Religious Anarchism

New Perspectives

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos

2009
Contents
PREFACE 6
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

INTRODUCTION 10
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

PART I: CHRISTIAN ANARCHIST PIONEERS 17

CHAPTER ONE. THE PELAGIAN MENTALITY: RADICAL POLITICAL THOUGHT

IN FIFTH CENTURY CHRISTIANITY 18
Pelagius and His Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
“On Riches” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Excursus: Avarice in Political Thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Back to the Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Perils of Avarice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
A Radical Political Theology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

CHAPTER TWO. A THEOLOGY OF REVOLUTIONS: ABIEZER COPPE AND THE

USES OF TRADITION 38
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

CHAPTER THREE. RELIGIOUS DISSENTERS AND ANARCHISTS IN TURN OF

THE CENTURY HUNGARY 51
Religious vs. Political . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
The Peasant Commotion at the Turn of the Century Hungary . . . . . . . . . . 56
Religious vs. Political Conscientious Objection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Final Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

CHAPTER FOUR. A DEAD SEED BEARING MUCH FRUIT: THE DUTCH CHRIS-
TIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL FRATERNITY 67
1. Prologue in Zwijndrecht, Groningen and De Wilp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
2. Christian Anarchism and the International Fraternity (1890-) 1897–1906 . . 69
3. Developments after 1906 in Bird’s Eye View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

2
PART II: CHRISTIAN ANARCHIST REFLECTIONS 76

CHAPTER FIVE. LOVE, HATE, AND KIERKEGAARD’S CHRISTIAN POLITICS OF

INDIFFERENCE 77
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Love, Hate, and Indifference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
The Politics of Kierkegaard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Kierkegaard on the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
The Lutheran Origins of Danish Establishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Hegel and Modern Christendom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Overcoming the State and Recovering the Individual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

CHAPTER SIX. RESPONDING TO THE STATE: CHRISTIAN ANARCHISTS ON

ROMANS 13, RENDERING TO CAESAR, AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE 95
Paul’s Letter to Roman Christians, Chapter 13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Paul’s Weaknesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
The Christian Anarchist Exegesis: Subversive Subjection . . . . . . . . . . 99
Similar Passages in the New Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Jesus’ Advice on Taxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Caesar’s Things and God’s Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
The Temple Tax and Fish Episode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Pondering the Role of Civil Disobedience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Against Civil Disobedience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
For (Non-violent) Civil Disobedience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Obedience to God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

CHAPTER SEVEN. BUILDING A DALIT WORLD IN THE SHELL OF THE OLD:

CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN DALIT INDIGENOUS PRACTICE AND WEST-
ERN ANARCHIST THOUGHT 121
Conversational Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Ascribing Dalitness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Religious Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

CHAPTER EIGHT. THE CHURCH AS RESISTANCE TO RACISM AND NATION:

A CHRISTIAN, ANARCHIST PERSPECTIVE 136
Race Theorising: A Historical Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Early Race Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Race Theories in Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
The Age of Modern Racism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140

3
 Race and Nation-Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Naturalising the Nation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Masking Economic Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Determining Citizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
Maintaining Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Racism Revised . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Christian Resistance to Racism and the Nation-State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
The Call of the Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
The Church is Political . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
The People of God in the Hebrew Bible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
Jesus and the State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
The Example of the Early Christian Fellowship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
Concluding Thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

PART III: BUDDHIST, DAOIST, AND MUSLIM ANARCHISM 161

CHAPTER NINE. ANARCHISM OR NIHILISM: THE BUDDHIST-INFLUENCED

THOUGHT OF WU NENGZI 162
Introduction: The Main Problems Raised by the Wunengzi . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
I. Daoist Anarchism before Wu Nengzi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
II. The Political Thought of Wu Nengzi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
III. More Narrow Problem: Is All Daoism Nihilism? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
IV. Larger Problem: Is Post-Modern Anarchism Nihilism? . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

CHAPTER TEN. KENNETH REXROTH’S INTEGRATIVE VISION: ANARCHISM,

POETRY, AND THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IN POST-WORLD WAR II SAN
FRANCISCO 181
Religion in Post-War America . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Rexroth and the Anarchists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Literary-Religious Styles of Anarchism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
The Practice of Religious Anarchism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197

CHAPTER ELEVEN. TO BE CONDEMNED TO A CLINIC: THE BIRTH OF THE

ANARCA-ISLAMIC CLINIC 198
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
The Patient Comes to Their Own Aid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
The Birth of the Clinic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Castrating Daddy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
A Disinterested Love in Mommy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
To (Re) Do Away with the Clinic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218

4
CHAPTER TWELVE. IMAGINING AN ISLAMIC ANARCHISM: A NEW FIELD OF
STUDY IS PLOUGHED 220
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
The Study of Islamic Anarchism to Date . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Comparative Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
A Tentative New Model for the Study of Islamic Anarchism . . . . . . . . . . . 238
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242

CONTRIBUTORS 246

5
PREFACE
Both religion and anarchism have been increasingly politically active of late, often (though by no
means always) behind the same lines and for similar causes. At Genoa or Porto Alegre, behind
slogans such as “Stop the War” and “Another World Is Possible,” in response to the environmental
catastrophe or to the financial crisis, followers and activists of both religion and anarchism have
been criticising orthodoxies and voicing radical alternatives. Both groups have attracted new
members, and both have revived the interest of scholars and other observers. Within many
academic disciplines—politics, sociology, anthropology, law, theology, philosophy, history, you
name it—specialists and commentators on religion and on its relation with politics have been busy
observing, reflecting and sharing their conclusions. Many of these academic disciplines have also
been enriched by critiques and contributions coming from anarchist thought and practice. In
short, both anarchism and politically-engaged religion have been increasingly noticed, analysed,
and thought from. Yet despite this, it would seem that the overlap between the two has so far
not been blessed by a similar explosion of interest. This lack of interest is even more acute
for religious anarchism—where it is not just an overlap anymore but where anarchism is rooted
in religion—perhaps in part precisely because many find rather uncomfortable approaches to
religions which treat them almost as forms of political ideologies, as perspectives on the world
that directly inform and enthuse political behaviour.
Indeed, some have argued that religion and anarchism do not really mix, that each stands
for the opposite of the other. Religions are hierarchic and manipulative, many have insisted, and
anarchism vehemently opposes such oppressive constructions. Besides, anarchists are often com-
mitted atheists, others have rejoined, which means that they reject the most basic proposition
upon which a religious outlook can be developed. Yet however true both (admittedly here heavily
simplified) arguments might be, and despite the prevalence of their proponents, there have also
always been advocates of fruitful dialogue between the two, with many even seeing a clear con-
tinuity between religion and anarchism. One recent publication on anarchist studies even boldly
remarks that “every religion supports anarchy in religious teachings.”1 The a priori impermeable
incompatibility of religion and anarchism, therefore, cannot be taken for granted. The debate is
ongoing and will no doubt continue to provide measured and thoughtful contributions.2 Some
of these will inevitably emanate from the here central field of religious anarchism.
1
Lisa Kemmerer, “Anarchy: Foundations in Faith,” in Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology
of Anarchy in the Academy, ed. Randall Amster, et al. (New York: Routledge, 2009), 200.
2
I am not aware of a generic, in-depth and exhaustive study on the religion and anarchism debate, but good
sources on it do include: “Editorial,” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25 7/1 (1994); George Bradford, “Nature, Flesh,
Spirit: Against Christianity,” The Fifth Estate, Summer 1984; Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, trans. George
W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1991); Ammon Hennacy, “Can a Christian Be an Anarchist?,” in
Patterns of Anarchy: A Collection of Writings on the Anarchist Tradition, ed. Leonard I. Krimerman and Lewis Perry
(Garden City: Anchor, 1966); Bill Kellerman and Bill McCormick, “Anarchy and Christianity: An Exchange,” The Fifth
Estate, Summer 1984, 22; Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London: Fontana, 1993),
chap. 6; George Walford, “Through Religion to Anarchism,” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25 7/1 (1994); Nicolas

6
 This field, it is worth noting, has been around for at least as long as “secular” anarchism, and
has produced numerous primary sources in the form of books, articles, pamphlets and the like.
The academic literature usually cites Leo Tolstoy as the most famous (sometimes even as the
only) Christian anarchist writer, but there are many others, such as Jacques Ellul, Vernard Eller,
Dave Andrews or those associated with the Catholic Worker movement. There are also anarchists
from other religious traditions, although their anarchist credentials are no more frequently the
subject of meticulous scholarly analysis than their Christian counterparts’. Even on Christian
anarchism—the religious anarchism which, for a number of historical reasons, has generated
the most literature in the area—no book-length study covering most of its many thinkers or
encapsulating their generic contribution has been published to date. In other words, religious
anarchism has been both present and understudied for a while now.
That, however, may be changing. For a start, most introductory texts on anarchism already
do include sections on religious anarchism.3 More recent collections of essays on anarchism
have also featured chapters on religious anarchism.4 My doctoral thesis, which weaves together
existing threads of Christian anarchist thought, attempts to offer precisely the sort of generic
study mentioned above.5 And of course, there is the present volume, which, while not offering a
systematic overview of the various voices in religious anarchism “out there,” does instead gather
new perspectives—current scholarship—on particular strands of religious anarchism.
This present volume is a proud child of the Anarchist Studies Network, part of the (British)
Political Studies Association. More specifically, it is a child of the first ever conference on anar-
chism organised under the network’s auspices, in Loughborough, in September 2008. For that
conference, I set out to convene a stream on “Religious Anarchisms” with the aims of bringing to-
gether researchers interested in religious anarchism, providing space for conversations between
them and with other anarchists, and sharing ideas and projects for the future. The call for papers
reaped more proposals that I had expected, and in the end nine papers were presented over three
panels. The topics covered were diverse, the panels well attended, and the audiences clearly en-
gaged by the presentations. The stream, in other words, was a success which defied any initially
modest expectations.
To consolidate that success, there was a desire to create a forum for this group of like-minded
people to stay connected. This led to the creation of a subgroup within the Anarchist Studies Net-
work, which was named “Academics and Students Interested in Religious Anarchism” because
the resulting acronym sounded nice. That group’s web pages and its corresponding mailing list
can be accessed via anarchist-studies-network.org.uk. The other important product of those pan-
els was this volume.

Walter, “Anarchism and Religion,” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25 7/1 (1994); Colin Ward, “Anarchist Entry for a
Theological Dictionary,” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25 7/1 (1994).
3
To name but a (random and diverse) few: Ruth Kinna, Anarchism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld,
2005); Peter Kropotkin, Anarchism (Encyclopaedia Britannica), available from dwardmac.pitzer.edu (accessed 26 April
2007); Marshall; D. Novak, “The Place of Anarchism in the History of Political Thought,” The Review of Politics 20/3
(1958); George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).
4
Randall Amster et al., eds., Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the
Academy (New York: Routledge, 2009); Nathan J. Jun and Shane Wahl, eds., New Perspectives on Anarchism (Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2009).
5
That thesis is due to be published, slightly revised, as: Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the
Gospel (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010).

7
 The book contains all nine of the papers that were presented at the conference, reviewed and
improved, but also three further papers from authors who did not make it to that conference.
These have been spread over three parts: one on Christian anarchist “pioneers,” the second on
Christian anarchist reflections on specific topics, the third on anarchism in other religious tradi-
tions.
The first part includes a chapter on Pelagius and another on Abiezer Coppe, two thinkers who
predate the anarchist and hence Christian anarchist school(s) of thought by several centuries
but whose thought nevertheless leans towards it; and two chapters on the Christian anarchist
communities which appeared in Hungary and in the Netherlands when classical anarchism was
flourishing, towards the end of the nineteenth century.
The second part explores specific themes around Christian anarchism: the Christian anarchist
indifference to the state articulated by Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard; the debate over how
to respond to the state in light of perhaps the two most notorious New Testament passages on
it (Romans 13 and “Render to Caesar”); the anarchic tendencies at play in the religious practice
of Christian Dalits; and the Christian church’s call to resist the concomitant and state-upholding
concepts of race and nation.
The third part compiles four chapters on non-Christian religious anarchism: a chapter dis-
cussing of the Buddhist-influenced thought of ninth century Daoist Wu Nengzi; another on the
impact of Kenneth Rexroth’s integration of Zen Buddhism and anarchism in post-Second World
War San Francisco; a chapter making a committed and original plea for what is called an “Anarca-
Islamic clinic;” and a chapter reviewing prominent publications in Islamic anarchism and offering
a tentative model to classify its (and other religious anarchism’s) varieties.
The book, therefore, does not include a chapter on the more general debate on the compatibility
of religion and anarchism. A contribution of this sort was sought, but (unfortunately) did not
materialise. Yet by presenting twelve chapters of original scholarship in religious anarchism,
this book does add to the debate, if only indirectly, by demonstrating the fruitful potential of the
overlaps and continuities between religion and anarchism.
Also missing are contributions on Jewish anarchism, Hindu anarchism, or other religious an-
archism. Such contributions would have been most welcome, but (again unfortunately) no-one
came forth with proposed chapters on these topics. In any case, this book certainly makes no
claim to be offering an exhaustive coverage of religious anarchism. The aim is rather to bring
attention to the area by sharing what fresh scholarship on it could be gathered, and thus to
indirectly invite further research in other unexplored sub-fields within religious anarchism.
In closing, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all those without whom this book would not
have come together. Top among them are: Alex Prichard, Ruth Kinna, Dave Berry and the whole
Loughborough crew which hosted the conference, for their hard work in putting together that
timely and great show, and for ensuring its success; the Anarchist Studies Network (and hence the
Political Studies Association) for its very existence, for its lively discussions and for its generous
support; the team at Cambridge Scholars Publishing (and especially Carol Koulikourdi), for its
help and encouragement with this book; and last but far from least, the other twelve contributors
to this book, not just for their hard work in producing their contributions, but also for their help,
for their friendship, and for politely putting up with my endless requests and abundant emails.
It was demanding at times, but it is a real pleasure to be able to present this book to the wider
public. I hope that readers will be as interested, provoked and inspired as I was by these twelve
new perspectives on religious anarchism.

8
 ALEXANDRE J. M. E. CHRISTOYANNOPOULOS
Canterbury, May 2009

Bibliography

“Editorial.” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25 7/1 (Spring 1994): 1–2.

Amster, Randall, Abraham DeLeon, Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, II, and Deric Shannon,
eds. Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Introductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy.
New York: Routledge, 2009.
Bradford, George. “Nature, Flesh, Spirit: Against Christianity.” The Fifth Estate, Summer 1984,
9–10.
Christoyannopoulos, Alexandre J. M. E. Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the
Gospel. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010.
Ellul, Jacques. Anarchy and Christianity. Translated by George W. Bromiley. Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans, 1991.
Hennacy, Ammon. “Can a Christian Be an Anarchist?” In Patterns of Anarchy: A Collection of
Writings on the Anarchist Tradition, edited by Leonard I. Krimerman and Lewis Perry, 48–52.
Garden City: Anchor, 1966.
Jun, Nathan J., and Shane Wahl, eds. New Perspectives on Anarchism. Lanham, MD: Lexington
Books, 2009.
Kellerman, Bill, and Bill McCormick. “Anarchy and Christianity: An Exchange.” The Fifth Estate,
Summer 1984, 8, 22.
Kemmerer, Lisa. “Anarchy: Foundations in Faith.” In Contemporary Anarchist Studies: An Intro-
ductory Anthology of Anarchy in the Academy, edited by Randall Amster, Abraham DeLeon,
Luis A. Fernandez, Anthony J. Nocella, II and Deric Shannon, 200–212. New York: Routledge,
2009.
Kinna, Ruth. Anarchism: A Beginner’s Guide. Oxford: Oneworld, 2005.
Kropotkin, Peter. Anarchism. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910. dwardmac.pitzer.edu archy.html
(accessed 26 April 2007).
Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. London: Fontana, 1993.
Novak, D. “The Place of Anarchism in the History of Political Thought.” The Review of Politics
20/3 (July 1958): 307–329.
Walford, George. “Through Religion to Anarchism.” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25 7/1 (Spring
1994): 29–36.
Walter, Nicolas. “Anarchism and Religion.” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25 7/1 (Spring 1994):
3–9.
Ward, Colin. “Anarchist Entry for a Theological Dictionary.” The Raven: anarchist quarterly 25
7/1 (Spring 1994): 19–25.
Woodcock, George. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1975.

9
INTRODUCTION
PETER MARSHALL

“Neither God nor Master.”1

—Michael Bakunin

“Love, and do what you will.”2

—Augustine

Is religious anarchism a contradiction in terms? Is not anarchy the very opposite of hierarchy
which in the original Greek means the “rule of the priests”? Is not an all-powerful God who
threatens wayward humanity with terrible punishments necessarily evil? Is not submission or
obedience to the authority of God slavish?
Given the close historic link between the church and the state in the West, it is not surprising
that the classic anarchist thinkers of the nineteenth century, steeped in the humanist tradition
of the Enlightenment, should have generally opposed religion as a heavy fetter holding back
the liberation of humanity. For the most part, they shared Marx’s view that religion was the
“opium of the people,” offering workers and peasants extravagant fantasies of pie in the sky while
sapping their energy to improve things on earth. Like the philosophes, they generally held the
practices and beliefs of religion to be part of the ignorance and superstition left over from the
Dark Ages. Above all, they rejected unquestioning obedience to a supernatural power having
ultimate control over their destiny. Man, they concluded, was not made in God’s image, but God
in the image of some of the worst aspects of humanity.
They were standing in a long radical tradition in Europe which opposed the authoritarian and
hierarchical nature of organised religion. Popular peasant revolts during the Middle Ages at-
tempted to throw off the triple yoke of priest, landlord and magistrate who lived off their backs
and who threatened, fined and whipped them into sullen obedience. As capitalism began to de-
velop, the downtrodden and dispossessed further rejected the Protestant ethic which saw success
in making money as a sign of divine grace. Many during the French Revolution looked forward
to that splendid time when the last priest would be hanged by the entrails of the last aristocrat.
In the nineteenth century, the individualist Max Stirner argued that religion was a “spook” in
the mind, a manifestation of our alienation from our true humanity.3 But amongst the classic
anarchist thinkers, it was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Michael Bakunin who most virulently op-
posed organised religion, the unholy alliance of church and state, and the notion of an omniscient
God. Proudhon, brought up in Catholic France, put it simply: “God is stupidity and cowardice;
1
Anarchist slogan, usually attributed to Michael Bakunin.
2
Augustine, “Seventh Homily on the First Epistle of St John,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol.
7, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. H. Browne (Buffalo, N. Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888), para 8.
3
Max Stirner, The Ego & Its Own, trans. Steven T. Byington (1963) (London: Rebel Press, 1982), 39.

10
God is hypocrisy and falsehood; God is tyranny and poverty; God is evil.”4 Bakunin, a militant
atheist like Marx, was no less iconoclastic. In his view, “all religions are cruel; all founded in
blood.” As for monotheism, he declared: “The idea of God implies the abdication of human rea-
son and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the
enslavement of mankind, both in theory and practice.” Indeed, turning Voltaire on his head, he
argued that “If God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.”5
Anarchists after them have not only criticised the church as a hierarchical and authoritarian
institution but have condemned its repressive morality. Its concept of sin, they have pointed out,
encourage feelings of fear and guilt which can cripple the spontaneous generosity and playful-
ness of humans. In short, the agents of institutionalised religion have turned the sun-blessed
garden of love into a mouldy cemetery of desire.
That is the main thrust of the anarchist case against religion. But have all anarchists agreed?
As the wide-ranging, thought-provoking and scholarly essays in this excellent collection demon-
strate, religion has in the past been and can still be a source of inspiration for anarchists. An-
archism is not inherently atheistic, denying the existence of God, or even humanist, giving a
central place to humanity within nature. Nor is it wedded to any particular metaphysics, reli-
gion or even ethics; it is a wide river with many tributaries, currents and eddies. What unites
anarchists is a common rejection of coercive power and imposed authority and a call for freedom
to shape their own lives and realise their full potential.
Within the Christian tradition, there has always been an ambivalent attitude to government
and the state. Despite Paul’s teaching in Romans 13 and Jesus’ famous “Render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21) many early
Christians saw obedience to God and imitation of the life of Christ as taking precedence over any
obligation to worldly powers or temporal authority. In this, they took inspiration from Romans
11:36: “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.”
Early in the fifth century, for example, the British theologian Pelagius denied original sin,
emphasised free will and claimed that all human beings can achieve spiritual perfection without
external assistance. They could also have their basic needs easily satisfied if it were not for the
avarice of the rich. Again, in the twelfth century the Cistercian monk Joachim of Fiore predicted
the imminent realisation of the Kingdom of God on earth in which free individuals would live
together in loving harmony and ecstatic joy.
In the Middle Ages, there were waves of religious libertarian and millenarian movements in-
spired by such beliefs in north and central Europe. Most notable were the Brethren of the Free
Spirit who emerged in the thirteenth century. These mystical libertarians were antinomians, be-
lieving that they could be saved by faith alone and that the bestowal of grace released them from
any obligation to moral law. They took literally Augustine’s adage: “Love, and do what you will.”
Many of the revolutionaries in the peasant rebellions which swept through Europe, especially
the English Peasants’ Revolt in 1381 and the Hussite Revolution in Bohemia in 1419–21, were
tinged with these ideas. Peter Chelþický, recognized by Kropotkin as a forerunner of anarchism
and much appreciated by Tolstoy, was not only opposed to the “two whales” of the church and
state but following the example of Christ turned the other cheek and refused to take up arms.

4
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Système des contradications économiques, ou philosophie de la misère (1846) (Paris:
Rivière, 1923), I, 384.
5
Michael Bakunin, God and the State (New York: Mother Earth, 1916), chapter 2.

