Was Jesus an anarchist?

Question

Is anarchy compatible with any religion?

Comments

What does religion mean to you? Does it differ from spirituality? Is anything unscientific religious?

Answer 1

Christian anarchists, who are fairly significant branch of the anarchist family even if they never get invited to the reunions, say yes, and they have the scripture to prove it. Citing that book, though, with all of the other things it endorses, to advance a libertarian philosophy strikes me as unjustifiable.

Then again, before they went all pacifist the anabaptists were more anarchist, in my book, than many who have been granted that title. The ideas of equality and justice are flirted with in the New Testament, but in the 16th century the anabaptists advanced by sword and fire the hererodox idea that God's Kingdom should be brought to earth, and set about offing nobles and priests and restoring the commons.

Nonetheless, the majority reading of "Give to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's" finds in Jesus a challenge to, but not a negation of, authority, and thus, not anarchy.

Answer 2

Jesus was not an anarchist, but I don't exclude the reality that some people have reached anarchist conclusions by following his (supposed) teachings, even if that anarchism doesn't quite look like mine.

As far as other religions, there are people who have done the same with other religions. In particular Buddhism lends itself nicely to some aspects of anarchist thought. The danger comes when people actually believe that Buddha was more than just human (that enlightenment was somehow holy), or that Jesus was the son of god more than anyone else might be (if we were to accept the existence of said god).

That is where the rub comes. If people are accepting the dictates of some god over their own desires, they are still enslaved. There is something to be said here about religion versus spirituality, but I don't have the energy in me right now, and I reject both religion and spirituality, so I might not be the best person for the job anyway.

Comments

edited for punctuation and readability.

Answer 3

I would say 'no,' he is not because he advocated submission to authority (i.e. God).

Comments

not all christians are about the submission, and when you get into things like defining god as in all of us (a not un-common idea for some kinds of christianity), then your point is a bit simplistic.
i mean, i hate christianity more than most people, but the answer to this question is a bit more involved than you're allowing for.

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Jesus Christ preached turning the other cheek, loving your neighbor as yourself. He was a man who said "...not as I will, but as you will" during his final prayer to God before his crucifixion. Christian philosophy obviously extols submission of individual desire and will. It teaches that humans are sinful and must rid themselves of the proclivities of the flesh. A Christian is someone who follows Christ's example and his teachings. So, a Christian is submissive by definition. (Read John 3:30.)

Even if god is "in all of us," he still gets to sit behind the steering wheel. I'm sure there are theists out there who think that they--along with the rest of creation, or at the very least, humanity--are god or part of god. (Meher Baba preached this and other spiritualists have too.) But if one is a Christian, they must submit to that personal piece or representation of God--Christ incarnate. To eschew submission to him and his teachings is to cease being a Christian.

To put the onus back on you: Explain to me how anyone could legitimately call themselves a Christian without submitting to God's will.

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eh, matthew fox and those type of people talk about Other takes on christianity that have been de-emphasized since aquinas (i think it's aquinas, maybe some other "a" name)... tendencies that are not body- or woman-hating...
and i know that without having done much research or really giving much of a shit.
your examples of what jesus said can be interpreted to be "submission of desire/will", or they can be interpreted as promoting the ability not to be at the whim of our tempers...
and so on.
but i am not defending christianity any more. hate on it all you want, by all means. i just think that something that covers so much territory, and is so significant to so many people, is worth understanding a bit better than the shallow response you seem to be giving.

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The quote you gave of Jesus in the garden should make it obvious. "Not my will, but yours." Who is Jesus talking to here? God? But Jesus is God, there is only one God in Christianity, not two or three. So in submitting to God's will Jesus is submitting to his own will.

It's the same for the rest of us.

When the divine became man, man became divine. This is not a fringe theology, but the heart of Christianity. It's a mythological way of saying something which was of course true long before Jesus's birth. Most simply, it can just mean that we're capable of righteousness, like God. The myth of the Garden of Eden is also about the same thing. In it humans gained the divine knowlede right and wrong at the cost of our animal simplicity and happiness. Now, certainly the will to do right comes along witht the knowledge of it and that is God's will.

