrodden. Day was declared
Servant of God when a cause for sainthood was opened for her by Pope
John Paul II. Day's
distributist economic views are very similar to
Proudhon's
mutualism by which she was influenced. Day also named the phrase "precarious work" based on the former anarchocommunist
Léonce Crenier's
embrace of poverty. Peter Maurin's vision to transform the
social order consisted of establishing urban
houses of hospitality to care for the destitute, rural farming communities to teach city dwellers
agrarianism and encourage a movement
back to the land, and
roundtable discussions in community centres to clarify thought and initiate action.
Simone Weil was a French philosopher who was very early animated by a great compassion for the exploited. She was first a socialist and then an anarchist. In 1930s, she converted to "love of Christ." During her experience, she explains that she suddenly felt that Christianity was the religion of the slaves and that she, like other slaves, could not resist adhering to it. She is considered a "Christian mystic" and an "anarchist Christian." == Anarchist biblical views and practices ==