11
During the Reformation, a loose movement of Anabaptists (who believed in adult baptism) and
Spiritualists (who believed God was within) called for the separation of church and state and
the building of a New Jerusalem on earth. It was not easy. When the puritanical Anabaptists
in Münster in 1534 pooled their resources and tried to create a community based on love they
ended up burning books and introducing a draconian new legal code.
The revolutionary and anarchistic tendency within Christianity came to a fore during the up-
heavals of the English Revolution and civil war in the seventeenth century. The Diggers wished
only to obey the “law of righteousness” and were willing to break the laws of England and to
work the land as a common treasury. Gerrard Winstanley spoke on their behalf when he declared:
“True freedom lies in the community in spirit and community in the earthly treasury, and this is
Christ the true-man-child spread abroad in the creation.”6 The most extreme antinomians at this
time however were the Ranters, lawless and masterless women and men, who believed that since
they were in a state of grace, they could commit no sin. They shared their goods and practiced
free love. Abiezer Coppe in his marvellous Fiery Flying Rolls made clear that since God dwells
within “to the pure all things are pure” and “sinne and transgression is finished.”7
At the time of the French Revolution, William Blake was an offshoot of this underground
religious libertarian tradition. Rejecting the constricting, judgemental and authoritarian Jehovah
God of the Old Testament, he saw Jesus as a revolutionary force of love and forgiveness, bringing
balm to heal the God-beaten heads of downtrodden humanity. In his view, Jesus not only broke
the Ten Commandments but was “all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules.” Indeed, for
Blake, “The Gospel is Forgiveness of Sins & Has No Moral Precepts.”8
William Godwin, a one-time minister, may have been an atheist when he wrote his Enquiry con-
cerning Political Justice (1793) but it was by extending the Dissenters’ right to private judgement
to the political realm that he reached anarchist conclusions. The kind of voluntary communism
he advocated moreover can be traced back to the Calvinist sect of Sandemanians among whom
he moved as a teenager. Later in life, he began to talk of a “Great Spirit” which pervaded all
nature.
Of the great anarchist thinkers, it was however Tolstoy who was most inspired by Christianity.
A radical interpretation of the “Sermon on the Mount,” with its emphasis on love and forgiveness,
helped him reject all governments as immoral forms organised violence. Since the “Kingdom of
God” is within us and we can all be guided by the divine light of reason, governments are both
unnecessary and harmful. Tolstoy died on his way to a monastery. Among the many religious
groups influenced by him were the Nazarenes in Hungary and the Christian anarchists in the
Netherlands who refused to bear arms and pooled their resources in intentional communities
close to the land.
While not strictly speaking anarchist, a stance of indifference to the state, developed philosoph-
ically by the Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard, was widespread among Christian anarchists
who believed like him that the love of God and the imitation of Christ lead to withdrawal from
the state. In the twentieth century in the United States, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy and
their fellow Catholic Workers further argued that the law of God overrides all man-made laws
and supersedes any obligation to obey governments. As Hennacy put it colourfully, a Christian
6
Gerrard Winstanley, A Watch-Word to the City of London (1649), in The Law of Freedom and Other Writings, ed.
Christopher Hill (Cambridge University Press, 1983), 128.
7
Andrew Hopton, ed., Abiezer Coppe: Selected Writings (London: Aporia Press, 1987), 27.
8
Geoffrey Keynes, ed., Blake: Complete Writings (Oxford University Press, 1972), 158, 395.

12
anarchist is “one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the money-lenders, and who
does not need a cop to tell him how to behave.”9 The French thinker Jacques Ellul equally claimed
that Christianity means a rejection of temporal power and argued that a form of non-violent an-
archism is the only sensible and moral way forward.
For Christian anarchists, if there be any conflict between God and Caesar, a benevolent God
will always take precedence. Love of God and love of one’s neighbours are paramount. It is not
a question of Bakunin’s “Neither God nor Master” but rather “No Master apart from God.” While
they reject the church as a hierarchical and authoritarian institution, most Christian anarchists
see the church in the universal sense of a community of believers as a place for resistance against
the nation-state and the racism and inequality it engenders.
Although anarchism as a self-conscious body of ideas and practices was largely a product of the
European Enlightenment, many indigenous peoples, from the pygmies in the African rainforest
to the Dalits in rural India, have been “anarchic” in their religious practices by worshipping with-
out leaders and institutions. Even the humanist Kropotkin argued that morality among humans
had evolved naturally prior to the state and recognised that religion had played an important
role in encouraging the practice of mutual aid.
As with Christianity, religious traditions and beliefs throughout the world have had their lib-
ertarian movements and have inspired anarchist beliefs. The Judaic God of the Old Testament
certainly cast the sinful into hell and called for an eye for an eye, yet the Hasidic mystical tra-
dition which developed within Judaism in the eighteenth century brought out the importance
of “loving kindness” (the Hebrew root word of Hasidism). Many Jews have been drawn to an-
archism. The libertarian philosopher Martin Buber, strongly influenced by his anarchist friend
Gustav Landauer, also saw the kibbutz movement as one of the possible Paths to Utopia (1949).
Although it has largely lost its way under the pressure of war, some Jewish anarchists still see
the possibility of creating a network of libertarian communes to replace the need for the brute
force of government.
Islam of course is a monotheistic religion like Judaism and Christianity whose prophets it
recognises. At first sight, and certainly for many in the West, it would seem to be fundamentally
authoritarian and violent. But this view is largely based on ignorance and prejudice; historically,
Christianity has been no less given to violence and coercion than Islam when linked to temporal
powers and misled by political leaders.
The very word “Islam” means “submission” or “surrender” and Islam calls for submission to
the teaching of the Koran and surrender to the authority of God. The primary commitment of all
Muslims is to obey God and God alone. Yet within Islam, there has been a libertarian tendency.
The brotherhood and sisterhood of Muslims go beyond national boundaries and their morality
transcends the laws of the state and the dictates of government. While sharia has crystallised
into a rigid set of laws and rules it was originally a form of ethics for everyday life. There is
moreover no institutional hierarchy in Islam and a strong emphasis on the search for consensus
( ijma) within the community ( umma).
Among Islamic sects, the Qarâmita, the Ismailis (especially the so-called Assassins) and the
Sufis have all had anarchist-leaning groups. The Berbers and the Bedouin lived in a form of tribal
anarchy. In the ninth century, the Najdiyya and members of the Kharijites felt that since imams
had a tendency to turn into kings and rulers, it was better not to set them up in the first pace.

9
Ammon Hennacy, Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist (New York: Catholic Worker Books, 1954), preface.

13
From the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, antinomian dervishes, such as the Qalandars and
Haydarîs, went their own idiosyncratic way, either rejecting or embracing the world as unruly
friends of God. Like Christian anarchists, they refused to obey any master apart from God. The
mystical sect of Sufis, who preach universal love and tolerance, are particularly libertarian and
egalitarian—so much so that Ataturk, the founder of the modern secular state of Turkey, banned
them. Sufism has had a growing influence in the West. The anarchist Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn
Wilson) in particular has espoused Islam and celebrated its heretics and outcasts.
Unlike Christianity and Islam, Hinduism has no room for a supreme God in its unruly pantheon
of gods and goddesses. At the same time, it stresses the divine nature of the unique individual
and encourages personal autonomy. Its ethics can be summed up by the phrase ahimsa, meaning
“no harm.” Like all the major religious traditions, it too has had its libertarian movements and
thinkers. The religious philosopher Aurobindo Ghose, for example, argued that the ideal of hu-
manity is to be found in the natural association of free individuals outside the constricting and
mechanical nation-state. Although brought up as a Brahmin, Gandhi was strongly influenced
by Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism. He too considered a form of “enlightened anarchy” to be the
highest form of society where “everyone is his own ruler, and … there is not political power
because there is no State.”10 He had a profound belief in the power of truth and like Godwin
believed that it would ultimately be victorious over error. In the long run there was no need for
government in a self-managing and decentralised society based on the village councils. Society
would then become a community of communities. The Sarvodaya (“Welfare for All”) movement
in India and Sri Lanka continues to apply Gandhian principles of non-violent resistance and the
voluntary pooling of land and resources.
In the Far East, modern Daoism has taken on many of the attributes and rituals of a religion
but in its original form it was a strongly libertarian philosophical and moral system. The Dao is
older than any god and by its very nature escapes concepts and words. The wise person goes with
the flow of the Dao. As the Daodejing, the most beautiful, oldest and profound libertarian text in
the world, puts it: “The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by
interfering.”11 The conclusions of the Daoist text Zhuang Zi are even more anarchistic: to attempt
to govern people with laws and regulations is impossible, “as well as try to wade through the sea,
to hew a passage through a river, or make a mosquito fly away with a mountain!”12 If the natural
dispositions of humans are not perverted, there is simply no need for government. Some later
Daoists like Wu Nengzi were prepared to accept a degree of governmental rule if not attached
or deceived by it usefulness but the early Daoists were undoubtedly forerunners of anarchism
when they embraced the universe as a whole, accepted the underlying unity and equality of all
things and beings, and advocated letting them go their own beneficial way.
Like Daoism, Buddhism is non-theistic. In its pure form it is more of a system of ethics than a
religion. Buddha is not considered divine but as a symbol and living example of the enlightened
person. Buddhism does not therefore worship a personal deity or divine being but is concerned
with self-development. In self-disciplined freedom, all are equally capable of enlightenment. Al-
though it became institutionalised and sclerotic like other world religions, its original message
is deeply libertarian. While recommending the teaching of the wise, as the Kalama Sutta makes

10
Mohandas Gandhi, Democracy: Real and Deceptive (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1961), 28–9.
11
Tao te ching, trans. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage, 1972), section 48.
12
Chuang Tzu, trans. H. A. Giles (London: Unwin, 1980), 87.

14
clear, it encourages free enquiry. Its practice of personal autonomy and self-disciple makes
external government superfluous. Combined with Daoism to form Zen, it can have profound
nation-shaking and state-transforming implications. And as Gary Snyder and Kenneth Rexroth
understood, living the life of Buddha in the East or West does not need the law or the state.
It should by now be clear that religion itself is not inherently authoritarian and hierarchical
but that organised religions have an unpleasant tendency to become so. The original message
of the great religious teachers to live a simple life, to share the wealth of the earth, to treat
each other with love and respect, to tolerate others and to live in peace invariably gets lost as
worldly institutions take over. Religious leaders, like their political counterparts, accrue power to
themselves, draw up dogmas, and wage war on dissenters in their own ranks and the followers
of other religions. They seek protection from temporal rulers, bestowing on them in return a
supernatural legitimacy and magical aura. They weave webs of mystery and mystification around
naked power; they join the sword with the cross and the crescent. As a result, in nearly all cases
organised religions have lost the peaceful and tolerant message of their founding fathers, whether
it be Buddha, Jesus or Mohammed. For these reasons, anarchists, whatever their religious beliefs
or lack of them, have questioned and opposed the authority of religious leaders and the rule of
priests. They have tried to end the close alliance of church, mosque and temple with government
and the state. They have insisted on the freedom of belief as well as the freedom of thought and
action.
An increasing number of libertarian socialists and anarchists, including myself, feel that the
arguments against the existence of a tyrannical God and the need for hierarchical institutions
have been won. At the same time, they are prepared to call themselves “spiritual” in a loose sense.
While continuing to oppose organised religion, the hierarchy and domination of the church and
mosque, and the imposition of a repressive morality, they recognise that life is sacred, that the
cosmos is inherently good, that all is ultimately one. They believe that every created thing is
divine. As mystics have always known, to attain “union with God” or to be “at one” with the
universe goes beyond all organised religion, temporal laws, governments and states. It involves
a transformative experience which breaks down the narrow boundaries of ego, nation and race
and connects with all beings and the cosmos as a whole.
We can be spiritual without being a member of an authoritarian sect; religious without joining
a hierarchical organisation; moral without obeying religious leaders or laws. We can be at one
with God or the universe and at the same time work for the betterment of humanity and the
well-being of the earth. We can read sacred texts and listen to the wise and still think, judge
and act for ourselves. We can enjoy voluntary poverty, peace, fellowship and forgiveness in the
garden of love. In short, we can be deeply spiritual and still profoundly anarchist, one strand
enriching and enlarging the other in a widening circle of freedom.

Bibliography

Augustine. “Seventh Homily on the First Epistle of St John.” In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,
First Series, Vol. 7, ed. Philip Schaff, trans.
H. Browne. Buffalo, N. Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1888.
Bakunin, Michael. God and the State. New York: Mother Earth, 1916.

15
Chuang Tzu. Translated by H. A. Giles. London: Unwin, 1980.
Gandhi, Mohandas. Democracy: Real and Deceptive. Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1961.
Hennacy, Ammon. Autobiography of a Catholic Anarchist. New York: Catholic Worker Books,
1954.
Hill, Christopher, ed. The Law of Freedom and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983.
Hopton, Andrew, ed. Abiezer Coppe: Selected Writings. London: Aporia Press, 1987.
Keynes, Geoffrey, ed. Blake: Complete Writings. Oxford University Press, 1972.
Marshall, Peter, ed. The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin. Second edition. London Freedom
Press, 1996.
—. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. Third edition. London: Harper Perennial,
2007.
—. “Human nature and anarchism.” In For Anarchism: History, Theory and Practice, ed. David
Goodway. London: Routledge, 1989.
—. Riding the Wind: Liberation Ecology for a New Era. Third edition. London and New York:
Continuum, 2009.
—. William Blake: Visionary Anarchist. Third edition. London: Freedom Press, 2008.
—. William Godwin. London and New York: Yale University Press, 1984.
Tao te ching. Translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English. New York: Vintage, 1972.
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. Système des contradications économiques, ou philosophie de la misère.
Paris: Rivière, 1923.
Stirner, Max. The Ego & Its Own. Translated by Steven T. Byington. London: Rebel Press, 1982.

16
PART I: CHRISTIAN ANARCHIST
PIONEERS
CHAPTER ONE. THE PELAGIAN
MENTALITY: RADICAL POLITICAL
THOUGHT IN FIFTH CENTURY
CHRISTIANITY
RICHARD FITCH
Pelagianism is known, if at all, as an early fifth century Christian heresy. Politically radical
forms of Christianity, and their secularised kin, are sometimes accused of being Pelagian in spirit
and therefore heretical. Being Pelagian is taken to mean having a naïvely optimistic understanding
of human nature. Following from this understanding, forms of political life are invented that are
themselves wildly optimistic and thus politically unrealistic. Furthermore it is alleged that these
political forms, based on a false concept of human nature, act to oppress the flourishing of real human
nature. Such a line of attack has often been used against radical political theologies, anarchism, and
socialism. Theologically the supposed naivety that lies at the root of these radical political theologies
and philosophies is held not to be innocent, but to be an example of unchristian hubris tainted
with satanic pride. However, this understanding of the Pelagian is rooted in Augustine of Hippo’s
polemical misrepresentation of the teaching of Pelagius. As numerous Pelagian texts have survived
there is no scholarly reason to accept prima facie Augustine’s misrepresentation. Indeed, when those
texts are examined a far more complex, and far less heretical, Pelagianism emerges. Here the most
politically radical Pelagian text, the Epistula de divitiis or On Riches , is examined. Beginning
with the sin of avarice a striking political theology is unfolded. With an incipient class analysis, an
awareness of the slippery logic of desire, and a sensitivity to the political problem of philosophical
method, themes are raised that would not be tackled again with such sophistication until at least the
late eighteenth century. In this text, and others, the Pelagian mentality reveals itself to be, within
theological parameters, both realistic and radical, and as such, worthy of note by all concerned with
political radicalism.

Get rid of the rich man, and you will not be able to find a poor one. Let no man have
more than he really needs, and everyone will have as much as they need, since the
few who are rich are the reason for the many who are poor.1
—Anonymous, On Riches

In and of themselves these words, and the political sentiments they express, are unremarkable.
What is certainly remarkable is that they were written between 410 and 415 A. D. by a follower
of a British Christian thinker—indeed probably the first British thinker whose writings have

1
B. R. Rees, Pelagius: Life and Letters (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998), 194.

18
survived.2 The thinker’s name was Pelagius (c. 360–420 A. D. ). Today he is known, if at all,
as the author of one of the great Christian heresies. Pelagius was accused, most famously by
Augustine of Hippo, of teaching that human beings can achieve spiritual perfection without
direct divine assistance. He denied this charge and accused his enemies of tolerating immoral
behaviour within Christianity by exaggerating the effect of original sin. Pelagius lost the fight.
Whenever a political radical is accused of having a naïve concept of human nature, or of designing
an ideal polity for angels not humans, then there is an echo of the dispute between Pelagius and
Augustine.

Pelagius and His Context

Who was Pelagius?3 If his enemy Jerome is to be believed, he was a fat foolish oaf, a “dog
from Albion … made heavy by Scottish porridge.”4 Naturally there are profound difficulties in
establishing reliable facts for this period, especially concerning someone who was to become a
heresiarch. But we know enough not to fall for one of Jerome’s all too frequent rants.5 Pelagius
was born in the British Isles or Brittany, and received a sophisticated education, perhaps as a
lawyer. Sometime in the 380s he began to make his mark in Rome. He became significant as
a spiritual adviser to leading Christian families in the city.6 He fled Rome, as many did, in an-
ticipation of the fall of the city to Alaric and the Visigoths in 410. He thus lost his powerbase
and network of political protectors. As he and his followers scattered throughout the Empire, so
his ideas were more widely disseminated. This made him the target of those who did not share
his theological vision. By 415 he had been formally charged with heresy but acquitted. How-
ever, his enemies, chiefly the intellectual titan of the rich and powerful North African Church
Augustine of Hippo, persisted.7 They bypassed the ecclesiastical hierarchy and appealed directly
to the Emperor. By 418 Pelagius had been excommunicated and his ideas condemned as heresy.
The Council of Ephesus of 431 provided ecumenical confirmation of this judgement. After 418
Pelagius disappears. He may have returned to his birthplace or sought refuge in the monastic
communities of Egypt.

2
Christopher Kirwan, Augustine (London: Routledge, 1989), 8. There is some dispute about whether Pelagius
was a Briton or a Breton. His exact birthplace matters little for the purposes of this chapter.
3
The “Life” section of Rees acts as a good basic introduction to Pelagius. Of more recent vintage, and notwith-
standing a reservation expressed in this chapter, see Mathijs Lamberigts, “Pelagius and Pelagians,” in The Oxford
Handbook of Early Christian Studies, eds. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), 258–279. For reception history see: C. Garcia-Sanchez, Pelagius and Christian Initiation: A Study in
Historical Theology (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1978); and Mathijs Lamberigts, “Recent
Research into Pelagianism with Particular Emphasis on the Role of Julian of Aeclanum,” Augustiniana 52, no. 2 (2002):
175–198. Further relevant literature can be found in the bibliography below.
4
M. Forthomme Nicholson, “Celtic Theology: Pelagius,” in An Introduction to Celtic Christianity, ed. James P.
Mackey (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993), 388, for the full range of anti-Briton prejudice expressed towards Pelagius.
5
On Jerome: J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975).
6
Peter Brown, “Pelagius and his Supporters: Aims and Environment,” Journal of Theological Studies 19, no.1
(1968): 93–114; and “The Patrons of Pelagius: The Roman Aristocracy between East and West,” Journal of Theological
Studies 21, no. 1 (1970): 56–72.
7
On Augustine the standard biography remains Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2002), but to complement Brown: James J. O’Donnell, Augustine: A New Biography (New York:
HarperCollins, 2005) is too invigorating not to mention.

19
 Pelagius was in essence a Christian moralist. He lacked the theological subtlety of an Augus-
tine, and he was not directly active in politics.8 As indicated Pelagius was taken to hold that
salvation was simply a question of human effort not divine grace. Augustine felt that this under-
estimated the corporate effect of the Fall which meant that all human beings were incapable of
goodness on their own, and furthermore that all are always already implicated in Adam’s crime,
and thus guilty, and therefore share Adam’s punishment. For the Pelagian divine justice was a
mockery without meaningful human freewill, and thus that Augustine’s position mocked God.
He held that the Fall was not a crime for which we all become guilty through the sexual inter-
course of our parents at the moment of procreation, and for which we all punished by being fated
to corrupt inadequacy. For him the Fall served as the preeminent example of how easy it is to fall
into sinful habits and remain trapped there. But for him this enslavement to sin in this life was
not necessary because the human, thanks to God’s creative power, could choose otherwise. He
felt Augustine and others were using original sin as a licence to justify immoral and unchristian
behaviour as if Christians simply could not behave better. Pelagius believed that the search for
human spiritual perfection in this life was the crux of the Christian life. However, it must be
stressed that Pelagius did not think that such a search was easy, or that one should ever think of
oneself as perfected.9 Perfection served rather as a regulative ideal for the Christian life. That it
was the Christian task, and what it entailed, were for Pelagius to be found in the life and teaching
of Jesus.
While Pelagius was not himself a political creature his ideas certainly had political implications,
as does any philosophical or theological anthropology. Indeed, Leszek Kolakowski, towards the
conclusion of a mild polemic against Pascal and Jansenism, endorsed the bold claim

that the entire history of European millenarian and utopian thinking, from the six-
teenth century onwards or even from medieval sources, has depended consciously or
not, on the Pelagian mentality, on the refusal to admit that evil cannot be rooted out
on earth by human effort … According to this view our modernity is fundamentally
Pelagian and this includes its Promethean hope for a perfect human city without
evil.10

It should be noted that Kolakowski is working with the Augustinian conception of Pelagian-
ism as a Promethean and proto-modern mentality.11 The preliminary reading of a Pelagian text
8
There is a controversial but intriguing theory that British resistance to Roman rule was rooted in Pelagianism.
This explains the brief appearance of Pelagius as the young Arthur’s teacher and inspiration in the Director’s Cut
of the lumbering 2004 film King Arthur. I simply lack the necessary historical competence to adequately assess this
theory concerning Late and Post-Roman Britain. It originated with J. N. L. Myres, “Pelagius and the End of Roman
Rule in Britain,” Journal of Roman Studies 50 (1960): 21–36. Gilbert Márkus, “Pelagianism and the ‘Common Celtic
Church,’” Innes Review 56, no. 2 (2005): 165–213, provides a recent sceptical and Augustinian response to ongoing
speculation in this area.
9
Rees, 67.
10
Leszek Kolakowski, God Owes Us Nothing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 183. Kolakowski, a
thinker shaped by the Cold War, is convinced of the centrality of the dispute between Augustine and Pelagius for the
development of European culture, and it structures his understanding of political radicalism especially in its Marxist
form. See also “Can the Devil be Saved?” in Modernity on Endless Trial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990),
75–85.
11
Pelagianism is often taken as a proto-modernism so that its critique can also function as a critique of modernity.
See Michael Hanby, Augustine and Modernity (London: Routledge, 2003), passim, or John Passmore, The Perfectability
of Man (London: Duckworth, 1970), 94–115.