So God's will is your will and your will is God's will. There's no distinction on which to base the kind of submission you're talking about. Of course, it's silly to say that an individual has a single unified will. In reality, we have many will's pulling is in different directions and that's where the submission comes in. Submit to righteousness, which is the will of God that is within you.

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Sweater Fish:

This all sounds very nice, but you're ignoring the obvious. At some point, every Christian arrives at a crossroads. Every time he sins, he is consciously separating himself from the God within him. Or, put another way, he is acting on non-religious desires instead of religious ones. This duality is inescapable. All religion is built upon the same premise: that there are two sides to man, the carnal and the spiritual; and that man the carnal animal is somehow wounded, somehow imperfect or sinful; and that he must therefore suppress this side of himself if he is to attain spiritual enlightenment, which is the predominance of the God-will of which you speak.

The problem is that man cannot go against his nature anymore than he can fly. One must admit that they have 'given into the flesh' to even become a Christian in the first place. And this 'sinful' impulse is the heart of anarchy because it is a rebellion against any and every restriction. It's a rebellion against forms, including the "form" (straight-jacket really) of the God-will.

You made my point when you wrote: "Of course, it's silly to say than an individual has a single unified will. In reality, we have many will's pulling is [sic] in different directions and that's where the submission comes in. Submit to righteousness, which is the will of God that is within you."

Listen to yourself: What word did you just use there at the end of your comments? 'Submit.' Think about it: if the name of the spiritual will is "God's will" and not "Sweater Fish's will," then no matter where it is housed--whether or not it even registers in time--that will is not your own. It is an ought generator. A demander. A boss. A ruler. A master.

The only thing you have succeeded in proving is that, conceived a certain way, religion is about submitting yourself to an idea (or 'ideal') rather than a person or a god. So be it. That's still submission and submission is decidedly opposed to anarchy.

Anarchy is Satanic. It is anti-religious. To my mind, anarchists who embrace religion are either deluding themselves or were never really anarchists in the first place. Anarchy is adversarial. It represents the rejection of structure and normality. God and religion, on the other hand, in the words of Satanist Blanche Barton: "generally [represent] conventionality, predictability, the safety of normality, the comfort of the larger group and the rewards of staying within the bounds of propriety."

Answer 4

Jesus never existed as a real person, but he was never an anarchist for many reasons.  He did advocate a very profoundly severe submission to his conception of a god and that god's demands.  Those god's demands were very much against any substantial conception of anarchy.  Biblical verses are pretty ok with slavery, rape, murder, and all sorts of horrible shit that is justified in all sorts of weird authoritarian ways.

That said, since Jesus wasn't a real person, if you wanted to (like many other folks have) you could retell the story of Jesus in a way that was very anti-authoritarian and furthers your beliefs by reinforcing them with the authority of this famous historical figure.

Also, see wikipedia for definitions of religion and spirituality.

Comments

Actually, most biblical scholars believe that he was a real historical figure, although they obviously differ on which actions and statements  attributed to him are "real."  There's about as much evidence of his historical existence as you could reasonably expect for someone of that time period. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

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Sure, most Christian scholars agree since they have such a strong bias.  Proofs they give such as Tacitus's testimony, who was born after Jesus was dead already, don't really help their case.  The wiki article says that people can only agree that there was probably someone baptized by John the Baptist who was later crucified.  Whoever this person was, despite what people of his time actually said about him, he was very clearly nothing like what the stories tell of him.  People can't even agree on what his name was.  So sure, most of these biblical scholars can agree that there was a real person that started their religion, but no one knows a single thing about him.  So effectively, the Jesus that everyone thinks of is not a real person.

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You are right, there isn't very much definite information about his life, but I think that to say that "the Jesus that everyone thinks of is not a real person" simplifies things too much.  It's possible to have erroneous beliefs about real people, right?