20
undertaken below hopefully demonstrates that such a conception is a misconception. Yet I still
think the substance of the claim concerning its influence is correct. Given this purported influ-
ence a greater appreciation of the implicit Pelagian political theology can only enrich, and help
reconceptualise, radical thought. The political implications of Pelagian ideas were explored by
at least one who followed him.12 Of him little is known except that he was probably the author
of a number of letters known as the Caspari Corpus.13 It is only through the care and tolerance
of librarians that one can once again listen to what Peter Brown described as the “distant music”
of the social radicalism of early Christianity.14 One of the Caspari texts is explicitly political as
it deals with the social significance of the sin of avarice. But the unpacking of these political im-
plications, and the attendant sketching of a political theology, were not merely logical exercises,
as they were undertaken at a moment of profound political turmoil.
What is now taken to be unquestionably orthodox was in the late fourth century still just one
option amongst many, and this was especially true in the sphere of political theology. It is only in
retrospect that it is Pelagius and not Augustine who appears the obvious heretic. In the early fifth
century the marriage of Christianity and Empire was less than a century old. It was a relationship
that was both fluid and fragile. The transformation of Christianity into a political institution was
very much a work in progress. Indeed, the relationship of the Christian religion to the world as
such was in question. In 410 the Empire experienced a profound ideological trauma. Rome was
sacked by the barbarian Alaric. Gibbon’s words capture something of this shock:

Eleven hundred and sixty-three years after the foundation of Rome, the Imperial city,
which had subdued and civilised so considerable a part of mankind, was delivered
to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia.15

The sack itself was not the problem. Alaric left the city after a few days, and as an Arian
Christian he had tried to restrain his troops. The problem was the symbolism. More of Gibbon’s
eloquence:

This awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire with grief and terror.
So interesting a contrast of greatness and ruin, disposed the fond credulity of the
people to deplore, and even to exaggerate, the afflictions of the queen of cities. The
clergy, who applied to recent events the lofty metaphors of Oriental prophecy, were
sometimes tempted to confound the destruction of the capital, and the dissolution
of the globe.16

The catastrophe provoked much political soul-searching. What was its cause? Was it the
adoption of Christianity by the empire? The event was of profound ideological significance as it

12
Recent research shows that the idea of a Pelagian school or movement is probably an overstatement. So
“follower” should be minimally understood in the sense of participating in a mentality, a shared attitude or ethos. In
the articulation of this ethos Pelagius comes first and the author of On Riches builds on his ideas. See Lamberigts,
“Recent Research into Pelagianism,” 198.
13
Robert F. Evans, Four Letters of Pelagius (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1968), 24–31.
14
Peter Brown, Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (Hanover, NH: University Press of New Eng-
land, 2002), 112.
15
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 2 (London: Penguin, 1995), 201.
16
Gibbon, 207.

21
threatened emergent Imperio-Christian normative structures. To some in the Church all that had
been achieved since Constantine was in peril. But as the old “eternal” order tottered it was also a
moment of opportunity for those who sought different forms of political and spiritual order. The
most famous response to the catastrophe may have been Augustine’s The City of God against the
Pagans.17 But there were other responses. In his letter To Demetrias Pelagius himself asked

Where stood our order of nobility then? Where were the occupiers of the fixed, dis-
tinct grades of their hierarchy? Everything was thrown into confusion and disorder
by fear, in every home there was lamentation, and terror was spread through all
alike. Slave and noble were on the same footing: all saw the same image of death,
except that those whose life was more pleasant feared it more.18

He was concerned not so much by the sack of Rome but by what the Roman reaction to it
revealed of the moral health of the Christian Empire. The trauma exposed the weakness of con-
tingent normative structures, such as those rooted in the existing social hierarchy, while spiritual
equality endured. One follower of Pelagius took this analysis further to analyse the interrelation
between spiritual equality, sinfulness, and the structures of social normativity.
Sicily appears to have been a hotbed of radical Pelagianism in the years immediately after the
sack of Rome. In 415 Hilary of Syracuse wrote a panicky letter to Augustine seeking advice about
combating dangerous ideas that were abroad in Sicily at the time.19 He reported that some local
Christians argued

that a rich man who contrives to live rich cannot enter the kingdom of heaven unless
he sells all he has, and that it cannot do him any good to keep the commandments
while keeping his riches.20

Augustine gave him much advice in a lengthy response. The teachings on riches that Hilary
reports can also be found in the Pelagian letter On Riches, hence the conclusion that the letter
was either sent to or from this Sicilian Pelagian community. The letter is the most politically
radical Pelagian text that survives. Indeed, the inflammatory language of On Riches may have
prompted the Imperial edict of 30 April 418 whereby Pelagians were banished from Rome as a
threat to peace.21 What follows is an attempt to sketch the outlines of this most politically radical
expression of the Pelagian mentality. It is not its most representative expression but the chief
goal of this chapter is not represent the Pelagian mentality as such but to give a snapshot of one
of its manifestations. This should show how even in its most radical expression it is very different
from its pejorative representation in Augustinian texts.

17
Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
18
Rees, 69.
19
See Otto Wermelinger, Rom und Pelagius: Die theologische Position der römischen Bischöfe im pelagianischen
Streit in den Jahren 411–432 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1975), 29 ff.
20
Augustine, Letters vol. 3, trans. Sis. Wilfred Parsons SND (Washington DC: Catholic University of America
Press, 1953), 318. This is letter 156. Augustine’s reply is letter 157 (319–354). He defends the possession of riches at
340 ff. The best that can be said is that this passage is not one of Augustine’s better moments.
21
As suggested by Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (London: Penguin, 1990), 251.

22
 There is a recent line of thought that holds that Pelagian texts such as On Riches might be better
understood not as Pelagian texts at all but as expressions of mainstream Christian asceticism.22
At one level this does not affect the thrust of the argument of this chapter which is concerned with
exploring the content of the piece rather than determining its precise position in early Christian
thought. With regard to this latter task I defer to the historian. But I suspect there is a problem in
pigeonholing On Riches as simply a text in Christian asceticism. It certainly has ascetic aspects
but they are not what make the text distinctive. It is rather the political theology it expresses
that marks it out. On Riches is itself rich not when expressing a technology of the self, but when
exploring the radical social and political logic implicit in Christ’s teaching. Furthermore I suspect
the unpacking of this logic is intimately related to the themes of the core Pelagian texts.23

“On Riches”
The Epistula de divitiis contains positions and arguments that were radical even at the time of
the text’s rediscovery in the sixteenth century.24 But for the early fifth century they appear ex-
traordinary. This raises the question as to how widespread radical political ideas were at the
time. There is a tendency, based on the available evidence, to date significant political radicalism
to the Enlightenment with precursors on the fringes of the Reformation.25 On Riches raises the
possibility that sophisticated political radicalism has a far longer history. It is simply that little
evidence of it has survived. Naturally, given the lack of substantial evidence this remains specu-
lation. But it is a possibility that should at least be kept in mind when contemplating the history
of political thought and theology. And with On Riches there is at least some evidence for ancient
radicalism.
On Riches prompted John Morris to write:

The crisp argumentation that wealth and property had arisen in the past through
“oppression;” that the existence of the rich, the fact that society is divided into such
“genera,” is the cause of poverty, cruelty and violence; and that society should be
wholly reshaped, now and in its present substance, by abolishing the rich and redis-
tributing their property to the poor—is by any textbook definition socialism. Further
it is socialism of a coherence and urgency that was hardly to be met again before the
nineteenth century, or at earliest the end of the eighteenth.26

22
W. Liebeschuetz, “Did the Pelagian Movement Have Social Aims?” Historia 12 (1963): 227–241; Andreas
Kessler, Reichtumskritik und Pelagianismus: Die pelagianische Diatribe de divitiis: Situierung, Lesetext, Übersetzung,
Kommentar Paradosis 43 (Freiburg, Schweiz: Universität Verlag, 1999); Lamberigts, “Recent Research into Pelagian-
ism,” 180, and “Pelagius and Pelagians,” 261–2.
23
Regardless of this concern any deeper investigation into On Riches requires careful engagement with Kessler’s
work, and Lamberigts’ demand for further research into the relationship between quasi-Pelagian texts and wider
Christian asceticism must be wholeheartedly endorsed (Lamberigts, “Pelagius and Pelagians,” 274) .
24
The original text can be found at C. P. Caspari, Briefe, Abhandlungen und Predigten aus den zwei letzten Jahrhun-
derten des kirchlichen Altertums und dem Anfang des Mittelalters (Christiana: Mallingschen Buchdruckerei, 1890), 25–
67; R. S. T. Haslehurst, ed., The Works of Fastidius (London: The Society of SS. Peter and Paul, 1927), 30–107.
25
For example Murray Bookchin identifies the beginning of the revolutionary tradition with the late mediaeval
peasant revolts but things do not really get started for him until the 1640s. The Third Revolution: Popular Movements
in the Revolutionary Era, vol. 1 (London: Cassell, 1996), vii.
26
John Morris, “Pelagian Literature,” Journal of Theological Studies 16, no. 1 (1965), 50–51.

23
 Though Morris is broadly correct, there is the danger of treating the text in an anachronistic
or narrowly anticipatory manner. To repeat: the attempt is to sketch the faint outlines of one
example of the Pelagian mentality rather than directly claim the text and its contents for social-
ism, anarchism of any other form of modern political radicalism. Yet despite this aspiration the
very richness of the text itself works against any hermeneutic Puritanism.
A similar tension can be found in the ebb and flow of the text’s rhetorical structure. It takes
the form of an intervention in an existing conversation about the place of wealth in Christianity.
The rhetorical defences put up by two overlapping constituencies are considered: Christians who
defend, and entrench, their existing possession of riches, and those who seek to acquire riches. It
starts in sober and sophisticated, even sophistic, analysis but then anger builds up to a rhetorical
crescendo. The anger is prompted by the casual obscenity of everyday life. It is an obscenity
that is for the author rooted in both socially systemic sin and individual sinful acts. Morris
uses oppression instead of the usual sin to translate iniquitate.27 This can be misleading but this
misleading can also be useful. As will be explored below oppression follows from sin, usually
the sin of avarice. Sin, its effects, and its causes, are not confined to the individual will. They
are also social. Oppression can be useful in capturing this aspect of the Pelagian understanding
of sin. After these rhetorical eruptions of righteous indignation there comes a moment of calm
where wits are gathered. The discourse switches back from moral to intellectual intensity until
indignation builds again. “The argument,” Morris comments,

is built up with compromising logic, shot through with fierce moral indignation, but
relieved by stern dry humour, and culminates in a causal analysis quite alien to its
age.28

The central message of On Riches appears simple: the possession of riches prevents salvation.
This is an expansion of the message of Matthew 19:16–24 and other gospel passages. It lingers
on New Testament verses such as Matthew 19:21:

Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the
money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”29

But the novelty of the text does not lie in its defence of the virtue of poverty. The early Christian
valuing of poverty is well-known.30 What is striking is its analysis of the sources of sin and
injustice which it explores with both an incipient class analysis and a hard-headed anthropology.
In short, it is in the analysis of causal processes that the text’s significance can be found. And in
these processes spiritual, moral, political and economic causation are found to be intertwined if
not equivalent. There is an appreciation of both the questions of economics and of power. And
both are rooted in the sin of avarice.
On Riches opens with an exploration of the corrupting power of avarice in relation to that of
lust and gluttony. It is argued that greed/avarice is the most dangerous of the three as:
27
The passage in question is from section 7.5 of On Riches ( cf Rees, 182): Non dico, quod ipsae iniquitates sunt,
sed existimo, quod vel maxime ex inquitate descundunt. Haslehurst, 46.
28
Morris, 46–7.
29
The New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition: Anglicised Text has been used for this chapter.
30
See Brown, Poverty; Martin Hengel Property and Riches in the Early Church, trans. John Bowden (London:
SCM, 1974); Justo L. González, Faith and Wealth: A History of Early Christian Ideas on the Origin, Significance, and Use
of Money (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990).

24
 lust and gluttony are more easily overcome than avarice, because in their case sati-
ety arouses a certain feeling of repugnance, whereas avarice, since it is insatiable,
is never wholly repugnant to those who love it; rather, the more it increases the
more completely they love it … Greed is like a fire that derives its kindling from the
materials provided by worldly things.31

Here is recognition of the potentially pernicious logic of desire. It is a logic that, logically, can
never be satisfied. The starting point of the text is thus not a naïve view of the perfectibility of
human nature. It starts with an acknowledgement of the overwhelming power of desire. It is a
power that can enslave, and the excesses of which only a Christian can avoid through baptism
and a proper Christian life. Desire in itself is not bad. It can be formed as love. The Pelagian is
eager to counter the Origenist tendency to see life itself as a sin, and also the Manichean view of
matter as evil with which Augustine tarried prior to his conversion.32

Excursus: Avarice in Political Thought

Avarice is a vice that effects thought as well as action:

All human beings suffer from the vice of thinking that what they love is better than
anything else and of identifying deep down in their minds as the greatest good what
they espouse with such love that they become totally incapable of being separated
from it.33

It is striking to think of avarice as a vice of thinking as well as of desire. How one thinks
can then be as sinful as what one thinks about. Thus, even when one is thinking about virtuous
matters one might be sinning by thinking about them in a sinful manner. The sin of avarice can
then be understood as potentially resulting in corrupted political or theological thought.
It is often asserted that one of Pelagianism’s vices is that it is barely Christian and better
grasped as a thinly veiled version of Stoicism.34 In particular it is alleged that it depends on the
vulgar appropriation of the Stoic ethical goal of apatheia. Rist, for example, states that:

Pelagianism is a syndrome rather than a theory, at least in Augustine’s view. Its un-
derlying philosophical claim is an axiom of Greek philosophy and thought generally:
the possibility of heroic perfection in this life.35

31
Rees, 175. The distinction between greed and avarice can be ambiguous. Are they synonymous? Are they
both manifestations of warped desire with greed concerned with the physical and avarice the mental? Or is avarice
a particular manifestation of greed: greed for wealth and power? In this chapter avarice is understood as desire for
excessive wealth and power.
32
On Origen and Pelagius see Evans, 6–26.
33
Rees, 174. See John H. Beck, “The Pelagian Controversy: An Economic Analysis,” American Journal of Eco-
nomics and Sociology 66, no. 4 (2007): 681–696, for an examination of how economic self-interest might have con-
tributed to the attacks on the Pelagian mentality.
34
See especially Hanby. But see note 51 at 235 where Hanby is forced to admit that his claim of Pelagian conso-
nance with Stoicism is historically shaky.
35
John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 18.

25
 Augustine’s true “Pelagian” enemy is in fact not Pelagius but classical virtue.36 It is worth
considering for a moment the difference between Christian theology and philosophy before going
on to see if the Pelagian mentality greedily consumes forbidden Greek philosophy.
The excursus proper can begin with an examination of how the sin of avarice might manifest
itself in the practice of thinking both theologically and philosophically. Philosophy aspires to
human truth and knowledge. Even philosophies that hold that human truth and knowledge are
impossible orientate themselves with respect to this impossibility. They work out what follows
from the impossibility of truth and knowledge for thought and life. In a sense philosophical activ-
ity is defined as philosophical by the concern with truth and knowledge. Truth and knowledge
are desirable for human beings for at least two basic reasons. First each human being experi-
ences the world differently. They experience it as relative to themselves. This means that the
appearance of an object to me is on investigation revealed to be different from another’s expe-
rience of what is, in some sense, supposed to be the same object. Communicating with fellow
self-conscious creatures makes us aware of these differences.
Despite the fact that we experience life differently some manner of living together is required.
Social normativity is required. That is perhaps the most basic problem of political philosophy.
Together with the problem of different experiences comes the problem caused by disagreement.
This means that, even when different self-conscious creatures’ experiences appear similar enough
not to cause serious problems, the self-conscious creatures that we are still disagree about things.
This disagreement makes social life even more difficult.
There are many possible solutions to this problem. One can diminish the problem of difference
and disagreement by persuading everyone to accept a common standard. In this one puts aside
one’s personal experience and accepts the standard in order that difference and disagreement
cease to be severe problems. The philosopher thinks there are better and worse ways of positing
this standard and getting people to accept it. A way is better if the acceptance is deeper. For
example a better way would be if a person accepts that their perspective is not wrong but merely
perhaps distorted. If we think for a while one can see “how things really are, objectively” and
recognise that we were perhaps mistaken when we lived rooted in difference and disagreement.
This involves the recognition that there is a difference between personal opinion and experience
on the one hand, and truth and knowledge on the other. We accept knowledge as superior to our
immediate opinion and experience because knowledge is, say, justified true belief.
Now this is one possible superficial but still philosophical response to the problems of differ-
ence and disagreement. There are of course many more that are much more sophisticated. I
clumsily sketch it here only to contrast it with another response which, following On Riches, one
can understand as being rooted in avarice. In this response when faced with difference and dis-
agreement one does not try to uncover answers to the problem that are true or that would be
equally acceptable to all. Instead one takes one’s own experience, opinions, and values as given,
and then tries to impose them on everyone else, often by force. Personal opinion or prejudice
is elevated to the status of social normativity. One’s own experience (or that of a group such as
a social class) is imposed as the standard by which the experience of all is judged. This can be
done in a Machiavellian manner.37 But it can also be done unconsciously. Those who practice
36
See also: Paula Fredriksen, “Beyond the Body/Soul Dichotomy: Augustine on Paul against the Manichees and
the Pelagians,” Recherches augustiennes 23 (1988): 97–114.
37
Machiavellian understood not in a philosophical sense as referring directly to the thought of Niccolo Machi-
avelli but in the quotidian sense of unscrupulous and devious action.

26
this assume that what they think is of value is automatically of value to everyone else. They
might impose these values out of what they take to be charity or goodwill towards others. But in
fact it is actually avarice that is at work. These have forgotten, thanks to their avarice, the basic
philosophical problems of difference and disagreement and move too swiftly onto the problem
of how to establish their values which they have too swiftly taken to be effectively universal and
absolute. This swiftness is a prejudgement. They have decided too quickly what is of value to all.
They have simply decided and not thought carefully. In this they establish the good on the basis
of their prejudice. And prejudice is thoughtless opinion and thus far from truth and knowledge.
Prejudice cannot solve the problems raised by difference and disagreement. So a political system
will sooner rather than later have to rely on oppression to solve the problem of difference and
disagreement if it is rooted in prejudice.
Modern philosophers have struggled with this problem. For example Kant thought he could
solve it through the means of the transcendental deduction. One could deduce from one’s own
experience that which all human experience must have in common. Hegel thought that, while
Kant was on roughly the right track, this was just another case of the elevation of one’s personal
prejudices or particularities to the status of the universal, or in Kant’s case the transcendental.
Hegel felt that philosophy had to strive to avoid all prejudices if it were to be successful in dealing
with philosophical problems. He felt that philosophy should be presuppositionless.38 However,
Hegel’s approach threw up as many questions as it answered. Much modern Western philosophy
inhabits the terrain established by Kant’s and Hegel’s efforts and failures.
These problems are not the chief concern of the Christian theologian. They have an answer.
It is an irresistible answer for theologians in that if they resist it they cease in a profound sense
to be Christian theologians. Straightforwardly the answer for the Christian is of course God and
especially the incarnation of Jesus Christ. For the philosopher the “avaricious answer” to the
problem of difference and disagreement is a bad answer because it is philosophically incompe-
tent: it only exacerbates the problems it claims to be solving. For the Christian theologian it is
a bad, sinful, even evil, answer, because it is contrary to the teaching of Christ or divine law.
This puts the lie to the claim that Pelagianism is fundamentally a form of paganism or classical
philosophy, because it is rooted not in philosophical investigation but in its interpretation of the
teaching of Christ. Of course this is where problems start again. As soon as one has solved the
problem of difference and disagreement through Christ one is faced by the hermeneutic prob-
lem of how to correctly interpret the teaching of Christ. But this is a theological rather than
philosophical problem í though it should be recognised that there is nothing in the above that
means that philosophy and theology cannot be complimentary practices. This can be found in
the unproblematic and complementary relationship between theology and philosophy of religion.
Theology begins with axioms of a particular religion. Philosophy of religion should attempt to
proceed without unnecessary prejudgements or axioms. The two practices can enrich each other
if their basic differences are remembered.
On Riches is a theological text. It begins with avarice which is a sin according to God’s will and
law. It proceeds rigorously to unpack what is implied by the fact that avarice has a social aspect. It
thus swiftly becomes a political theology. It would be a category mistake to think of it as political
philosophy. But how is it essentially different from Augustinian political theology? Ultimately

38
On Kant: Michael N. Forster, Kant and Scepticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008). On Hegel:
Stephen Houlgate, The Opening of Hegel’s Logic (West Lafayette, In.: Purdue University Press, 2006), 29–42.

27
any authority they have as political theologies rests not directly on the rigour and logic of their
arguments, but on the question as to whether, and to what extent, their arguments are rooted in,
and draw nourishment from, the fundamental axiom of the Christian religion: the incarnation.
At the heart of Christian thought there are incarnational rather than transcendental deductions.
Of course the incarnation is not a logical principle or a simple proposition. It was a complex event
and thus opens up a number of possible deductions of greater and lesser validity. The Pelagian
allegation is that the Augustinian deduction misses a significant aspect of that event: the life
and teaching of Jesus Christ. The Augustinian accusation is that the Pelagian deduction misses a
different aspect of that event: the redemptive efficacy of crucifixion and resurrection; the absolute
majesty and sovereignty of the divine and the devastating consequences of the human rejection
of this majesty and sovereignty in the Fall. What should be noticed is that this is a dispute within
theology. The Augustinian has usually sought to represent it as an argument between theology
and philosophy, most recently between theology and Promethean modernity. Such arguments
certainly do exist but they are not the argument between the Augustinian and the Pelagian. This
is a misrepresentation that leaves the Augustinian interpretation of the incarnation unchallenged
as a theological interpretation. The whole motivation of the Pelagian mentality is to challenge the
perceived narrowness of this theological interpretation from within theology. It seeks to widen
it theologically to better grasp the full significance of the incarnation by paying more attention
to the life and teaching of Christ than to the more metaphysical mechanics of redemption. If the
Pelagian mentality is misunderstood as philosophical and not theological then it is drained of all
theological power. That is why if one only reads the Augustinian version of the dispute there
can be only one just and right winner: Augustine. But if one takes what actually survives of the
Pelagian mentality at face value as theology then the situation is much more complex.
This tension was conceptualised by Lessing as one between the religion of Christ and the Chris-
tian religion. “The former, the religion of Christ, is that religion which as man he himself recog-
nized and practiced.”39 This is the religion of the Pelagian mentality. It can be a radical religion
as the teaching of Jesus was radical. As Hegel noted “We may say that nowhere are to be found
such revolutionary utterances as in the Gospels.”40 The Augustinian mentality, as an example of
the Christian religion, focuses on the significance of the fact that Christ is Christ. This division is
also reflected in political theology. The religion of Christ tends towards a theology of community,
the Christian religion towards a theology of sovereignty.41 These tensions can be resolved by
recognising that both religions depend on the fact of the incarnation. They both capture aspects
of the incarnation. They are both examples of incarnational deduction. In this they are both
essentially Christian.42

39
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, “Nathan the Wise,” “Minna von Barnhelm,” and Other Plays and Writings, ed. Peter
Demetz. (New York: Continuum, 1991), 334–335. The relevant fragment dates from 1780. See also Giorgio Agamben,
The Time that Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2005), 124–126.
40
G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), 328.
41
On this distinction and its genealogy see Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, trans. Dana Hollander
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 140–142.
42
Perhaps a central theological task is to understand, without avarice, how these incarnational deductions relate?

28
Back to the Text
One can sense that the author wants to denounce riches and the rich as simply evil. But he, not
always entirely successfully, holds himself back. Perhaps he recognises that to do so would be
to indulge his own prejudice and thus succumb to the sin of conceptual avarice resulting in an
enslavement. So possessing riches is not the nub of the problem. It is rather how riches are
amassed that is the occasion for sin. However, the author wants to argue that this problematic
causation of riches permits him to condemn all riches and all those that riches possess. “I do not
know … how the fruit can be harmless in a tree whose flowers have grown from sin.”43 In this
the text follows 1 Timothy 6:9–10:

But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless
and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of
money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have
wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

It is in the desire for riches that the danger is to be found. Avarice is the root. A necessary,
but perhaps not sufficient, sign that somebody is no longer avaricious is that he is no longer rich.
This will be because he will have given away his possessions until he has only what he needs.
So it is not possession but coveting that is the problem with riches—though the author doubts if
“an avaricious man can be said to possess rather than be possessed.”44
This is straightforward but what is novel about the text is that the social implications of this
passage are unfolded. There is the recognition that the evil enabled is a social evil, and a social
evil that can, and should, be remedied. This is more than the early Christian valuing of poverty.
On Riches’ concern is not that everyone should be poor. From the perspective of combating
avarice poverty is not a goal in itself. True, those who are poor may suffer less temptation. But
it is not necessarily a state that the Christian should aspire to for its own sake. The logic of On
Riches leads onto the task of ensuring that poverty is abolished and that everyone has enough. It
proceeds by looking at the cause of poverty. The cause ultimately is greed but this is mediated
through a primitive class system. Poverty entails suffering inflicted on those who are poor, and
this suffering is caused directly or indirectly by the rich. Even the rich who are good cause the
poor to suffer through the social organisation that enables them to be rich. Hence the good rich
person is an illusion, whatever the apparent goodwill the rich person might have towards their
fellow creatures. How does this indirect infliction of suffering come about?

Mankind is divided into three classes: the rich, the poor, and those who have enough,
for every man must be accounted to be either rich or poor or self-sufficient. To be
rich, so far as my meagre understanding is able to determine, is to have more than is
necessary; to be poor is not to have enough; and to have enough, the mean between
these two extremes, is to possess no more than is absolutely necessary.45

The author is always aware that behind his analysis is avarice and behind avarice there is the
fact that humans desire. He states that by “sufficient, I mean, not for the demands of avarice
43
Rees, 176.
44
Rees, 175.
45
Rees, 177.

29
but for the needs of nature. For nothing can ever be sufficient for avarice, even if it possessed
the whole world.”46 He has an objective rather than subjective concept of poverty. Here the text
appeals to Proverbs 30:8: “Remove me far from falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty not
riches; feed me with the food that I need.” Behind this primitive class system lies the concept
of need. Poverty occurs where those needs are not satisfied. Poverty is a thing to be remedied.
There is no excessively ascetic, or naïve, valuing of poverty. Indeed, there is the admission that
“folly and knavery are to be found among the poor.”47 There is also, as ever for the Pelagian,
the example of Jesus who though he lived a frugal life always ensured that his followers had
enough to eat, hence the numerous feeding miracles in the Gospels. From the perspective of the
requirements for a basic decent human life this is not an asceticism. It is only ascetic if one views
it from a perspective of over-indulgence, from the perspective of being possessed by the desire
for excess, by the desire for riches and power. The concept of wealth deployed here should not be
understood in a narrow manner: “Riches are not gold or silver or any other created thing but the
superfluous wealth that is derived from unnecessary possessions.”48 Admittedly the definition of
what is necessary is left open but that is a subsidiary question.
These injunctions are rooted in the examination of the life and teaching of Christ. For the
Pelagian mentality the chief goal of the Christian life is to imitate Christ. As human beings
have freewill and are not entirely corrupted then this imitation is possible if extremely difficult
given the enslaving power of sin. The injunction found at 1 John 2:6 is appealed to: “whoever
says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk just as he walked.” Also Luke 14:27: “So therefore, none of
you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.” And most pertinently
Matthew 19:21: “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give to the poor, and you
will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The last passage was the focus of disputes
with Augustine. Augustine made much of the distinction between what is required to be good
and what is required to be perfect. He claimed that goodness, keeping the commandments, was
sufficient. For the Pelagian the aspiration to perfection is what really matters. If “ought implies
can” then perfection is possible for the human. Whatever the anthropological naivety of the
position, or the difficulty entailed in its achievement, the possible and desirable attainment of
human perfection is attributed to Christ himself in Matthew 19:21. For the Pelagian mentality
this means that whatever the effect of the Fall there is an obligation on the Christian to try to be
perfect and that there is no necessary reason why this state cannot be achieved by a Christian.
Augustine was wont to dismiss Pelagianism as nothing but “law and teaching.” But the role of
Christ as teacher is central to the Pelagian mentality as for it: “surely everyone who is called a
Christian professes that he is Christ’s disciple, and Christ’s disciple should follow his teacher’s
example in all things.”49 Human perfection is not about being divine. It is not promethean in that
sense. It means aiming for what Jesus described as human perfection. For the Pelagian human
perfection is existential, a way of living, a way of being Christian. It does not mean cohering to
something like an absolute platonic form of perfection. Human perfection is still far short of the
perfection of the divine.

46
Rees, 178.
47
Rees, 210.
48
Rees, 190–1.
49
Rees, 179.

30
The Perils of Avarice
Another crucial concern of the text that marks it out from some other early Christian ideas on
poverty is that it recognises that power as well as riches is an object of avarice, and thus both
are aspects of the same social and spiritual problem. In this one finds not only the concern with
economic organisation that anticipates socialism, but also a concern with the problem of power
that anticipates anarchism.

Note carefully, I beg you, what a great sign of arrogance and pride it is to want to
be rich when we know that Christ was poor, and to take upon ourselves any of the
power that comes with lordship when he took on the outward form of a servant.50

The author may have had a legal education, and this might well explain why his ire when it
comes to abuse of power is focused on the law. Then, as now, the overlap between the categories
of the rich, lawyers, and those who exercise political power was extensive. And there is no more
vicious critique of law and lawyers than that provided by the disillusioned lawyer:

the rich … are sometimes accustomed to solicit earthly power and to take their seat
upon the tribunal before which Christ stood and was heard. How intolerable is the
presumption of human pride … This is not the pattern given by your teacher. He
stood humbly before the tribunal; you sit on the tribunal, above those who stand
before you, propped up by your pride, perhaps about to judge a poor man. You
ask the questions, he was heard; you judge, he was subjected to a judge’s decision;
in your presumption you utter your judgement, in his innocence he received it, as
if guilty; he said that his kingdom was not of this world, but to you the glory of a
worldly kingdom is so desirable that you procure it at vast expense or acquire it with
unworthy and wearisome servitude and flattery.51

The text goes on to consider judicial evils and the hypocrisy of the willing inhabitants of legal
systems, such as those who claim they are only doing their duty when they inflict cruel tortures
on the accused, as if judges and lawyers were under weaker moral obligations than any other
member of society.52
The text then proceeds to counter the suggestion that inequality is either justified or even
divinely ordained. The author gives full rein to his rhetorical talents:

Observe whether the rich man enjoys the benefit of this air of ours more than the
poor, whether he feels the sun’s heat more or less, or, when rain is given to the
land, whether larger drops descend on the rich man’s soil than upon the poor man’s,
whether the glowing lights of the moon or the stars serve the rich man more than
the poor. Do you not see then that we possess equally with others all the things
which are not under our control but which we receive by God’s dispensation, and
on unjust and unequal terms only the things which are entrusted and subjected to
our own rule for the sake of free choice and to test our righteousness?53
50
Rees, 179.
51
Rees, 179 (emphases in the original).
52
Pelagians had such suspicion of the legal system that they were encouraged not to swear oaths. See Rees, 205.
53
Rees, 183.

31
 Thus inequality is the result of the exercise of human freewill. There is equality before the
divine law: “Let us see if there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, if the former are
reborn by one kind of baptism and the latter by another.”54 To those who claim that the virtue
of charity would be meaningless in a just society he notes that spiritual perfection is the highest
goal. Charity is but one step towards that goal and one should not sacrifice the end for the sake
of a temporary means.
Towards the end of the text there is a mellowing of sorts. As the author draws back from his
rhetorical heights there is an acceptance that riches themselves might be without evil. But this
point is still conceded reluctantly and it is a position that is still far from perfection if not entirely
sinful.

Not that they [riches] are sin in themselves but that they offer an occasion of sin so
long as they are acquired by evil means or are possessed improperly, or the cares
attached to them give rise to neglect of the heavenly commandments or result in a
need to commit crimes more often.55

Even in the unlikely event that their riches are not impure then their example will encourage
others to sin in their search for riches.56 When others see the rich person they will seek to
imitate him. They will seek to amass riches themselves. Even the innocent possession of riches
then has a sadistic aspect. While it might leave the possessor’s subjectivity untainted by sin, it
tempts others into the path of sin as they succumb to their desire for riches. Here the role of
mimetic desire is acknowledged to remove the final argumentative citadel of those who defend
the possession of excessive wealth and power.

It is difficult to acquire riches without committing every kind of evil … How can
we imagine that something which is acquired by such a variety of crimes has the
sanction of God?57

The text concludes by returning again to the perils of greed:

For what wise or sensible man would doubt that greed is the occasion of all evils, the
root of crimes, the fuel of wrongdoing, the source of transgressions? … For its sake
the earth is daily stained with innocent blood.58

It corrupts every good feature of human nature. It corrupts even one’s sense of one’s own
nature. Greed prompts one to seek to become not what one truly is, but the opposite of what
one truly is. “And so in his wretchedness, in his desire to cease to be the man he is, the worse he
becomes the better he thinks he is.”59 All valuations are inverted. Even the criteria of political
wrong-doing become corrupted resulting in the righteous indignation displayed when those who
feel absolutely entitled to riches and power (by divine right?) are criticised.
54
Rees, 184.
55
Rees, 206.
56
Rees, 207.
57
Rees, 199.
58
Rees, 199.
59
Rees, 200 (emphases in the original).

32
 Listen to him [the rich man] saying, “Just look at him, outcast, ragamuffin, and base-
born; and h e is the one who dares to say anything in the presence of people in our
position and, in his rags and tatters, to discuss our morals and conduct and to try to
disturb our consciences and force them to recognize the truth by rational debate!”
As if the rich alone were permitted to speak, and riches, rather than thought, had
the right to reason out the truth!60

Here spiritual egalitarianism meets the egalitarianism of the careful and carefree exercise of
reason well over a millennium before the Enlightenment. Here the right to philosophy and free
expression is as much a part of a just society as economic justice.

The Church
Social evils have roots in the unjust distribution of wealth and power, but also, and more funda-
mentally, in the un-resisted distortion of human subjectivity through greed. And this distorted
subjectivity seeks to make itself as one with social normativity, especially as embodied in human
law:

through false interpretation of the law and the use of every stratagem which their
natural wit can devise, to protect what they love, not so much ordering their con-
duct according to the precepts of the gospel as modifying their understanding of the
commandments of the gospel to suit their habitual actions. What they want is not
so much to submit their way of life to the law as to subordinate law to the way in
which they conduct their own lives.61

But this subjectivity is always social. And for the Pelagian Christian sociality is the Church.
Peter Brown, the most astute investigator here, reminds us that what is essentially at stake in
the Pelagian dispute is the idea of the Church as the community of all Christians. The Church is
the institutional name for the being-together of those who are Christians.

The Pelagian’s sense of the free will enjoyed by the Christian, his promises of perfec-
tion, his inexorable insistence on obedience to the just law of God—all this is firmly
based on a distinctive idea of the Church. For Pelagius and the Pelagian the aim
remained not to produce the perfect individual, but, above all, the perfect religious
group … Thus the most marked feature of the Pelagian movement is far from being
its individualism: it is its insistence that the full code of Christian behaviour, the
Christian Lex, should be imposed, in all its rigours, on every baptised member of the
Catholic Church: “There is one law for all …”62

The life of Jesus is the regulative ideal of the life of the Christian and of the Christian com-
munity. It is only within the Church that free will can be enjoyed. Not any human can achieve
human spiritual perfection. Conversion and baptism are required before this is even possible. As
Brown explains
60
Rees, 200.
61
Rees, 204.
62
Brown “Pelagius and his Supporters,” 102.

33
 there is no out-and-out naturalism in Pelagius, for the simple reason that the man
who has recovered his natural capacity to act, inside the Christian Church, is discon-
tinuous with any “natural” man outside the Church.63

The Pelagian mentality is rooted in a sober awareness of the corruptibility of human nature.
This corruptibility is itself an effect of the fluidity and fragility of created human subjectivity.
Yet it is this very fluidity and fragility that also allows this subjectivity to be enhanced, even
perfected. This is achieved immediately by the exercise of the human will.

His criticism of the doctrine of original sin, therefore, was determined by the fear
that once a sin was regarded as “natural” rather than “voluntary” it would be allowed
to survive the geological fault between a man’s past and his present that Pelagius
associated with conversion and with the rite of baptism.64

Original sin can belittle what it is to become and be a Christian.

The Pelagian naivety is not anthropological naivety. It is the deliberate and unapologetic
naivety of their faith that Christ was Christ.

Augustine’s support was thrown on the side of toleration for human shortcomings,
not so much in private morality (for the Church of his day had stern disciplinary stan-
dards) as in a broader structural way; by resisting too close a scrutiny of the actions
of the Church and the Empire and the implications of their mutual involvement.65

Divine sovereignty and its just exercise are a given for the Pelagian. But the organisation
of worldly economic and political power is not a given. What the worldly pattern of social,
economic and political power should be follows from the logic implicit in the life and teachings
of Jesus. But it is up to the Christian to work to ensure that this organisation comes to pass.

Augustine, in a scrupulous examination of his abiding weaknesses, in his evocation

of the life-long convalescence of the converted Christian, had tacitly denied that it
was ever possible for a man to slough off his past: neither baptism nor the experience
of conversion could break the monotonous continuity of a life that was “one long
temptation.” In so doing, Augustine had abandoned a great tradition of Western
Christianity. It was Pelagius who had seized the logical conclusions of this tradition:
he is the last, the most radical, and the most paradoxical exponent of the ancient
Christianity—the Christianity of discontinuity.66

With the passing of this vision the clergy asserted control. The Church became in practice
less than the community of all spiritually equal Christians. It became an institution with all its
hierarchies and powers, rather than a being-together. So that for Brown finally: “The significance
63
Brown “Pelagius and his Supporters,” 103.
64
Brown “Pelagius and his Supporters,” 105.
65
Eugene TeSelle, Augustine the Theologian (London: Burns & Oates, 1970), 273. At 274 TeSelle goes so far as
to admit that this “does disclose a tragic flaw in his personality, for unlike Ambrose he was not prepared to stand up
against civil authority.” The words submissive and cowardice are even deployed.
66
Brown “Pelagius and his Supporters,” 107.

34
of the death of Pelagianism, therefore, lies in the idea of the Church in Western society.”67 And
with this the “laity sinks into the background.”68 Something was lost.

A Radical Political Theology

To conclude: On Riches expresses a Christian political theology. It is not pagan or Stoic. It is
rooted in an understanding of the incarnation. It orientates itself with respect to the question of
how a Christian life can be lived. It struggles with the problem of how desire can be more than
greed and avarice—can even be love—can even undertake the work of justice. The Christian life
can be different from other lives because of the break wrought by baptism. Baptism invigorates
and enables the free will in its struggle with sinful habit. Baptism is what enables the will to will
freely. But the free will must be complemented by a free and equal society. Personal spiritual
virtue alone is not sufficient for the Christian life or the Christian society—a society that aspires
to, and actively works toward, being without avarice—a Christian community that aspires to be
Christian in the sense of behaving as Christ instructed his followers to behave.
More tendentiously I have suggested that the text implicitly opens up the relation between
what is thought politically and how it is thought. Consider anarchism, which of the modern po-
litical philosophies might appear ideologically closest to the Pelagian mentality. Anarchism can
be, and indeed often is, conceptualised or defined dogmatically. Certain values might be taken
as axiomatic: the overriding value of the particularity of each human subject, and of the liberty
and equality of such subjects; scepticism concerning the desirability and efficacy of any authori-
tarian form of political organisation, and so on. This would be recognisably anarchism. But there
is a danger of a performative contradiction here as it is a dogmatic definition of anarchism, and
I submit that there is something in anarchism that finds dogmatism to be absolutely foreign to
its basic sensibility, to its mentality. For the Pelagian dogmatism is implicitly an expression of
avarice if the dogmas are not given by Christ (and not only greed but other sins such as pride).
Is not dogmatism a “sin” for the anarchist? I use “sin” well aware of how problematic a use it
is. But if dogmatism is problematic to the anarchist because it entails arbitrary assertion that
without justification seeks to arrogate the authority of social normativity to itself then can it not
be understood as the expression of avarice? Such an awareness can enrich not only anarchist
thinking, but any political thinking.
Does the Pelagian mentality matter to those who are not Christian, to those who do not ac-
cept the incarnation as axiomatic for life? Radical political thought is always about more than
the setting forth of a programme, more than the diagnosis of the ills of a society, more than the
sketching of the architecture of a just polity. It should also be about the education of political
desire (not political avarice) and the expansion of the social imaginary. This is not a question of
positing the impossible but realistically and rigorously both exploring and expanding the ever
changing limit of the possible. As a result the politically “possible but difficult” cannot erro-
neously be posited as politically impossible. These two practical aspects: the political/critical
and the pedagogic/utopian should enrich each other. The Pelagian mentality as it is expressed in
On Riches may as political/critical be exclusively theological, but as pedagogic/utopian it bears
witness to the fact that in the early fifth century there was a fearless political imagination that
67
Brown “Pelagius and his Supporters,” 113.
68
Brown “Pelagius and his Supporters,” 114.

35
rigorously followed its own logic to demand the spiritual and material transformation of both
self and world. Its like would not be found again for many a century.

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Ferguson, John. Pelagius: A Historical and Theological Study. Cambridge: Heffer, 1956.
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37
CHAPTER TWO. A THEOLOGY OF
REVOLUTIONS: ABIEZER COPPE AND THE
USES OF TRADITION
PETER PICK
This chapter attempts to place Abiezer Coppe in his historical and social context and outline some
of the strategies he employs to justify both his theological positions and his actions. The main focus
is on Coppe’s use of the Bible as both a supporting text and a template for action. In Coppe’s hands
the Bible becomes a storehouse of subject positions and narrative resources which are used to support
highly heterodox doctrines and activities. Coppe thereby exposes and exploits contradictions within
the text and in the uses made of it in contemporary political discourse. I seek to show that Coppe
was an anarchist at a time when even “democracy” was thought contemptible, and to show the
reasoning underlying his position. Both sides in the English Civil War used Biblical precedent and
religious doctrine as a support for their conflicting positions, which itself opened the text to further
strategic reading, and Coppe’s education and training equipped him to understand the unstable and
contingent nature of the text itself, a text full of conflicting opinions which had been subject to more
than 1,000 years of interpretation and commentary and yet was held to represent—indeed to be—
unchanging and eternal truth. In contrast to the assumptions and accommodations of orthodoxy
Coppe stresses God’s unlimited and arbitrary power and adopts Pelagian and Joachite positions.
The Bible becomes a weapon against all earthly authority, an unstable document of multi-valent
interpretation in a time of profound political and religious instability.
My chapter will attempt to place Abiezer Coppe in his historical and social context and outline
some of the strategies he employs to justify both his theological positions and his behaviour. My
focus is on his use of the Bible as both supporting text and template for action. In Coppe’s
hands it becomes a storehouse of subject positions and narrative resources which are used to
support highly heterodox doctrines and activities. Thus Coppe exposes and exploits inherent
contradictions both within the text and in the uses made of Biblical texts to support authority in
contemporary political discourse.
That both sides in the English Civil War used Biblical precedent and religious doctrine as
means of support for their conflicting positions opened the Bible to strategic reading, and Coppe’s
education and training equipped him to understand the unstable and contingent nature of the
text itself, a text full of conflicting opinions and different viewpoints which was subject both to
the vagaries of translation and to more than 1,000 years of interpretation and commentary and
yet was held to represent—indeed to be—unchanging and eternal truth.
In contrast to the assumptions and accommodations of orthodoxy Coppe stresses God’s unlim-
ited and arbitrary power and adopts positions that might show Pelagian and Joachite influence.1
1
Pelagius was a British monk of the fifth century who taught that God, in requiring men to behave perfectly,
could not be asking the impossible of them. He therefore denied original sin and instead emphasised free will. This

38
Coppe’s theological studies will have allowed him access to such authors and their controversial
positions, an access not available to the majority of his contemporaries, radical or not.2
The English Civil War, sometimes also called the “English Revolution” and its immediate
aftermath—the Commonwealth or Protectorate—took place from 1642 to 1660, whereupon
Monarchy was re-imposed, or, as the English like to say “restored.” Even after all this time the
period remains the site of much conflict, though fortunately this is now confined largely to
historians. The middle of the seventeenth century was a crucial time in English, British and Irish
cultural history, and it is at this time that Abiezer Coppe, seemingly the child of a respectable
Presbyterian family who was undergoing a highly privileged education at the University of
Oxford (then as now a fairly conservative institution) turned radical preacher, first within the
“New Model Army” of Oliver Cromwell and then freelance, wandering the counties of the West
Midlands.3
That there was much radical religious and political activity during this time is well known
through the work of such authors as Christopher Hill, and the best known movements or ten-
dencies of the period in rough chronological order include the “Levellers” (who spent much of
their effort denying that they intended a “levelling of estates” in seventeenth century terms), the
“Diggers” (who in contrast call themselves “True Levellers”) the “Ranters” (who many histori-
ans deny even the existence of) and the “Quakers” (who still prefer to be called “the Religious
Society of Friends”).4 It should be noted that all these names, now fixed by years of use, were
originally terms of abuse coined by their opponents, tokens in a propaganda war. Abiezer Coppe
himself was what is called a “Ranter.” Even those who repudiate the existence of the Ranters as
a movement, church or coherent theological grouping could scarcely deny that.5
To treat these movements briefly, the Levellers were an increasingly well-organised campaign-
ing movement which attempted to push the Parliamentary leadership towards greater reforms
than they had ever intended. They gained popular support especially in London and later in
the New Model Army, and some degree of influence through pamphleteering, rallies, “agitation”
and lobbying within the increasingly numerous and influential Independent religious groupings—
“gathered churches”—disaffected with mainstream religious practice, especially the Baptists and
the Presbyterians. Increasing radicalism led to the Levellers losing the support of the Presbyteri-
ans (who had authoritarian tendencies) and most Baptists, and attempts to raise a mutiny in the
Army were crushed by Cromwell after attempts at negotiation had largely failed in the famous
“Putney Debates” of October 1647.6 For many it must now have seemed that whatever gains the
struggle with the King had promised they would not accrue to those who had borne the brunt of
it.

apparently liberal position nevertheless led him to condemn all who sin in the slightest; they are damned and should
be expelled from the Church. “Such severity is only too characteristic of ‘universal’ perfectibilists. If all men can be
perfect, given only that they seriously try, it [ sic] a short step to the conclusion that they deserve damnation—or
execution—for not being perfect.” John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (London: Duckworth, 1972), 95.
2
For Joachim of Fiore, see below, note 46.
3
Nigel McDowell, “A Ranter Reconsidered: Abiezer Coppe and Civil War Stereotypes,” in The Seventeenth Cen-
tury 12, no 1 (Spring 1997): 173–205.
4
For example, Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975).
5
Principally J. C. D. Clark, Revolution and Rebellion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
6
Pre-eminently A. S. P. Woodhouse, ed., Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647–9) from the
Clarke Manuscripts, with Supplementary Documents (London: J. M. Dent, 1938).