Answer 5

I am uncomfortable with the critique of "Christian anarchism" that focuses on pointing out irreconcilable differences between the supposed "tenets" of Christianity and anarchism because obviously neither of these is truly a completely static doctrine. For me, the value of each of these, if there is any, is precisely in the fact that they are not closed systems of thought, or at least do not have to be.

I think that that anarchists can definitely make theological claims that reinforce their political claims. In fact, I don't think it is even possible to avoid making theological claims!

Moreover, I personally think that it would be strategic for us to couch our arguments in theological terms, the way political radicals of the middle ages generally had to. I believe that the terrain of political economy and political ideology is an extremely limiting one, whereas theology is potentially a much more open field.

Whether this means that an anarchist can be religious is a complicated question -- the answer depends on what you mean by religious. The term 'religion' probably comes from Latin religare (to bind fast) or relegere, (to go through again and again) both in the sense of monastic devotion to spiritual texts. Which, in a loose sense I would say that many anarchists I have known are very guilty of (although this is perhaps something we ought to try and avoid).

On the other hand in popular usage, religious usually means belonging to a particular religious organization or, more recently, individual belief in a god or gods. Both of which an anarchist might do, but probably not without a lot of difficult conflicts arising.

Also, no, Jesus was not an anarchist.

Comments

asker - how are you defining theological?

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I don't have any complicated smart-aleck definition, it's just claims about divine stuff.  Thus, even saying that there is no god is a theological claim, I think.

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Jesus was royalty.   And, I know, Kropotkin was a prince, but that shit is pretty rare.

edited to make into a comment.

Answer 6

If Jesus was an anarchist, Satan also was an anarchist. At least Mikhail Bakunin thinks so:

"But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge."

Mikhail Bakunin.
"God and the State"
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michail-bakunin-god-and-the-state

Proudhon also had good opinions on Satan. As such "Proudhon was fascinated with Christianity, and wrote about it from a variety of perspectives and in a variety of tones, but he is probably best remembered for writings like his “Hymn to Satan” and the final chapter of the first volumes of the Economic Contradictions, where he worked himself up to a sort of declaration of war against the very idea of God..."  

Introduction by Shawn P. Wilbur to "God is Evil, Man is Free"
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/pierre-joseph-proudhon-god-is-evil-man-is-free

Individualist anarchist Emile Armand thought both Satan and Jesus were anarchists. He said that "History and legends cite the names of numerous anarchists: Prometheus of mythology, Satan of the bible, Epictetus, Diogenes, and the mythical Jesus could be considered, under many aspects, old kinds of anarchists."

Émile Armand
2Anarchist Individualism and Amorous Comradeship2
http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emile-armand-anarchist-individualism-and-amorous-comradeship

Answer 7

The render unto Ceasar quote that Peter Mandzhukov mentioned and is always brought up in discussions of Jesus's politics has clearly been misinterpretted even since pretty early in the history of Christianity. Or a actually, it was deliberately re-interpretted in order to defuse the political meaning of the original. Jesus, in Jerusalem, holds up a coin bearing the image of Ceasar. That's enough. Those graven images of a so-called son of God were highly controversial, especially the fact that the Roman demanded they be used in the holy city of Jerusalem. Jesus was inciting a riot. There can be no doubt that Jesus was an anti-Roman revolutionary. The story of casting out Legion is an obvious myth of overthrowing Roman rule. And Jesus was executed for it.

That doesn't say whether he was an anarchist, though. The question is what kind of rule did Jesus and his followers imagine in place of the Romans once they were gone? Jesus was meant to be David risen again, the divine king. But divine meant more than just blessed by God. The idea was that in God's presence on Earth, the Divine Kingdom would become harmonious and not require any actual rule. The people would spontaneously be united. So I think it's impossible to say whether this is anarchy or not because it's really dealing with wholly different concepts than we're used to today even in religious contexts, let alone political ones.

To answer your second question, yes anarchy is certainly compatible with religion. Many religious people are anarchist. These people prove that they are compatible. Zealots might say "oh, but they're not REAL anarchists" or "they're not REAL Christians" or whatever, but that's fundamentalist bullshit.