39
 Not all shared this pessimism, however. The failure of the Levellers to force universal male
suffrage or relieve the burdens of those less privileged in a relatively immobile society led to
the direct action movement known as the Diggers. These agricultural communalists seized land
that had been enclosed and began to farm it, most famously at St. George’s Hill in Surrey. Their
chief propagandist, prophet, ideologue or mystic Gerrard Winstanley shared much of the Leveller
affection for Saxon common law and combined it with visionary Christianity in a series of poetic
pamphlets. Describing the earth as “a common treasury” he opposed the private ownership of
land and property which he equated with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of
Eden.
Like Gerrard Winstanley both Abiezer Coppe and the Quakers felt that a new age was dawning,
perhaps indeed that of the direct rule of Christ on Earth. All felt justified and driven, even “called”
to enact their beliefs, to instantiate the community and Christian charity they envisaged as the
ideal society. Coppe’s ecstatic prophecies in A Fiery Flying Roll (1649/50) explicitly predict the
end of all power, not just the power of the recently beheaded King, “your forerunner who is gone
before you” but of all those who seek dominion over others, the “great ones.”7
The ferment of radical ideas set loose by the Civil Wars and the symbolic and actual behead-
ing of the body politic threatened the very Parliamentary Grandees whose argument with King
Charles’ autocratic rule and Catholicising religious tendencies had initiated the conflict. The lack
of a King threw the question of government wide open, and many sought historical precedents in
Roman and particularly Biblical history for ways to proceed. The equal and simultaneous lack of
a centrally controlled National Church also threw open the question of what constituted proper
theology and forms of worship. The breakdown of pre-licensing and central control over publi-
cation which was a direct result both of the conflict and the propaganda war accompanying it led
to an unprecedented flood of publication, one of the richest periods of independent production
ever seen in England. Sections of society previously assumed to be illiterate reveal in unlicensed
print cogent and forceful opinions often of a heterodox religious and millenarian nature.
The Ranters were only one of a profusion of sects recorded, abused and perhaps invented in
sensationalist pamphlets by Puritan moralists, but Coppe was singled out for special attention.8
His period of preaching in London in 1649 where he set himself up as “a signe, and a wonder,” the
messianic tone of A Fiery Flying Roll and his status as a renegade member of the nascent ruling
class might all have contributed to his arrest and imprisonment by order of Parliament itself.9 A
Fiery Flying Roll was ordered to be burned by the hangman. Coppe claims in his first “retraction”
(a notably incomplete apology called “A Remonstrance of the Sincere and Zealous Protestation”)
that the two Blasphemy Acts of 1650 “were put out because of me.”10 The unique flavour of
Coppe’s most notorious work A Fiery Flying Roll, in a time that produced a gigantic outpouring
of pamphlet literature of all persuasions is at least partly encoded within its structure, so hedged
about by interpolations, predictions and introductions as to make the act of first reading the
text seem itself like a repetition. The promised secret seems endlessly deferred, and indeed it
has already been stated, the process of deferral is a ritual, a baptism, the text an invocation

7
Abiezer Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” in Abiezer Coppe: Selected Writings, ed. Andrew Hopton (London: Aporia
Press, 1987), 22.
8
Thomas Edwardes , Gangraena, 3 vols. (London) (1646).
9
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 32.
10
Abiezer Coppe, “A Remonstrance of the Sincere and Zealous Protestation,” in Abiezer Coppe: Selected Writings,
ed. Andrew Hopton (London: Aporia Press, 1987), 58.

40
so enmeshed in repetitions that the contents pages and chapter headings sometimes exceed in
detail the subject of their advertisement. This is a text of hints and elisions, of, as John Dury
observes later, insinuations.11 Its structure subverts expectation, mixing denunciation, prophecy
and biographical narrative with an extensive array of marginal notes, learned references and
Latin tags: all the paranoid accoutrements of the academic text.
A Fiery Flying Roll is from the outset a double work, containing its own supplement (there is
included in the original publication a second part) and commentaries. It begins with a title page
announcing the work as “A Word from the Lord to all the Great Ones,” proceeds to a preface,
which is followed by a detailed account of the contents of both subsequent “Rolls.” The first
Roll (or book) begins with a reiteration of the title page and then proceeds again to recount
the forthcoming contents of the body of the text, which is a series of threats to the powerful
delivered in the voice of God. The structure is of Chapters divided into verses, plainly modelled
on the Bible. Each Chapter is preceded and prefigured by an account of its contents which differs
slightly from that already given in the introductory account in the contents pages.
Coppe’s greatest point of divergence from the majority of the pamphlet literature stirred up
by the Civil War derives from his academic training. The great outpouring of unlicensed pub-
lication over this period derives in large part from areas of society that have traditionally been
considered by historians to be illiterate; small farmers, artisans and suchlike who had previously
been denied the means to publish their opinions, or to otherwise preserve whatever writings they
might have made. Historians are forced to rely on written records, and since central licensing of
publication prevented anyone not explicitly approved by authority from publishing and poverty
and obscurity inhibit the preservation of the written word it has been generally assumed that
the vast majority of the population was illiterate (and thus in a very real sense beneath notice).
Reading is thought to have been more common than the ability to write, as the skills were taught
separately, but it is generally thought that the artisan and smallholder were functionally illiterate
throughout history until the late eighteenth century. This assumption is thrown into doubt by
the evidence of this window of unrestricted publication, within which many who have had no
access to formal education produce cogent and often eloquent accounts of their beliefs, desires
and expectations.12
Coppe is not one of these peasant prophets. He attended Oxford University and received the
benefit of tuition in theology and the classical languages, even it seems a little Hebrew. He
recounts a personal history in which a youth once tormented by his own sinfulness throws the
burden of Calvinist guilt aside and comes to violate social norms, to transgress. At this time he
is already an itinerant preacher, the once respectable Presbyterian is already among the most
free of the Baptists according to Richard Baxter.13 He is a married man, he preaches to scattered
sympathisers he reaches on horseback and from whom he must be somehow collecting funds. He
goes to London, where he preaches in the streets, charging down carriages filled with notorious
cavaliers by his own account and getting into a trouble for making a disturbance at a “gathered
church,” probably strict Baptists not attracted by Coppe’s ecstatic liberation. He falls ill, he sweats,
he has visions, he experiences a sudden and imperative call to “write, write write”—he borrows
11
Coppe, “A Remonstrance of the Sincere and Zealous Protestation,” 86.
12
Recent research, led by that of David Cressy, has suggested that rates of literacy were greater in the period
than had previously been assumed. See David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and
Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
13
Richard Baxter, Plain Scripture Proof (London: Robert White, 1651), 148.

41
his commission from the Lord in part from Isaiah, to whom he also seems to owe a good deal
stylistically.14
Coppe’s expressed doctrines, although somewhat obscured by the heated tone and convoluted
style of A Fiery Flying Roll are distinctly anarchist in tone. They are less authoritarian than
Winstanley became over time, but share a repeated stress on communality. “True communion,”
according to Coppe is to be found in the breaking of bread together, and true religion in not think-
ing of what you have as your own.15 He pours scorn on any religious practice which concentrates
on the formalities of religion rather than this essential charity.
It is difficult to accurately backdate our current political positions onto a previous era. The
maps we use to navigate our modern-day political landscape distort the image of the past. To
describe Winstanley as a communist or Coppe as an anarchist poses such difficulties, since among
other factors we are looking back at an era when most political discourse was framed in religious
terms, and most political positions were defended on theological grounds. Coppe’s conviction
that the millennium is imminent is intimately connected to his communalist demands.

The time’s coming, yea now is, that you shall not dare to say, your silver or your
gold is your owne.
It’s the Lords.
You shall not say it is your own, lest the rust of it rise up in judgement against you,
and burn your flesh as it were fire.
Neither shall you dare to say, your oxe, or your asse is your owne.
It’s the Lords.16

Coppe is taking up the prophecy of James Chapter 5 here, which begins:

Go to now, ye rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you.
Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth eaten.
Your gold and your silver are rusted; and their rust shall be a testimony against you,
and shall eat your flesh as fire.17

Coppe continues:

All your former sweets shall be mingled with gall and wormwood. I give you but a
hint.
It’s the last daies.18

14
Part of Coppe’s autobiographical account is to be found in the Preface of “A Fiery Flying Roll,” Coppe, “A
Fiery Flying Roll,” 17. His “commission to write” is also given at the beginning of the second part of “A Fiery Flying
Roll,” Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 36. A further autobiographical account is given in the early part of Abiezer Coppe,
“Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth” in Abiezer Coppe: Selected Writings, ed. Andrew Hopton (London: Aporia
Press, 1987), 67–70. His behaviour in London is alluded to in Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 42–43, Chapter V of the
second Roll. His conflict with the Anabaptist “churches” is recounted in Chapter VI of the first Roll, Coppe, “A Fiery
Flying Roll,” 32–34.
15
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 50–51.
16
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 48.
17
James 5:1–3. King James Version.
18
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 48.

42
 “Gall and wormwood” are mentioned by Isaiah, and in the following excerpt it is clear how
Coppe’s text interpenetrates with Biblical models, in this case James 5, as above:
Howl, howl, ye nobles, howl honourable, howl ye rich men for the miseries that are
coming upon you.
For our parts, we that hear the APOSTLE preach, will also have all things common;
neither will we call any thing that we have our own.
Do you [if you please] till the plague of God rot and consume what you have.
We will not, wee’l eat our bread together in singlenesse of heart, wee’l break bread
from house to house.19
In verse 2 of A Fiery Flying Roll he claims that “that excellent Majesty, which dwells in the
writer of this Roule hath reconciled ALL THINGS to himselfe” but
sword levelling or digging-levelling are neither of them his principle … although he
hath more justice, righteousnesse, truth, and sincerity, shining in those low dung-
hils (as they are esteemed) then in the Sunne, Moone, and all the Stars.20
This praises the Levellers and the Diggers in high terms, and also, even more controversially
perhaps, makes two claims about God, the first that he dwells within Coppe (the writer of this
roule) and that everything is equal in his view. Coppe was later forced to justify this first claim
in his first prison retraction A Remonstrance of the Sincere and Zealous Protestation.
I do not vainly, ignorantly, and blasphemously affirm myself, or any other meer
creature, to be very God: neither was this Tenent (or any of the rest that follow)
ever mine.
But this I have and do affirm, and shall still upon the house tops affirm, and shall
expire with the wholesome sound, and orthodoxal opinion That God Christ is in
the creature.
[——— CHRIST IN YOU except you are reprobates, 1 Cor]
The contrary assertion is the Blasphemie of Blasphemies, &c.21
The language he adopts here not only echoes Biblical models, but also utilises the text of the
Blasphemy Acts of 1650. He also uses the Bible in order to justify his apparently eccentric be-
haviour. The Bible provides him with a range of narratives, behaviours and subject positions
with which he can make identification. In A Fiery Flying Roll he frequently adopts the voice of
God, a voice so closely allied to his own that his act of ventriloquism exceeds that of the Hebrew
Prophets from whom it is derived.
Thus saith the Lord, I inform you, that I overturn, overturn, overturn. And as the Bish-
ops, Charles, and the Lords, have had their turn, overturn , so your turn shall be next
(ye surviving great ones) by what Name or Title soever dignified or distinguished)
who ever you are, that oppose me, the Eternall God, who am UNIVERSALL Love,
and whose service is perfect freedome, and pure Libertinisme.22
19
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 50.
20
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 22.
21
Coppe, “A Remonstrance of the sincere and zealous Protestation,” 60 (Coppe’s emphasis).
22
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 21–22 (Coppe’s emphasis).

43
 “Pure Libertinisme” is something more than freedom, it suggests that any act is permitted to
the elect.
The nature and root of this “pure Libertinisme” is revealed more clearly in Chapter 2, verse 7
of A Fiery Flying Roll where Coppe announces:

That sinne and transgression is finished, it’s a mere riddle … some there are who …
see no evill, think no evill, doe no evill, know no evill.
ALL is religion that they speak and honour that they do.23

And further: “Well! To the pure all things are pure.”24

In his second prison retraction, the much fuller and more detailed Copp’s Return to the wayes
of TRUTH he is forced to affirm the reality of sin, but the sins he chooses to emphasise seem
unlikely to offer great comfort to his accusers.25

All are Sinners.

Thieves, little thieves, and great thieves, drunkards, adulterers, and adulteresses.
Murtherers, little murtherers, and great murtherers. All are Sinners, Sinners
All…
As is written, there is none righteous; no, not one;—there is none that doth good; no,
not one.26

EVERY ONE loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards—

And now O my God, I am ashamed, and blush to lift up my face, to thee my God. For
we have sinned.
We, our Kings, our Rulers. Our Priests, our Judges.
All have sinned, and gone astray.
Do sin, are sinners.
Wo be to the inhabitants of the Earth—-
The EARTH is full of sin.
There is sin, sin with a witness.27

… murther of all sorts, is a sin.

Whether men imagine it to be so, or no.
And so is pride, covetousness, hypocrisie, oppression, Tyranny, cruelty, unmerciful-
nesse, despising the poor and needy, who are in vile raiment, &c.
A sin.
Whether men imagine it to be so, or no.
And so is doing unto others, as we would not be done to ourselves, &c.
A sin.
23
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 27.
24
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 27.
25
Abiezer Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth” in Abiezer Coppe: Selected Writings, ed. Andrew Hopton
(London: Aporia Press, 1987), 63–97.
26
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 74.
27
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 75.

44
 Whether men imagine it to be so, or no.
And the laying of Nets, Traps, and Snares for the feet of our neighbours, is a sin.
Whether men imagine it to be so, or no.
And so is the not undoing of heavy burthens, the not letting the oppressed go free:
the not breaking every yoak, and the not dealing of bread to the hungry, &c.28

It should be noted that the recurring refrain in this excerpt “Whether men imagine it to be so,
or no. ” is derived from the letter sent to Coppe by his Parliamentary inquisitor John Dury and
reprinted in Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth.29 It is clear I think that Coppe intentionally
chooses examples of sinfulness which he feels can be directed at Dury and the Parliamentarians
he represents.
Although he denies contemptuously that God dwells exclusively within any creature, or that
any “meer creature” is God, Coppe continues to maintain a doctrine of “filiation,” whereby

We are partakers of the divine nature.

Through that glorious, Mystical, unfathomable, Spiritual union which we have with
Christ, and his in-dwelling in us, &c.30

And being in him dwels ALL the fullness of the God-head bodily——&c.
Of his fullness we all receive, Joh.1.Colos.
Whereof I say, of and from, and through him—–through mystical, spiritual, filiation,
fraternity, unity and in-dwelling. We are partakers in the Divine nature.31

In A Fiery Flying Roll part 1, Chapter 2, verse 15 he hints at his belief in a new dispensation.

Never was there such a time since the world stood, as now is.
Thou knowest not the strange appearances of the Lord now a daies. Take heed, know
thou hast been warned.32

Coppe makes this striking comparison between different sorts of morality, the kind of obser-
vation common among adolescents:

… we (holily) scorn to fight for anything: we had as live be dead drunk every day
of the weeke and lie with whores i’ the market place, and account these as good
actions as taking the poore abused, enslaved ploughmans money from him (who is
almost everywhere undone, and squeezed to death; and not so much as that plaguy,
unsupportable, hellish burden, and oppression, of Tythes taken off his shoulders,
notwithstanding all his honesty, fidelity, Taxes, Freequarter, petitioning &c. for the
same,) we had rather starve, I say, then take away his money from him for killing of
men.33
28
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 90 (Coppe’s emphasis).
29
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 85–87.
30
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 93 (Coppe’s emphasis).
31
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 93 (Coppe’s emphasis).
32
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 28.
33
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 24–25.

45
 Here Coppe attacks the tithes collected by the Church as well as the added financial burdens of
the Civil War and balances an extreme example of purely sexual immorality against the repressive
financial and political impositions of the governing class.
Coppe defends his eccentric behaviour in London (some of which he recounts in A Fiery Fly-
ing Roll with a mixture of bravado and astonishment)34 by reference to the “many” “pranks” of
Ezekiel,35 who “was more seraphicall than his Predecessors” and, Coppe recounts was “the son
of contempt; it pleases me [right well] that I am his brother.”36
This involves a well-understood Biblical precedent for strange but “prophetic” symbolic ac-
tions. Such behaviour might contain a divine message. Coppe invokes Isaiah at the beginning of
A Fiery Flying Roll and states that “the Author has been set as a signe & a wonder, as well as most
of the Prophets formerly.”37 By association with these models Coppe seeks both to normalise his
own behaviour and claim divine sanction for it. The appeal is in two directions, both bringing
prophecy and Prophets into the present and pushing Coppe’s particularity into a distant cultural
background. This effect of honour by association is also attempted in the retractions, where he
compares his previous wild behaviour to the story of Nebuchadnezzar in the Book of Daniel.38
While admitting to error and transgressive behaviour his association of it with familiar figures
within a Biblical template allows it the sanction of tradition, even a sort of respectability it could
not otherwise claim.
This template is to be applied to all the circumstances of life. It is part of a common seven-
teenth century hermeneutic, often coupled with providentialist belief, and is common among
some Christians to this day—within America’s religious right, for example. Coppe simultane-
ously reserves the right to supersede and overrule Scripture as the Spirit moves him, and this
moving by, or occupation, —possession—by spirits is invoked to emphasise his helplessness as
a Prophet moved by the Lord. We, as twenty-first century post-Freudians may read other di-
agnoses in Coppe’s account of his actions, but for Coppe the explanation that he has been the
passive instrument of supra-normal forces provides a coherent and empowering narrative. Thus
“he was strangely acted by that omnipotency dwelling within him” and “The same most excellent
Majesty (in this forme) hath set the Forme in many strange postures lately.”39
Coppe also reserves the right to Biblical interpretation according to the “mystery” rather than
the “history,” both elements coexisting throughout the Bible. This esoteric principle is repeated
in the notion of “inward” and “outward” or “religious” and “civil,” a binarism constantly repeated
and reinforced by Coppe, although he is equally capable of attacking those who rely on “the
mystery” as being “void of understanding.” The distinction is a commonplace in seventeenth
century Biblical interpretation. A further expression of this binarism Coppe employs is between
“the jewel” and “the Cabinet.”

The mystery is mine, [mostly] that which I delight in, that’s the Jewel. The historie’s
mine also, that’s the Cabinet. For the Jewels sake I will not leave the Cabinet, though
indeed it’s nothing to me.40
34
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 42–43.
35
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 41.
36
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 41.
37
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 41. Isaiah 20:3.
38
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth” 68–69.
39
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 42.
40
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 50.

46
 And in the next verse he makes his case more plainly still:

The inwardness is mostly mine, my prime delight is there; the outwardenesse is

mine also, when thou for thine own ends, standest in competition with me about it,
or when I would confound thee by it.41

The Biblical text is a weapon he can use to “confound” his opponents as well as a territory to
be fought over, the site of struggle, the battlefield itself. As a trained scholar he is in a position
to use the text and its interpretation against others.
Coppe’s experience of himself as the puppet of the Divine causes him to perceive his body as
a “corps,” a “worm eaten chest,” something itself inanimate which is moved only by the spirits
which occupy it. This is also a common psychological position in the writings of Quakers, and
prefigures Descartes’ “ghost in the machine.”
“I am about my act, my strange act, my worke, my strange work, that weosoever hears of it,
both his ears shall tingle.”42 Coppe declares, claiming that the heavens blush and the earth reels
to and fro like a drunken man at the rising of the spirit. Coppe is

confounding, plaguing & tormenting nice demure, barren Mical with David’s un-
seemly carriage … dancing like one of the fools … and uncovered too before hand-
maids.43

Coppe here again compares himself with a Biblical figure, but soon advocates a moral or spiri-
tual particularism: he is himself above or beyond sin. “I can if it be my will, kisse and hug Ladies,
and love my neighbours wife as myselfe, without sin,”44 and he attacks conventional displays of
morality

nasty stinking formall grace before meat … give over thy stinking family duties, and
thy Gospell Ordinances as thou callest them, for under them all there lies snapping,
snarling, biting, besides covetousnesse, horrid hypocrisie, envy, malice, evill surmis-
ing.45

As we have seen, in his retractions Coppe is forced to acknowledge sin, but his subtle and
convoluted argumentation seems to conceal some reservations:

Now we know, that what things soever the Law saith, it saith to them that are under
the Law; that every mouth may be stopped; and all the world become guilty
before God.
Therefore by the DEEDS of the Law, shall no flesh be justified in his fight, &c.
But NOW the righteousness of God WITHOUT the LAW is manifest.46

41
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 50.
42
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 43.
43
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 43.
44
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 44.
45
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 45.
46
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 75.

47
 This surely still leaves open the possibility that there are those who are not under the law,
those who are under the influence of the righteousness of “God without the law.”47 In a world
where unheard of upheavals were taking place, where the King, often thought of in England as
a Divine appointee, being Head of the Church as well as the State, had been himself decapitated,
leaving both Church and State in headless turmoil and where Providentialism, the belief that
God’s will was behind all earthly events was all but universal, it must have seemed possible that
the Millennium was imminent, and Coppe felt this upheaval within him. Thus Coppe in his retrac-
tion stresses at great length God’s unlimited almightiness, his tendency to “overturn, overturn,
overturn” all that had been certain, the arbitrary and inarguable nature of the supernatural.

He sets up a brazen Serpent when he pleaseth, Numb 21.8,9

And grinds it to powder when he pleaseth, 2 Kings 18.4.
He institutes Circumcision when he pleaseth, and commands it, upon pain of Excom-
munication and death, &c.48

Coppe then includes a slew of Biblical citations intended to illustrate the importance previously
attached to circumcision and continues:

But unlimited Almightiness dasheth that to pieces, which he made. Nuls his own
Acts, Statutes, Laws and strict Ordinances. Nothings this great thing, Circumcision.
As it is written. Verily Circumcision is nothing, &c 1 Cor.7.19.49
From this example Coppe draws the following moral, and goes on to further demon-
strate God’s inconsistency by reference to Abraham:

And sure there’s something I’the’winde—–

Certainly the meer creature is not very God.
For the meer creature is limited, and weakness.
But God is unlimited Almightiness.
He doth what he pleaseth.
He saith, thou shalt not kill, Exod.20
And yet he bids Abraham slay his son, &c.50

This is not only a revolutionary theology, it is a theology of revolutions: nothing is perma-

nently fixed, all certainties are conditional and contingent. In his hands the Bible becomes a
weapon against all authority, an unstable document of multi-valent interpretation in a time of
profound political and religious instability. The direction of Coppe’s argument is to reduce the

47
Such thinking seems to be influenced by the theory of successive dispensations as set out by Joachim of Fiore,
a monk from the twelfth century, who divided history into The Age of the Father, which was the Kingdom of Law, in
which men lived as slaves to the Law, in fear; the Age of the Son, which was the Kingdom of Grace, in which men
lived in the servitude of sons, in faith; and to come was the age of the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of Grace Abounding,
wherein men were to live as “friends to God,” in love. It seems likely that Coppe might have come across such teachings
in his studies, and sectarian groupings like the “Family of Love,” the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and some Anabaptists
seem to have shared something of this feeling. See Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man, 212.
48
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 78.
49
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 78.
50
Coppe, “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth,” 78.

48
authority of the text. As the text is contradictory, so God’s will is contradictory. The Bible be-
comes a great play of the possible, a range of options, a delicatessen counter. God’s incalculable
will—or historical necessity, perhaps—will decide the issue and it will soon be, indeed it is being
decided. The just society is being enacted by just men behaving justly. This may be a prefigura-
tion or an early flowering or a bringing into existence. The Diggers sought to make their city on
the hill by the work of their hands, Coppe seems to speak it into being. The sudden release of
the pressure of sinfulness in Coppe’s personal outlook combined with the physical removal of
the actual head of the head of government in the public sphere were absolute proof in the here
and now of God’s changing purpose, of his revolutionary force.
Coppe was released from his imprisonment to preach a recantation sermon in Burford, where
the Leveller mutineers in the army had been confined in the church, and some of them shot.
Hostile contemporary reports suggest that he recanted but little.
Coppe seems to me one of the most interesting of seventeenth century writers, full of energy,
humour, satirical force—even violence—and real religious feeling. His writing is interestingly
characterised by sudden shifts of register and mood, by deferrals and discursive asides. He gen-
erates an undeniable rhetorical power in his angry denunciations and threats to the powerful
and in his urgent ventriloquising of the Divine voice:

Behold, Behold, Behold, I the eternall God, the Lord of Hosts, who am that mighty
Leveller, am comming (yea even at the doores) to Levell in good earnest, to Levell to
some purpose, to Levell with a witnesse, to Levell the Hills with the Valleyes, and to
lay the Mountaines low.51

Bibliography
For all original documentary sources, Letter/Number combinations in brackets after the publica-
tion details are Wing Short Title Catalogue numbers.

Baxter, R. Plain Scripture Proof. London: Robert White 1651. (B1344) Clark, J.C.D. Revolution and
Rebellion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Coppe, A. “An Additional and Preambular Hint” to Richard Coppin’s Divine Teachings. In A Col-
lection of Ranter Writings from the Seventeenth Century, edited by Nigel Smith, 73–79. London:
Junction Books, 1983. (C6096)
—. “Copp’s Return to the Wayes of Truth.” In Selected Writings, edited by Andrew Hopton, 63–97.
London: Aporia Press, 1987. (C6090)
—. “Divine Fire-Works.” In Selected Writings, edited by Andrew Hopton, 98–105 . London: Aporia
Press, 1987. (D1721)
—. “A Fiery Flying Roll.” In Selected Writings, edited by Andrew Hopton, 15–55. London: Aporia
Press, 1987. (C6087)
—. “Preface” to John the Divine’s Divinity. In A Collection of Ranter Writings from the Seventeenth
Century, edited by Nigel Smith, 41. London: Junction Books, 1983. (F39)
—. “A Remonstrance of the Sincere and Zealous Protestation.” In Selected Writings, edited by
Andrew Hopton, 57–62. London: Aporia Press, 1987. (C6089)
51
Coppe, “A Fiery Flying Roll,” 22.

49
—. “Some Sweet Sips, of Some Spirituall Wine.” In A Collection of Ranter Writings from the Seven-
teenth Century, edited by Nigel Smith, 42–72. London: Junction Books, 1983 [1649]. (C6093)
Edwardes, T. Gangraena. 3 vols. London: Ralph Smith, 1646. (E228/E229/E230)
Hill,Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas in the English Revolution. Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
McDowell, N. “A Ranter Reconsidered: Abiezer Coppe and Civil War Stereotypes.” The Seven-
teenth Century 12, no. 1 (Spring 1997): 173–205.
Passmore, John. The Perfectibility of Man. London: Duckworth, 1972.
Winstanley, G. The Law of Freedom. Edited by Christopher Hill. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973.
—. Selected Writings. Edited by Andrew Hopton. London: Aporia Press 1989.
—. The Works of Gerrard Winstanley: With an Appendix of Documents Relating to the Digger
Movement. Edited by G.H. Sabine. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1941.
Woodhouse, A.S.P., ed. Puritanism and Liberty: Being the Army Debates (1647–9) from the Clarke
Manuscripts, with Supplementary Documents. London: J.M. Dent, 1938.

50
CHAPTER THREE. RELIGIOUS DISSENTERS
AND ANARCHISTS IN TURN OF THE
CENTURY HUNGARY
BOJAN ALEKSOV
This chapter compares political and religious responses to pressing social problems in Hungary in
the decades preceding the First World War and the dissolution of Habsburg monarchy. Anarchist
revolutionaries such as Várkonyi or Tolstoians such as Schmitt explained the origins of widespread
injustice in social and power relations and offered class struggle or utopian communities as a so-
lution. By contrast, the neo-Protestant Nazarenes answered the problem of class exploitation and
social marginalisation through their community of spiritual equals. Theirs was also an egalitarian
community, but one based on religious rather than class or political consciousness. While the follow-
ers of both approaches strove for personal reassertion and emancipation, their paths and methods
used differed radically. The Nazarene faith was based on pietistic quietism that wanted to change
the world by one’s own inner change. While on the conversion path many could be led with similar
aspirations as political revolutionaries or rebels, but once they became Nazarenes, they believed that
only spiritual salvation could provide the basis for the egalitarian society they sought. In the first
decades of their existence in Hungary, and despite their similar social constituency, the Nazarenes
grew more rapidly and remained firm in their resistance to adaptation to political impetuses of other
radical movements and ideologies.
This chapter revisits the relationship between anarchist thinkers and activists and the
Nazarenes, who were the first religious movement or sect to arise in Hungary after the sixteenth
century and who became distinguished for their rejection of priesthood, infant baptism and
transubstantiation, for refraining from military service and politics, and for refusing to take
oaths.1 The new religious ideas were brought to Hungary by itinerary locksmith apprentices
coming back from Switzerland in 1840s. After the 1848 Revolution in Hungary a new religious
movement appeared acquiring its own dynamic and outgrowing massively a modest following
in the country of origin.2 A few congregations sprouted in Northern Hungary (today’s Slovakia),
in Transdanubia and later in Bosnia and Croatia, but they were short lived. The bulk of the
converts were found in Central and South Hungary, or the regions of today’s province of

1
Although the terms sect and sectarian initially had a neutral meaning deriving from Latin sequi meaning to
follow, they have acquired a derogatory connotation over time. Bryan Wilson uses the terms “sects” and “sectari-
ans” without any negative implications to designate mainly those which have come into being through schisms from
the established Christian churches while Rodney Stark further differentiates and defines some that came into being
through the activities of new visionaries; others as a result of the activity of “seekers;” other as spin-offs of interde-
nominational revivalism; yet others as a result of internal revitalization. See Bryan Wilson, “Introduction,” in Patterns
of Sectarianism, ed. Bryan Wilson (London: Heinemann, 1967), 17.
2
The Nazarenes in the Habsburg Monarchy and its successor states, as they were referred to in scholarly liter-
ature in English, are to be distinguished from the American denomination known as the Church of the Nazarene.

51
Vojvodina in Serbia. The Nazarenes especially attracted members of numerous ethnic minorities
living in Hungary at the time, the Orthodox Serbs being the most prone to conversion. These
Serbian converts were in fact the first Protestant Serbs. Though now largely forgotten, at the
time of their greatest expansion at the end of the nineteenth century, the Nazarenes were the
focus of much political and church attention. They provoked castigation and condemnation by
state and church authorities, and inspired some of the greatest Hungarian and Serbian writers
of the time, like Mór Jókai and Károly Eötvös or Jovan Jovanoviü Zmaj and Simo Matavulj, as
well as the intercessions of famous Czech writer and humorist Jaroslav Hašek and most notably
the great Russian author Lev Tolstoi.3
Following in the steps of the late British-born historian Peter Brock this chapter will examine
nonconformism and conscientious objection of the Nazarenes as their most significant features,
which denied them recognition, provoked bans and arrests and destined their men to long-term
imprisonment.4 Furthermore, using some sources unavailable to Brock it will explore their atti-
tudes towards politics or more precisely towards these ideas and movements in their surround-
ing, which aimed at political and social change in order to improve the lot of the deprived. On
the theoretical level it will draw from the debate on parallelism between political or social and
religious movements and offer new insights to the lively discussion on the reasons why some
religious movements become revolutionary or reform movements and others accept the status
quo and withdraw into an inner life. This will hopefully also correct the view held in historiog-
raphy which when mentioning the Nazarenes attributed their rise in the Southern Hungary in
the second half of the nineteenth century exclusively to social-economic factors because of their
majority proletarian constituency.5

Religious vs. Political

The Nazarenes were repressed because of the common perception that they were an anti-state po-
litical movement. In addition, they spread in areas of political instability and their growth often
paralleled the deepening of that instability. Finally, a large number of their converts originated
from social groups which were in one way or another politically dissatisfied, namely national
minorities, landless peasantry or urban proletariat. Yet a series of questions arise that a disci-
plinary divide between religious and political history does not provide an answer to. Why did a
religious movement attract a large following? How did it differ and even grow stronger than po-
litical, mainly socialist and anarchist groups around it? And last but not least why was it immune
to their campaigns?

3
In this chapter, unlike in the rest of this book, “Tolstoy” is written “Tolstoi” in order to be consistent with the
chosen transliteration method for all the other Slavonic and Eastern European names used in the rest of the chapter.
4
Tolstoi’s intercessions on behalf of sectarians and conscientious objectors were the topic of two of Brock’s
articles—“Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant” Slavonic and East European Review 58, no. 3 (1980): 345–369 and “‘A
Light Shining in Darkness:’ Tolstoi and the Imprisonment of Conscientious Objectors in Imperial Russia,” Slavonic
and East European Review 81, no. 4 (2003): 683–697, 798–799. Two of Brock’s articles dealt with Nazarenes—“The
Nonresistance of the Hungarian Nazarenes to 1914,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 54, no. 1 (1980): 53–63 and “Some
Materials on Nazarene Conscientious Objectors in Nineteenth Century Hungary,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 57, no.
1 (1983): 64–72.
5
Endre Kovács, ed., Magyarország Története 6/2 1848–1890 [History of Hungary 6/2 1848–1890] (Budapest:
Akadémiai Kiadó, 1987), 1163.

52
 Eric Hobsbawm was the first to draw attention to the “marked parallelism between the move-
ments of religious, social and political consciousness.”6 Léo Moulin described the parallelism,
transference and mimesis that existed—by their very nature, in his opinion—between the political
and religious.7 Comparing their shared notions of time he drew a parallelism between sectarian
Millenarianism and left-wing revolutionist ideology. Revolutionary and religious millenarians
shared a utopia, which Moulin called uchronia, whereby the perception of time is rooted in the
past and ceases to function once the future is achieved. Both drew in their ranks the masses of
the poor, the pariahs, the fringes, the casualties of progress or the wretched of the earth as the
International sings. Other common features include but are not limited to the ideological vocabu-
lary of demonisation and conspiracy, sociological context of isolation, notions of eschatologism,
concepts of final struggle and powers external to man, which might be led by God, the course of
history or a conscious and organised minority be it a sect or party.
Yet thorough historical comparison calls for more restraint. Analysing religious revival in the
years of and after Napoleonic wars and Revolution in England E. P. Thompson made a tentative
conclusion that “religious revivalism took over just at the point where ‘political’ or temporal
aspirations met with defeat.”8 This was best exemplified in radical Methodism and numerous
millenarian movements for which E. P. Thompson coined the term: “chiliasm of despair.” Just
as E. P. Thomson is cautious about any direct links and causality even when sources and studies
such as those of English religious revival abound, one should know much more about the minds
and aspirations of those embracing the new faith before any tentative conclusions are made.
Furthermore, Hobsbawm warned that religious movements were often misunderstood and their
behaviour interpreted as irrational or pathological, or at best as an instinctive reaction to intol-
erable conditions, instead of trying to appreciate the logic and the reality which moved them.9
The latter are the guidelines for the study of two aspects of Nazarene religious community which
follow, namely, the political activism of the Nazarenes or the lack thereof and their conscientious
objection.
The area and period of the Nazarene expansion were characterised by the profoundly disturb-
ing effects that the irruption of modern capitalism had into peasant society through the introduc-
tion of a free market, the reform of common land and forest laws, the secularisation of church
estates and especially the introduction of money economy. In Hungary, these were further exac-
erbated by the fact that they were not accompanied by a corresponding evolution of local social
and political forces. Until the First World War, no group with political right in Hungary wanted
to share them with peasants, a vast majority of which remained disenfranchised and could seek
solutions only through revolutionary policies or as this chapter will evidence through religion.
The religious revival that gave crucial impetus to Hungarian Nazarenes was a part of an ear-
lier tide of evangelicalism in Europe upsetting many churches, which yielded to religious apathy
and formalism. Vaguely speaking, it stood in the succession of the eighteenth century revolt
in religion initiated by German Pietist revivalists. Their distant founder was Samuel Heinrich

6
Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 129.
7
Léo Moulin, “Religious Millenarianisms and Political Millenarianisms,” in Political and Ideological Confronta-
tions in Twentieth-Century Europe: Essays in Honor of Milorad M. Drachkovitch, eds. Robert Conquest and Dušan J.
Djordjevich (London: Macmillan, 1996), 231.
8
E. Thompson, “The Transforming Power of the Cross,” in The Making of the English Working Class (London:
Penguin, 1991), 428.
9
Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, 60.

53
Fröhlich, a minister in the Swiss Calvinist Church who in 1825 according to his own testimony
experienced an inner conversion and began a search for true faith. He was mostly influenced
by the teachings of the Mennonites, the remains of the sixteenth century Anabaptists who lived
scattered in the neighbouring mountain villages near his hometown of Leutwill.10 Yet his en-
thusiastic and revivalist ideas brought him into conflict and suspension from the state church
and he soon became a leader of an independent sect that spread into neighbouring Germany and
further to Alsace and through immigration to the United States and Canada. Fröhlich’s followers
became known under a multitude of names—Neutäufer, Gemeinden Evangelischen Taufgesinnter,
Fröhlichianer, Evangelische Täufergemeinde. In English language publications they were often
referred to as Evangelical Baptists, New Amish or New Mennonites, which testifies the origin
of Fröhlich’s religious inspiration and contacts, but the official name adopted for the commu-
nity was the Apostolic Christian Church.11 It is evident that the historical circumstances of the
reception of Fröhlich’s ideas in Hungary distinguished and distanced their followers from the fel-
lowship in other countries and that Fröhlich’s role should not be exaggerated since the Nazarenes
in Hungary made their greatest advances after his death. Their beliefs and attitudes in Hungary
were first formulated by a young Catholic convert Lajos Hencsey but also changed over time
as the main channel of transmission of new faith was from mouth to mouth. The bulk of early
converts consisted of itinerant shoemakers, tailors, locksmiths and carpenters, most being eth-
nic Germans. Yet from the late 1850s and early 1860s thanks to another Catholic convert and
preacher, István Kalmár, they managed to set foot in South and Central Hungary where their
numbers swelled, exceeding several times those in other countries where Fröhlich’s fellowship
took root. The Nazarene “lay agency,” simple men and women who did the bulk of the preaching,
organising and pastoral care clearly distinguished them from other churches. Furthermore, the
closely-knit community network, the work ethic and morals accounted for rapid expansion and
prosperity of converts, who later mostly came from among the village poor.
The fact that our knowledge of Nazarenes is largely based on inimical sources might be even
considered beneficial in the study of their political action or the lack thereof since it was so
strongly determined by the perceptions and condemnation to which they were exposed. Threat-
ened by the appearance of the Nazarenes the representatives of the established churches in Hun-
gary were their greatest enemies. From the onset they stigmatised Nazarenes as communists
and anarchists though there is no evidence for any association between them. Sources name
only one early Nazarene preacher, István Ráb, who seems to be an unusual exception as he com-
bined politics with religion in his sermons, which brought him arrests and other misfortunes.12
Additionally, Jenö Szigeti, Hungarian scholar of the Nazarenes, found some evidence that in their
early days in Hungary some Nazarenes participated in peasant riots in HódmezĘvásárhely. Yet

10
For more on Fröhlich and the early Nazarene history in Hungary see Garfield Adler, De Tauf- und Kirchenfrage
in Leben und Lehre des Samuel Heinrich Fröhlich, VDM, von Brugg 1803–1857 (Bern, Frankfurt: n.p. 1976) and Karoly
Eotvos, The Nazarenes (Fort Scott, Ks, n.p. 1997).
11
For English language accounts see Herman Ruegger, Apostolic Christian Church History (Eureka, Ill: Apostolic
Christian Publications, Inc., 1985), second revised edition based on Hermann Rüegger, Aufzeichnung über Entstehung
und Bekenntnis der Gemeinschaft Evangelisch Taufgesinnter (Zurich: n.p. 1948) and Perry A. Klopfenstein, Marching
to Zion. A History of the Apostolic Christian Church of America 1847–1982 (Fort Scott, KS: Sekan, 1984). See also The
Swiss Anabaptists (Ephrata, Pa: n.p. 1990).
12
“Kako su Postali Nazareni [How the Nazarenes Came About],” Javo r 9 (1882), 277–280.

54
he concluded that this experience only persuaded them to refrain completely from politics.13
Ever since then the Nazarenes remained obstinate in their opposition to any political action, be
it participation in elections or joining political parties and movements.
Whatever their true intentions were, the Nazarenes were closely watched. They were sus-
pected of defying authorities, which, according to an early observer in 1870, had every reason to
fear them “because at the moment they are only a few but if their number grows substantially no-
body knows whether there will appear a Müntzer among them.”14 The accusations which claimed
that the Nazarene faith was just a cover for their essentially communist and anarchist ideas were
usually evidenced by their alleged communal property. The most gruesome of all accusations
claimed that they were perverts and that even women were communal property among them,
a common topoi in anti-Nazarene and anti-socialist treatises.15 Finally, they were accused of
Jewish haughtiness and of conspiratorial closeness in their communities.
Confronting the accusations and rumours that spread about the Nazarenes offers insights into
the reasons behind the misguided parallelism between the Nazarenes and political revolutionar-
ies, which dominated the accounts written in the period of the most intensive Nazarene expan-
sion. Much fear and suspicion among the inimical commentators was actually provoked by the
indifference or docility of the Nazarenes despite the harsh social reality in which they lived. On
the other hand observers among Russian socialists projected their own ideological agenda onto
the Nazarenes. They attributed the success of the Nazarene missionaries precisely to their ability
to address the people who were on the edge of proletarisation, to gather and organise them, to
develop the sense of solidarity and mutual help among them and to explain to them the mean-
ing and purpose of life. From articles in the Hungarian press, which accused the Nazarenes of
spreading socialist and communist teachings at their “secret” meetings, V. Olhovskii (Vladimir
Bonch-Bruevich), who is representative for this group of observers, inferred the confirmation
of his beliefs that socialist propaganda can find fertile soil among sectarians and that sectarian
peasants can easily be turned into socialist peasants.16 Further, he interpreted the Nazarene fre-
quent preaching against the established churches, clergy and their privileges as a conscious class
position. The rumours of collective property among the Nazarenes were also welcomed by Rus-
sian socialists even if they acknowledged that it was rather communism of needs than collective
production that was advocated.17 In one thing these leftwing observers, personified by Bonch-
Bruevich, were right. Condemning the reactions of the Hungarian and Serbian states and their
state churches, they deemed that repression was only reinforcing the Nazarene image of martyrs,
which would continue to attract converts.
The issue arises as to what can be established about the Nazarene attitudes to social and eco-
nomic pressures of the period behind the screen of biased perceptions. Similar to other neo-

13
Jenö Szigeti, Ti Pedig Mindnyájan Testvérek Vagytok [But You Are Always Brothers and Sisters] (Budapest:
Mimeo, 1978), 69–70.
14
“Nazarenusok-é? [Are They Nazarenes?],” Protestáns Egyházi és Iskolai Lap (1870), 277. The reference here
is to the rebellious Anabaptist in the sixteenth century, a trope which will continue for almost half a century. See
“A Tizenhatodik Századnak UjrakeresztelĘi Jelenben uj Életre Ébredve Magyarországon [Resurgence of the Sixteenth
Century Anabaptists in Hungary],” Evangelikus Egyházi Szemle (1905), 20–24.
15
“As Alsó-Baranya-Bácsi Egyházmegye Közgyülése [The Lower Baranya Bács Diocese Meeting],” Protestáns
Egyházi és Iskolai Lap (1867), 692–697.
16
V. Olhovskii, Nazareni v Vengrii i Serbii (Moscow: Posrednik, 1905), 23–24. Olhovskii alias Bonch-Bruevich
was a close associate of Lenin.
17
Olhovskii, Nazareni v Vengrii i Serbii, 40.

55
Protestant sects, the Nazarene strict scripturality rejects any social division based on property or
origin, which was at the core of political enfranchisement in Hungary. Furthermore, Nazarene
preachers stressed time and again that the supreme judgment is that of God and the Holy Scrip-
ture, as illustrated in the agreement of the representatives of all Nazarene congregations assem-
bled in 1895 to discuss whether to report to courts transgressions made by the Nazarenes or those
which were confessed before joining the community. It was unanimously decided not to address
“the court of this world.”18 However, the scripture also obliged them to “render unto Caesar the
things which are Caesar’s.”19 That is why the Nazarenes promptly paid their tax dues even if
they had considered any kind of taxation including the church tax unjust. Jaša Tomiü, Serbian
socialist turned nationalist, described how important it was for Nazarenes to avoid conflicts by
paying Orthodox parish tax although colloquially they called it not without a degree of sarcasm
beda (misery tax).20 Nevertheless, none of this spared them from accusations that the only reason
they abandoned state churches was to avoid paying the church tax.21 According to their own
statements, the Nazarenes respected all levels of authorities in all matters except regarding the
obligation to bear arms during military service, as evident from the rare insider report written by
their elder F. G. G. in 1903 to Dutch Mennonites.22 Considering their compliance with all other
rules and taxation, it is no wonder that in a rare instance of sincerity one mayor of a small Hun-
garian town was recorded admitting the Nazarenes were in fact his “best citizens,” highlighting
the hypocrisy of Nazarene persecutors.23

The Peasant Commotion at the Turn of the Century Hungary

In order to move beyond the realm of perceptions, the Nazarene stance towards state, politics
and political uproar will be illuminated on the concrete example of the so-called harvest strikes
and related political agitation in the areas of Alföld (Great Hungarian Plain) and Bácska (Plain
between the rivers of Danube and Tisza), at the turn of the century. These events were already
researched by Brock in the article which served as an inspiration for this study.24 Bringing in new
sources will hopefully assure a more encompassing interpretation. The peasant strikes occurred
in the area and time of the greatest Nazarene expansion and thus provide the best background
for the study of Nazarene behaviour in relation to the social ferment which surrounded them.
This episode is even more interesting because it involves the greatest writer of that day, Lev
Tolstoi, and the circle of his political associates, whose ideas out of all political movements of the
period came closest to that of the Nazarenes. During the last thirty years of his life Tolstoi wrote
scores of books, articles and pamphlets on religion and politics promoting what he believed to
be the true essence of Christianity. Like many radical Christian groups since the Reformation
he based his beliefs on the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus instructed his followers not to
swear oaths, not to judge and not to resist to evil and instead respond with love, forgiveness and

18
Olhovskii, Nazareni v Vengrii i Serbii, 38.
19
Matthew 22:21 (King James Version).
20
Jaša Tomiü, Nazareni (Novi Sad: Srpska štamparija Dra Svetozara Miletiüa, 1896), 101–102.
21
Dušan Makovicky, Nazarenove v Uhrach (Prague, 1896, Print out from Naši doby), 8 and Dušan Petroviü, “O
Nazarenima,” Srpski Sion, 16 August 1892.
22
Samuel Cramer, “Nazarener. Briefe,” Mennonitische Blätter 50, no. 7 (1903): 56–57.
23
Henrik v. Himmel, “Von den Nazarenern,” Pester Lloyd, 4 June 1897, 2–3.
24
Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant.”

56
sacrifice. In addition to his writings Tolstoi also helped financially religious non-conformists and
conscientious objectors. Finally, his correspondence with thousands of prominent or common
men and women in which he expounded his ideas and tried to influence political struggle in
many countries is unmatched in the history of literature and political activism.
Tolstoi learned about the Nazarenes very early. Their marked nonviolence coincided with Tol-
stoi’s own beliefs and attracted him to them. In a letter dated 14 September 1887 to his associate
V. G. Chertkov, regarding Nikolai Gazenvinkel’s idea to publish an anthology of authentic pop-
ular religious ideas against state and violence, Tolstoi informed Chertkov that he had received
a letter from “Serbs” describing the Nazarene sect in Hungary and Serbia, and state persecution
of it.25 In another letter to Chertkov dated 19–23 August 1894, Tolstoi wrote about the visit of
Slovak doctor Makovicky who told him about the oppression of the Slavs in the Habsburg Monar-
chy. Tolstoi was impressed with their nonviolent resistance to this oppression. He learned from
Makovicky that the Slavs used the weapons of oppressors—raising their own national aware-
ness against the foreign, safeguarding their language, confession and customs and conducting
their struggle on all fronts—in newspapers, courts, associations, elections for the parliament, etc.
Praising the struggle of Slavs in the Monarchy, Tolstoi noted that at the same time that while
the sect of the Nazarenes was getting more and more numerous among them, the intellectuals of
oppressed Slav minorities did not see that the liberation was possible only through faith. Tolstoi
condemned Slav leaders for not embracing the Nazarenes, writing that by pushing them away
they diminished their own chance for liberation.26 We learn from the next letter dated 3 Septem-
ber, how Tolstoi advised Makovicky to get close to the Nazarenes, learn about them and help
those who were suffering for their conscientious objection.27
Soon after, on 6 October, Tolstoi wrote to Eugen Heinrich (Jenö Henrik) Schmitt with similar
intentions.28 Schmitt was an educated government employee in Budapest. What separated him
from his colleagues was his profound interest in religion. He propounded a sort of Gnosticism
and found a journal, Die Religion des Geistes, around which a group of followers was formed.29
In his letter to Schmitt, Tolstoi showed interest in the religious Weltanschauung of the mem-
bers of Schmitt’s Gnostic league but reiterated that for him the most difficult thing in serving
truth was not the interpretation of religious principles but the carrying out of these principles
in one’s actual life. For this reason Tolstoi criticised the intelligentsia which wished to do good
without sacrificing any of its advantages. Similarly workers who inclined to the socialistic creed,
according to Tolstoi, endeavoured to change the present condition of things not because it was
unjust and prejudicial to love, but simply because justice in this case would bring them certain
advantages. For Tolstoi however:

Salvation, I believe, will come neither from the workmen who are socialistically in-
clined nor from their leaders, but only from people who will accept religion as their
only guide in life, as the Nazarenes in Serbia and others in certain places in Aus-
tria[by which Tolstoi meant Austria-Hungary] do—namely, that hundreds of them
25
L. N. Tostoi, Polnoie Sobraniie Sochinenii (PSS), 90 vols (Moscow-Leningrad, 1928–1958), here vol. 86, 79–83.
The dates are in Julian calendar.
26
Tostoi, PSS, vol. 87, 284–86.
27
Tostoi, PSS, vol. 286–87.
28
The letter to Schmitt published as “Letters from Tolstoi,” The Nation 122, no. 3162 (1926) in the translation from
German by Herman George Scheffauer.
29
Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant,” 346.

57
 refuse to take the oath and do military service and are condemned for this to spend
years in prisons and fortresses. It is only from such men as these who are ready to
give up their lives for their convictions that salvation will come. Men like these are
to be found everywhere and we ourselves must become such men in order to fulfill
our destinies and to imbue others with our spirit.30
After discovering Tolstoi’s ideas Schmitt turned into a Tolstoian, a self-declared anarchist and
an advocate of non-violent revolution. He left his position of a public servant in 1896, and started
a new paper in two most commonly spoken languages in Hungary (with the very telling name of
Ohne Staat/Állam nélkül), which opposed all forms of service to the state, especially military ser-
vice. Disappointed with his role as an intellectual he left Budapest and went to Alföld to preach
his ideas among the poor agricultural labourers and peasants, who at the time were engaged
in frequent strikes and disturbances.31 At the same time socialist ideas were making their first
impact in these rural areas, notorious for their poverty, landless labourers and hard working
conditions by the way of a dissident socialist and former farm labourer, István Várkonyi. He
left the Social Democratic party and formed his own Independent Socialist Party whose agrar-
ian program was interpreted as a step to the division and distribution of land.32 Schmitt and
Várkonyi, as Brock described, developed a close relationship. According to Várkonyi, Schmitt
shared the same goals as those of agrarian socialism: human brotherhood, the enlightenment of
the people, and an end to the exploitation of man by man. Their agitation in the countryside
certainly had an impact on the wave of the harvest strikes in 1897. Brock is to be credited for
pointing to this peculiar case of direct influence of Tolstoiism, since the program of Várkonyi’s
Independent Social party, which gathered Alföld peasants, emphasised that the state was the
source of all evil and summoned the people to refrain from paying taxes and refuse military ser-
vice.33 Brock also asserted that it was rather Schmitt’s anti-clericalism than non-violence that
attracted peasants from the area, which was already the most susceptible to the Nazarene preach-
ing. Schmitt urged for the replacement of the church’s slavish idolatry and superstition with the
genuinely free spirit of Christ which alone can liberate the world. This staunch anti-clericalism
was appreciated by many who were unwilling to accept his non-violence or adopt a communi-
tarian way of life. Several groups of Schmitt’s followers, which Tolstoi called communities of
disciples of non-violence, were formed among Alföld peasants. Brock singled out the one in
Ada in Bácska where Várkonyi also published his socialist newspaper in Serbian.34 During his
agitation Schmitt became a typical narodnik, who believed in the regenerating force of the peo-
ple. The people were to form self-governing communities, which, bound by mutual trust and a
spirit of self-sacrifice, would abolish poverty, wars and exploitation and establish peace, justice
and development. His ideas embodied some of the age-old peasant strivings, which surfaced in
so many peasant upheavals and sectarian movements before—negation of the existing social or-
der, anti-clericalism and longing for a society in which religious imagery of “paradise on earth”
was projected. Nonetheless, throughout these acute years and despite numerous attempts by
Schmitt and Várkonyi, their peasant following remained scarce and their most logical allies, the
30
“Letters from Tolstoi,” 184.
31
Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant,” 349.
32
Joseph Held, The Modernization of Agriculture: Rural Transformation in Hungary 1848–1975 (Boulder, Co: East
European Monographs, 1980), 149.
33
Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant,” 353.
34
Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant,” 362.

58
Nazarenes, kept distance. This was troubling Tolstoi as well as he was constantly urging Schmitt
to reach an understanding with at least the younger members of the sect insisting: “The future
of Christianity, of the living truth, lies with such people, with the simple, the workers, and not
with the social parasites.”35
After a year of disturbances the government reacted by banning all socialist publications, ar-
resting Várkonyi and passing an act which outlawed agricultural strikes. This signalled the end
of peasant commotion and another quarter of the century passed before peasants rose again and
achieved some gains.36 Schmitt too was arrested and upon release withdrew from the region
dispirited and persuaded that most peasants still preferred a political solution and struggle than
renouncing politics for communitarianism or as Brock put it, building a New Jerusalem in the
Great Hungarian Plain. Attempts by some peasant followers of Schmitt to form Tolstoian com-
munities, based on working the land collectively and sharing the produce, soon disintegrated.
Suspicion among the members was widespread and other villagers mocked them and, similarly
to the Nazarenes before, accused them of sharing women in the community.37 This experience
shows that the establishment of such communities was possible only with the discipline and
strict and overarching communitarian order intertwined with religious persuasion practiced by
the Nazarenes. This partly answers the question why there was no connection between the two.
Brock singled out the aloof stance of the Nazarenes and Schmitt’s lack of tact and communication
skills to transmit his message but also praised Schmitt as the only Tolstoian trying to persuade
his country’s peasantry or narod to inaugurate a new communitarian order. Yet his commu-
nities were few, very short lasting and left almost no traces behind. In contrast, the Nazarene
communities based solely on religion and removed from politics subsisted. It is true that Schmitt
too and his followers shared the Nazarene renunciation of power and rejected the sort of daily
politics for which the only goal was to attain power and which saw states and party policies
as means of achieving salvation. Nevertheless, his intellectualist approach helped little in set-
ting practical structures and regulations for the survival of his communities, the endeavour in
which the Nazarenes excelled for almost half a century. The issue of distribution and ownership
of land proved to be hardest to resolve both for Várkonyi’s political struggle and for Schmitt’s
communities. On similar grounds, the mainstream Social democratic party never managed to
mobilise peasants and considered their obsession with land as petty bourgeois individualism.
The Nazarene communities however, practiced a lasting solution at least for their members. De-
spite the malicious accusations, they respected private property and peasants’ obsession with
land. Yet their religious commands of love and solidarity, at least among their members, over-
came selfishness, individualism and exploitation in establishing what Bonch-Bruevich described
as communism of needs rather than collective production. That they came so close to the peasant
ideal of the “limited good” also helps explain the Nazarene lack of interest for political action.38
Furthermore, the Nazarene religious views widened their recruiting potential and they absorbed
both absolutely landless and village poor and well-off peasants, artisans and small traders in

35
“Tolstoi to Schmitt,” 27 March 1895, PSS, vol. 68, 56.
36
Agrarian ideas subsided in parties founded by Vilmos MezĘfi and András Áchim, the so-called peasant king
of Békéscsaba, yet unlike Várkonyi’s stateless idealism they incorporated element of Magyar nationalism.
37
Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant,” 364.
38
For the idea of “limited good” see G. M. Foster, “Peasant Society and the Image of Limited Good,” American
Anthropologist 67, no. 2 (1965): 293–315.

59
contrast to the movements of Várkonyi and Schmitt, which were directed only at one class or
segment of the population and when they involved more than one could not reconcile them.39
There were also radical differences in religious outlook between the Nazarenes and Schmitt and
Várkonyi. Brock explained the Nazarene rigid abstention from politics as a trait of Anabaptist-
Mennonite tradition, which is concerned with paradise in heaven and not on earth—according
to Jesus’ words: “My Kingdom is not of this world.”40 This was a key to Schmitt’s distaste of the
Nazarenes. Unlike Tolstoi’s and Nazarenes’ Christianity Schmitt’s religious outlook was more
anthropocentric: “I see salvation not in humility and penitence but in awakening consciousness
of the self.”41 While respecting their adherence to faith, Schmitt condemned the Nazarene’s views
on sinfulness, strict discipline and expulsion of members, and especially their reluctance to im-
prove the human lot.42 Yet it was exactly this Nazarene discipline and morality which improved
the lot of their members. The religious or Godly sanction of such discipline and morality were
essential for the mentality of peasant Nazarenes. Furthermore, in their reluctance to join political
forces the Nazarenes were similar to the majority of peasants, who were throughout this period
doubtful of socialist or intellectual agitators not because they were not revolutionary enough, as
dogmatic Marxist historiography claimed, but because they were doubtful of everything coming
from the city, politics especially. These differences of mentality and outlook are best illustrated
in the example of how even positively inclined socialist and pacifist activists were worlds apart
from the Nazarenes, which they praised in order to promote their own political agenda. This is ev-
ident in the testimony of Albert Škarvan who spent time with Slovak Nazarenes in this period.43
Škarvan himself objected to the military and lost his post as a military doctor in the Austro-
Hungarian army and later became a personal doctor to Tolstoi.44 After his visits and encounters
with the Nazarenes, Škarvan described the unusual orderliness of their homes and their modesty
in eating and dressing which both impressed him. But he could not hide his aversion for their
long prayer meetings that he hardly managed to sit through, disliking the ecstatic, sentimental
preaching whose meaning he could not understand. He admitted he suffered having to listen to
their endless singing and despite his efforts his soul could not rejoice the Nazarene Agape.45 It
was precisely the fact that the Nazarene religion and way of life could not be separated, which
was the hardest for observers to comprehend.

Religious vs. Political Conscientious Objection

The seemingly political issue of the Nazarene conscientious objection was widely noted and dis-
cussed by contemporaries but not thoroughly resolved. Indeed, from the late 1850s the Nazarenes
clashed with the state because of their refusal to bear arms. Bearing arms was considered against
the Word of God and in this case the Nazarenes behaved according to the homily of Apostle Peter

39
This is what even their most vociferous enemies admitted. See Dušan Petroviü, “O Nazarenima,” Srpski Sion,
16 August 1892.
40
John 18:36 (King James Version).
41
From the letter of Schmitt to Ervin Szabó. Quoted in Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant,” 357.
42
Brock, “Tolstoiism and the Hungarian Peasant,” 366.
43
Olhovskii, Nazareni v Vengrii i Serbii, 43–6.
44
For more on Škarvan see Peter Brock, “Pacifist Witness in Dualist Hungary,” in Studies in Peace History, eds.
Peter Brock and Nigel Young (York: William Session, 1991), 59–60.
45
Olhovskii, Nazareni v Vengrii i Serbii, 45.

60
which commanded that men must belong to God more than to men. Austria-Hungary’s Imperial
War Office (acting for what is today Ministry of Defence) argued that any concession would draw
people to join the Nazarenes. In reality, the number of members of three other groups who were
granted concessions regarding the military service obligation, the Mennonites, Bezpopovtsy and
Kharaites, either stagnated or decreased. At the same time the number of martyred Nazarenes
increased many fold despite harsh persecution.46 Furthermore, the tight rules imposed both be-
fore baptism and later for membership in the community clearly eliminated the possibility of
joining Nazarenes out of opportunism. Finally, despite the fears of the government and army,
Nazarene antimilitarism never took an active or rebellious stand of the scale of the mass burning
of weapons by Russian Doukhobors at the same time, which is another problem that requires
explanation.
Nazarene refusal to bear arms eventually had the most significant consequences for their own
community. The narratives of the Nazarene men who refused weapons and suffered imprison-
ment “for the faith” provided a unique source of oral tradition for the group. One such story is
preserved in the letter of Nazarene elder F. G. G. to Samuel Cramer from 1903.47 It recounts how
a certain brother called Zimbri was sentenced to death for his refusal to bear arms during the
war with Prussia in 1866. The miracle occurred in the very moment when execution was to take
place. While a colonel was ordering a fire squad to shoot, a grenade fell which threw him off a
horse and killed him while Zimbri survived for many years after the war was over. These stories
told and retold by old and young alike, contributed to a strong sense of self-identity, and the
persecution further bolstered the self-perception of the Nazarenes as a separate, chosen people
in a hostile society. Decades later, when a woman from the Neutäufer (Nazarene) community in
Zürich visited fifty-two imprisoned Nazarenes in Szeged in 1902, there were still some among
them imprisoned for more than ten years. Many more were in prisons in Komarom, Arad, Novi
Sad and other places. Yet F. G. G. recognised that conditions improved from the times when the
Nazarenes sentenced for conscientious objection were all being sent to Mällersdorf near Vienna
in order to keep them as far as possible from their families and communities in South Hungary
and reconvert them as the authorities hoped. There, the elder once joined a visit of a family
whose member was imprisoned for eight years. After a daylong journey they were allowed to
see him for ten minutes only and were treated by the prison commander as the worst criminals.
The Nazarene convict died soon after.48
Despite horror stories the Nazarene elder in the letter above also expressed his wish to tell the
full truth even if it astonished many, admitting that it was exactly the suffering that contributed
to the number of the Nazarene converts and that their martyrdom was the best proof of their true
witness. The persecutions, according to Mennonite theologian Cramer who was writing about
the Nazarenes, produced in them a certain fanaticism, characteristically Anabaptist, especially
evinced by their hatred of state churches and priests.49 Other observers also noted that the re-
jection and persecution of the Nazarenes only boosted their sense of separation and martyrdom
and strengthened the significance and authenticity of one’s conversion and spiritual commit-

46
Heinrich von Himmel, “Von den Nazarenern,” Pester Lloyd, 4 June 1897.
47
Cramer, “Nazarener Briefe,” 58.
48
Cramer, “Nazarener Briefe,” 56–7.
49
Samuel Cramer, “Nazarenes. 2. Hungarian Anabaptists,” in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious
Knowledge (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1950), 91. Originally “Nazarener, ungarische” in Realencyclopädie
für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, 3rd ed. (Leipzig: n.p. 1903).

61
ment.50 This explains the relatively weak reaction of the Nazarenes on behalf of their prisoners
and their reluctance to join other political forces, which condemned the harsh government and
army policies toward them. Generations were raised on prison and other stories of the suffering
for the faith, which stressed the firmness of Nazarene men and members of their families facing
ten-year sentences, torture or even death penalty.51 Similarly, visits to prisoners were extremely
important not only for members of the family of the imprisoned but for his whole congregation
and even coreligionists from distant places. If there were any chance to visit a number of people
would go even if they were poor and prison was far a way. Paying visits to an imprisoned fel-
low was perceived like a religious service giving the whole community the opportunity to share
with his suffering. During services special prayers were said or moments of silence honoured for
members who were in prisons and then special songs from Zion’s Harp (Nazarene Hymnal) were
sung.52 Since all leadership positions were held by men who had to undergo prison experience,
it was exactly this suffering for the faith that strengthened their spiritual and moral authority
later in leading their congregations. Nevertheless, the attitude of the Nazarenes regarding the
military changed with the generation change in the community and already in 1903, elder F. G. G.
admitted that the long imprisonment was the main reason for Nazarene emigration overseas.53
The greatest challenge for Nazarene conscientious objection came in the face of growing na-
tionalism as the century was drawing to a close. The continuous perseverance of the army and
government to refute any concessions to Nazarenes both in Hungary and Serbia and the complete
lack of social sympathy in this regard is best illustrated in the episode which involved Mór Jókai,
the most prominent Hungarian writer at the time. Jókai had a long term relationship with the
Nazarenes, who featured as a topic in several of his works.54 In one article Jókai recalled being
visited by seven Nazarenes from their greatest communities in Alföld in 1897, who approached
him as the chairman of Hungarian Peace Association.55 They shared with Jókai their difficulties
with local authorities especially in getting permits to buy property as well as their long held
problem with the military authorities. According to their testimonies the Nazarene conscripts
were still either imprisoned or compelled to serve in medical corps for up to twelve years. But
Jókai was of no help since his concept of peace was very different from theirs; he insisted on the
balance of forces and national sovereignty which conscription helped maintain ( civis paces para
bellum). Jókai’s addition to this old argument was the peculiar threat to which Hungary was
exposed, having no brothers (allies) in the world [ sic] so he told them: “If we let the foreigners
50
Szeberényi, Die Secte der Nazarener, 491- 506 contains official documentation of first trials against the
Nazarenes in Banat, which shows their firmness in face of persecution.
51
Some accounts are preserved in C. Stäubli, Die Nazarener (Zurich: Pfäffikon, 1928). For the interwar period
and more in reports of Delbert Gratz, Stella Alexander and others in IISH Archives, WRI 419 and 420.
52
Zion’s Harp Hymnal was one of the most potent instruments of Nazarene proselytism. For more see Perry
Klopfenstein, A Treasure of Praise. A History of the Zion’s Harp Hymnal (Fort Scott, Ks: Sekan, 1998) and Jenö Szigeti,
“A Nazaré nus Énekeskönyv Története [History of Nazarene Hymnal]” in És Emlékezzél Meg Az Útról (Budapest:
Szabadegyházak Tanácsa, 1981).
53
For the subsequent divisions, emigration and decline of the Nazarene community see C. Stäubli, Die Nazarener;
Peter Brock and Nigel Young, Pacifism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1999), 60–61,
68–69, 92–95, 316–319; and my “Nonconformist Sects under Communism: Case Study of Yugoslavia,” in Crossroads
of History: Experience, Memory, Orality. Proceedings of XI International Oral History Conference vol. III (Istanbul:
International Oral History Association and University of Bogazici, 2000), 1334–1337.
54
See his novel A Szerelem Bolondjai [Maniacs of Love] and Buddhisták Magyarországon [Buddhists in Hungary],
a story which feature Serbian Nazarenes in Hungary.
55
Mór Jókai, “A Nazarénusok Nálam [The Nazarenes to Me],” Magyar Hirlap, 4 November 1897.

62
take our fatherland, it is only the yoke of servitude and the destruction of our nation that awaits
us.”56 In such a catastrophe, Jókai explained, the Nazarenes will also perish, as it happened to the
Nazarenes’ fellow believers, the Doukhobors and Bezpopovtsy in Russia, who were exiled to the
barren mountains of the Caucasus. He continued with the nationalist tirade recalling the credo
of Árpád and the Hungarian martyred past, explaining in passing that the message of Christ as
recorded in the Sermon on the Mount meant only the prohibition of murder. The Nazarenes
replied that Christ instructed the believers to love their enemies and do good to those ones who
persecute them referring to Matthew 5. Jókai approved saying he loved all the neighbouring
peoples and wished them all the best in their countries but insisted on the preservation of con-
scription as the means of defence, implying naturally that in the international order Hungary
can only be victim of the injustice of others. The Nazarenes did not want to dwell on the issue of
Hungary being threatened and only asked him to support their young men doing service with-
out arms. To this last wish Jókai replied in the same bureaucratic fashion of the military officials
that any special treatment for them would draw others to their ranks. Confronted with the old
argument the Nazarene elders in the delegation could only reiterate that any new believer must
undertake tough trials and fulfil many prerequisites in order to be accepted in their community,
which Jókai knew very well. Yet even to an enlightened writer such as Mór Jókai, who praised
the Nazarene beliefs and morals and who was a devoted Christian and connoisseur of the Bible,
these meant little in comparison to his devotion to his Hungarian nation. He finished his discus-
sion with the legendary, so-called iron declaration of Miklós Zrinyi—“ne bántsd a magyart” (do
not harm the Hungarian).57 For Jókai nationalism came ahead of any religious belief. That was a
fully alien principle for the Nazarene, the principle that eventually sealed their fate which ended
in emigration, dispersion or abandonment of the community in the face of repression by the new
nation states after the First World War.

Final Remarks
Going back to Hobsbawm’s parallelism between political and religious movements, the
Nazarenes present a clear case where a religious movement has been resistant to adaptation to
political impetuses despite common features and similar social constituency. Hobsbawm defines
millenarian movement as one featuring a profound and total rejection of the present, evil world,
a passionate longing for another and better one, an ideology of the chiliastic type (the second
coming), and finally a fundamental vagueness about the actual way in which the new society
will be brought about. For him, the last feature is determining since this vagueness prevent
followers of millenarian ideologies to become makers of revolution.58 This chapter however
rejects the notion that the Nazarene community’s organisation and ways were characterised
by vagueness. Instead it advances the notion that in the turn of the century Hungary political
activism and religion were both legitimate responses to one’s own or society’s pressing needs.
Revolutionaries such as Várkonyi or Tolstoians such as Schmitt explained the origins of injustice
in social and power relations and offered class struggle or utopian communities as a solution.

56
Jókai, “A Nazarénusok Nálam [The Nazarenes to Me].”
57
Jókai, “A Nazarénusok Nálam.”
58
Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels, 57–8.

63
 By contrast, the Nazarenes answered the problem of class exploitation and social marginali-
sation through their community of spiritual equals. Theirs was also an egalitarian community,
but one based on religious rather than class or political consciousness. But while the followers
of both strove for personal reassertion and emancipation, their paths and methods used differed
radically. The Nazarene faith was based on a pietistic quietism that wants to change the world
by one’s own inner change. While on the conversion path many could be led with similar aspi-
rations to those of political revolutionaries or rebels, once they became Nazarenes, they believed
that only spiritual salvation could provide the basis for the egalitarian society they sought. That
is why they left the rest of the world to its own devices except for a token reminding the others
of their millennial program as with their refusal to bear arms and take oaths.
Last but not least this analysis wanted to escape a value judgment, typical of studies of
grassroots religious movements such as the Nazarenes, which divides them into “backward-
looking” and “forward-looking.” The Nazarene example shows that there is no clear-cut division.
Makovicky’s criticism of the Nazarenes condemned their eschatological beliefs, which prompted
them to reject the idea of progress and changes in this world in general. For this world, the
Nazarenes believed, would be destroyed by God with fire just like God destroyed the previous
one with flood.59 But the vision of the Nazarenes was pulling them both backward and forward.
Their communal morals and rules longing to re-establish the golden age of harmony also
required the adoption of certain practices of community networking and organisation which
were pulling them towards a new society. With all the change it brought about the conversion
to Nazarene faith was a legitimate option for the poor and deprived, and a way forward. Many
indeed chose this path.

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66
CHAPTER FOUR. A DEAD SEED BEARING
MUCH FRUIT: THE DUTCH CHRISTIAN
ANARCHIST MOVEMENT OF THE
INTERNATIONAL FRATERNITY
ANDRÉ DE RAAIJ
Dutch Christian anarchism as a tendency of the workers’ movement originates around 1890
amongst students of theology and young ministers of the latitudinarian tendency. There were
precursor movements in the nineteenth century, which may be seen as both state-denying and
Christian. The Christelijke Broedergemeente (Christian Communtity of Brethren, from 1803 till
around 1835), generally known as Zwijndrechtse Nieuwlichters, was the first of its kind—living in
community and (originally) sharing goods, rejecting all violence and refusing military service. Of
a second mystical group, the Frisian Berne fan God (God’s Children), still little is known today.
The self-professed Christian anarchist movement proper then developed alongside the secular
socialist and anarchist movements. In 1897 its members started their journal Vrede (Peace) out
of discontent with the presumed lack of interest for the ideas of Leo Tolstoy in Church circles.
They organised officially in the Internationale Broederschap (International Fraternity, 1899), and
started an agricultural/industrial colony in Blaricum. This colony was attacked by villagers in 1903,
an attack which challenged the defencelessness of its members beyond its limits. The movement
as such did not survive this onslaught, but its ideas about non-violence, conscientious objection,
sexual enlightenment and animal protection (amongst others) had an influence which outlasted the
dwindling membership and the organisational failure of these original Dutch Christian anarchists.
Christian anarchism can be dated to around 1890 as a movement in the Netherlands. There are
precursor movements in the nineteenth century, which may be classified as kindred to Christian
anarchism, such as the Christian Community of Brethren, and the Children of God. Of course
these precursors would not have used the combined term, as the positive connotation of anarchy
still had to be developed by people like Proudhon, later on in the nineteenth century. Dutch
Christian anarchism under this name is an offshoot of the modernist current of the protestant
Churches, breaking away by starting its journal Vrede in 1897. As an attempt to live communally
in an agricultural colony, the Christian anarchist organisation of the International Fraternity
failed. However, the influence of the ethical ideas spread by its members by far exceeds its small
numbers. The same can be said about the general pacifist and ethical standpoint of Dutch secular
anarchism, which has been definitely influenced by it. The Fraternity also had a big impact in
the fields of conscientious objection, sexual education, protection of animals and struggle against
alcoholism, amongst others—an influence which still resonates today.1
1
The general story of Dutch Christian anarchism as presented here is drawn from my dissertation: Onze God
is een arbeider (Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1989) and my forthcoming Droom en dimensie—a parallel

67
1. Prologue in Zwijndrecht, Groningen and De Wilp
Yet there are several exemplary precursor tendencies in Dutch history, most of them mentioned
and considered as such by the Christian anarchists of the fin de siècle. Living a communal
life with properties shared had been practiced—since the Reformation—by amongst others the
Anabaptists, the followers of Jean de Labadie (1675–1725), and less strictly by the Collegianten
(seventeenth-eighteenth centuries). The example of a movement which is seen as heralding
socialism in the Netherlands is the Christelijke Broedergemeente (Christian Community of
Brethren), commonly known as Zwijndrechtse Nieuwlichters (followers of the New Light,
with the connotation of: modernists). Central to their teachings and practice is Romans 11:36
(“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things”2 ). Started by peat barge proprietor
Stoffel Muller in 1803 the movement finally found its home in Zwijndrecht in the South of
Holland in 1829. Soon a part of it split away and moved to Mijdrecht. In 1832 the ideal of “from
each according to ability, to each according to need” was virtually abandoned, and soon after
this event Muller died and the Community slowly but steadily eroded itself. Some remaining
members joined the Latter Day Saints in the U. S. A. in the 1860s.
The Christelijke Broedergemeente—apart from the communal life—declined to have anything
to do with the registration service, which has been obligatory since the days of the annexation by
France (1810–1813), and they refused to serve in the army, which particularly became a problem
in 1830, when the Southern Netherlands declared independence as Belgium. Eventually, by way
of compromise, members could serve as medics in the army, which they accepted. It was the
first organised conscientious objection in the Netherlands. As mentioned above, the community
did not survive long after the death of its founder Muller. The idea of the community as a re-
ligious inspired socialist movement is supported by the once influential Dutch novelist Arthur
van Schendel in his novel De waterman (Dutch original published in 1933).3
Theologically related to the Zwijndrecht Community but without any sympathy for the
movement—a lack of interest which must have been class biased, as theologians in the nine-
teenth century were very much part of the ruling class—is the Groningen School of Theology.
Led by reverend Petrus Hofstede de Groot it is the tendency which brought back the humanist
tradition to the Dutch Reformed Church. With their journal Waarheid in liefde (Truth in love),
founded in 1837, they bridge the gap between the Zwijndrecht community and organised
theological modernism in the Netherlands.
Imponderable is how the working of the Berne fan God (God’s Children) based in De Wilp in
the Frisian moors might be described. Hardly known to its contemporaries, it was a community
of believers following the Inner Light, led by yet another mystic, Marten Jans van Houten (1801–
1879). The basic locus for him was John 1:5: “And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness

life of Christian anarchism in the Netherlands and its founder Felix Ortt. For the period after around 1930 the main
source to this day is the only book on religious anarchism published in Dutch: Ariëns, Hans, Laurens Berentsen
and Frank Hermans, Religieus anarchisme in Nederland tussen 1918 en 1940: in het rijk der vrijheid (Zwolle: SVAG,
1984). An important introduction in another language is: Jochheim, Gernot, Antimilitaristische Aktionstheorie, soziale
Revolution und soziale Verteidigung: Zur Entwicklung der Gewaltfreiheitstheorie in der europäischen antimilitaristischen
und sozialistischen Bewegung 1890–1940 — unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Niederlande (Assen etc: Van Gorcum
etc., 1977).
2
King James Version.
3
Schendel, Arthur van, The waterman [translated into English by Neline C. Clegg] (London: Heinemann, 1963).

68
comprehended it not.”4 There is no revelation outside of the Bible, Van Houten preached, but the
Spirit is the means by which the faithful can know God, and general Christendom is living in a
scandal: it has taken the broad path. Where God works is the real freedom. The teachings of Van
Houten sound similar to many of the themes adopted by Christian anarchists, and the Frisian
moors are a strong base both for Christian and for secular anarchism. If possible, more research
on this community should be done.5

2. Christian Anarchism and the International Fraternity (1890-)

1897–1906
In 1649 Gerrard Winstanley and the people called True Levellers or Diggers started their agrarian
activities at St. George’s Hill, which were violently cut down twice by forces more powerful than
these peaceful toilers on the soil. There is a parallel with Dutch Christian anarchists who in 1899
started their agrarian collective enterprise in Blaricum, on land which was cheap exactly because
it was hardly useful for agricultural purposes. Both places, St. George’s Hill and Blaricum, now
are home to nouveaux riches—in the latter case this is mainly due to the discovery of the poverty
of the villagers by a public that came to know the village through the news about the colony. The
poverty was considered to be picturesque and drew a lot of artists to the place, who wanted to
document this poverty, and who eventually took over the village.6
With this opening remark to this section I mean to give my theoretical position on Christian
anarchism in general and the fin de siècle variety in particular. I persist in disagreeing with the
idea of a turn-of-the-century semi- or complete identity crisis of the bourgeoisie, which led artists,
philosophers and other very non-proletarian people to adopt anarchism. Dutch historiographer
Jan Romein is as far as I know the first who has coined this idea, which still survives, but for
reasons which I shall not dwell upon here I do not accept this interpretation.7 I will only mention
the main reason: Christian anarchists of the turn of the century saw themselves as part of a long
tradition throughout the history of Christianity and if I did not take their position seriously there
would be no motivation to write about them as far as I am concerned.8 We can conveniently call
it Christian anarchism but defying or denying worldly authorities in the name of Jesus predates
anarchism about eighteen centuries. The qualification of anarchism should only be applied to
tendencies in the era of modern statehood, starting with Anabaptism on the European Continent
and certainly with radical tendencies in the English Revolution. And after all, from the early
Church up till present day New Monasticism the anarchist thread can be traced in the history of
what Dutch church historian Lindeboom called Christianity’s stepchildren.9
Dutch Christian anarchism was first manifested in circles of latitudinarian theologians, hence-
forth to be called modernists (Modernen), specifically in their journal De Hervorming (Reforma-
4
KJV.
5
Sources are scanty, to say the least. The only full description has been done by G. A. Wumkes in: Een mysticus
uit de Friesche Veenen (Leeuwarden: Friesch Genootschap, 1914).
6
On this transformation of the poor villages Laren and Blaricum due to colonies: Lien Heyting, De wereld in
een dorp: schilders, schrijvers en wereldverbeteraars in Laren en Blaricum, 1880–1920 (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1994).
7
This is the general thesis of Jan Romein, Op het breukvlak van twee eeuwen (Amsterdam: Querido, 1976). Trans-
lation in English: The watershed of two eras: Europe in 1900 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1978).
8
Felix Ortt, De vrije mensch— studies (Amersfoort: Vrede, 1904), 44–45.
9
J. Lindeboom, Stiefkinderen van het christendom (‘s-Gravenhage: Nijhoff, 1929).

69
tion). The modernists were shaken up very much by confrontation with abject poverty of what
were supposed to be their faithful parishioners through the new practice of house visits—in the
spirit of English Christian socialist Arnold J. Toynbee. This culture shock is documented very
well in De Hervorming and there were discussions going on of a very high intellectual quality
on how the social question should be resolved—the meaning of socialism, and how to realise it.
The original political leaning of most modernist theologians was towards liberalism, which im-
plied they did not like to think of the state as the means to solve the social question. And so to
them anarchism was more or less the natural choice for a tendency of socialism. There was also
the combination of anarchism and Christianity as preached by Leo Tolstoy which particularly
appealed to the radical theologians, generally referred to as “the young” ( de jongeren). The most
radical of them, Henri van den Bergh van Eysinga, is together with his brother G. A. van den
Bergh van Eysinga, the most important name attached to the Dutch Radical School of Theology
which insisted that Jesus of Nazareth never even had physically existed. Van den Bergh van
Eysinga did not join any organisation of Christian anarchists and died just when he realised the
new so-called socialist state in Russia was not the earthly paradise he longed for.
Socialism and anarchism were seriously discussed by theologians who knew what they were
talking about in those days. Modernist professor of theology Gunning gave a course on anar-
chism in Leiden, stating that following Jesus would be the only real form of “archism.”10 The
man who started a theologically rightwing split in the Dutch Reformed Church, Abraham Kui-
jper, called for attention for the “social question” arguing that probably the only solution would
be some kind of Christian socialism—an idea he easily forgot once he had become prime minister.
The first anarchist preacher in the Netherlands was the man known as the Prophet of Coevor-
den, H. C. J. Krijthe, who was a modernist theologian and a freethinker at the same time.11 He
may be considered the man who has prepared especially the North of the Netherlands for athe-
ism, anarchism and Christian anarchism together. Atheism in this period should be seen as a
rejection of official church teachings, so it should not be confused with present day ideological
offerings.
Dutch Christian anarchism was expressed in the modernist journal De Hervorming from about
1890 to 1897. Expressions of this type actually pre-date the foundation of a parliamentarian social
democratic party (in 1894) and run parallel to the development of a secular anarchist movement.
So Christian anarchism, small as it may be, was an independent new phenomenon in the workers’
movement from the start. The reverend Krijthe, mentioned above, certainly was one of the early
Dutch anarchists. The most prominent member of both the early socialist and the anarchist
movement, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis had been a bearer of the cloth too, but he left the
Church when he was “converted” to socialism.
Radical ministers complaining that the ideas of Tolstoy were not given enough space in De
Hervorming broke away from this journal and the organisation of modernists entirely, in 1897.
They started their own paper, called Vrede (Peace), which continued under different titles for
about twenty-five years. The immediate cause was the refusal of J. K. van der Veer to serve
(again) as a civic guard, quoting Tolstoy’s vision of the gospel, which in turn led Tolstoy to write

10
J. H. Gunning, Anarchisme (Nijmegen: Ten Hoet, 1895), 30.
11
On Krijthe and other anarchist preachers in the Netherlands: André de Raaij, “‘De gekruisigde communist van
Galilea’: anarchisten op de kansel,” in Onvoltooid verleden 18, www.onvoltooidverleden.nl (accessed March 24, 2009).

70
his Les temps sont proches (“the end is nigh”).12 Van der Veer became publisher and editor of
Vrede, which was officially called the organ of the Christian anarchists. Together with the start
of Vrede the most important Christian anarchist who was not a theologian, Felix Ortt, published
a book called Christelijk anarchisme, soon re-titled as Het beginsel der liefde (The principle of
love)—a plea for voluntary and complete defencelessness. Ortt was working for the department
for the maintenance of dikes, roads, bridges and the navigability of canals (Rijkswaterstaat) and
had developed a method to predict the tide at the Dutch coast, which was used until 1985. This
civil engineer and hydrographer left the aforementioned department in 1899, when it became
clear that he inevitably would have to work for the new Dutch navy harbour in Den Helder.
The people who were calling themselves Christian anarchists in the Netherlands around this
time were cherishing the idea of their own domestic colony, living together and working the
land, all in the spirit of Christ or the earliest Christians. It might still be a matter of debate
where this idea came from, but the most fitting explanation seems to me that several socialist
experiments—sometimes also called utopian—in North America were model to this ideal. The
novelist/philosopher/psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden had his own colony in Laren, named after
Thoreau’s Walden. Van Eeden had been a friend of Felix Ortt’s since their days at school. It is hard
to overestimate Van Eeden’s influence on Dutch Christian anarchism. His interest in spiritualism,
his vision of socialism—building the new society within and at the same time outside of existing
society—and perhaps his symbolism as a novelist and poet had a big impact. However, he can be
considered neither as an anarchist nor as a Christian anarchist.13
In the village of Blaricum, near Van Eeden’s Walden colony, a rich sympathiser with Christian
anarchism, Jac. van Rees, professor of histology in Amsterdam, bought a piece of very poor land
for the Christian anarchist colony. First to settle there were the reverend Anne de Koe, who left
the church refusing to serve the parish of Den Helder, the navy harbour, and S. C. Kijlstra, soon
to be joined by student of theology Lod. van Mierop. The publisher Van der Veer joined too, but
left for England soon, where Christian anarchism was more explicitly inspired by Tolstoy.
It can be easily seen with hindsight that ministers turning themselves into farmers on poor
soil, having no agricultural experience whatsoever, was a recipe for disaster. They were joined by
more experienced workers, but these did not necessarily share their high ideals. The colony some-
how drew people who then and now could be considered problematic cases, just like Walden—
Van Eeden was a psychiatrist and patients hoped to be cured by life in the country.
To relieve professor Van Rees of the formal burden of responsibility for the colony it had to
have its own legal form, which was carried by the association “de Internationale Broederschap”
(the International Fraternity), which was recognised by the government at the end of 1899. The
name expressed the universality of the Christian anarchist ideal and the striving for fraternity.
Brotherhood may have been there, but sisterhood was left out: the spouses of the ministers
turned out to be very unwilling participants in the colony. So much for the ideal of equal rights,
which was an important part of Christian anarchism. Actually, the spirit of fraternity somehow
did not work either. People considered to be unworthy members apparently were told to leave—

12
L. N. Tolstoj, Les Temps sont proches. Trad. sur le manuscrit original par P. Boyer et Ch. Salomon (Paris: n.p.,
1897).
13
His peculiar religiously tinged vision of socialism is explained in: Frederik van Eeden, Happy humanity. [Trans-
lated from the Dutch original: De blijde wereld: reden over mensch en maatschappij] (Garden City, N. Y.: Country Life
Press, 1912).

71
sometimes even by notes, stuck on the wall in the communal refectory.14 Felix Ortt joined rather
late, and became the colony’s naturopath as well as printer and editor of the publishing house.
Van der Veer had soon been replaced as editor, since he was too fanatic as a Tolstoyan and after
being around with the kindred spirits in England he left the Christian anarchist ranks altogether,
making no secret of the fact that he considered the English Tolstoyans to be utterly crazy. That
is one reason why the International Fraternity never really was international in the usual sense.
High-minded Anne de Koe also left the colony in disappointment, moving over to nearby
Walden to be even more disappointed.
The disaster story does not end here. The colony was used as a meeting centre in the days of
the Dutch general strike of 1903. This was not taken well by most villagers, who were suspicious
of the vegetarian (grass-eating) wearers of reform clothing (nudist) colonists anyway (in the
brackets are the names given to the colonists by the villagers). At the kermis of the village, always
a perfect excuse for boozing a bit more than usual, a mob gathered to attack the colony, for queen
and country. Most colonists left in fear, but Lod. van Mierop defencelessly and demonstratively
sat reading the Bible, visible in front of his window—so a fire bomb was thrown at him. The
colonists had to be rescued by the national guard, morally and practically the worst defeat to be
suffered.
When members started discussing means to defend themselves against repetition of this siege,
it turned out to be the bitter end for the colony as a community in the spirit of Christ.15
Scattered and saddened the adherents however still had their focal point in the journal Vrede.
But the idea of continuing unity was blown away when Van Rees turned out to be supporting a
mistress, which did not particularly indicate a chaste life. In effect the International Fraternity
was dissolved. When the last, if not the only proletarian member, S. van den Berg—a most re-
markable Christian anarchist, being Jewish and a syndicalist organiser—asked for support during
a strike in the Rotterdam harbour in 1906, his calls were met with silence.16 This spelled the end
of the illusion of playing a role in the workers’ movement altogether.
This may sound like a disastrous story, but this is just the spectacular side of the Fraternity
that never really was. The really important role of Dutch Christian anarchists was in the battle of
ideas. They organised conscientious objection, and rallied behind every young man who refused
to wear the uniform, which had been compulsory since 1901. The advocating of chaste life was
combined with sexual education, for so-called heterosexuals as well as homosexuals, in which
they were absolutely pioneers.17 They had their unmistakable influence on the idea of animal
protection, with an impact which still makes the Netherlands a pioneering country (resulting
in the Partij voor de Dieren—the Party for the Animals—uniquely representing the interests of
animals in Dutch parliament these days). Louis Bähler translated a Buddhist call for mission
among the Christian barbarians in Europe—which I consider to be a falsification.18 The result was
a split between modernists and anti-modernists in the Dutch Reformed Church, in 1906, which
14
The main story by an outsider of life in the colony is: Henriëtte Hendrix, Een week in de Kolonie der Interna-
tionale Broederschap te Blaricum (Amsterdam: Cohen, 1901).
15
Maria W. J. L. Boersen, De kolonie van de Internationale Broederschap te Blaricum (Blaricum: Historische Kring
Blaricum, 1987).
16
S. van den Berg, De elevator-kwestie, haar verloop en hare beteekenis voor de arbeiderswereld (Amsterdam:
Lodewijk, 1906).
17
Een Hunner [= J. H. François], Open brief aan hen, die anders zijn dan de anderen (Den Haag: Berkhout, 1915)
18
Louis A. Bähler, Het “christelijk” barbarendom in Europa: Boeddhistische zending (Blaricum: De Waelburgh,
1903).

72
still has not been healed yet. Bähler could stay as a reverend since the modernist wing had won
the struggle for his position, but in 1909 he left after a conflict with his parishioners. Even the idea
of starting your own self-managed business as a model against prevailing capitalism did catch up,
and has stayed around until this day. So, in spite of what one might think of the disaster story, I
would say that the story of Dutch Christian anarchism is one of small but significant successes
which gives the ideal and its proponents a weight which lies far beyond the story of defeat or
failure expressed by the Blaricum colony.

3. Developments after 1906 in Bird’s Eye View

Felix Ortt and Lod. van Mierop continued working together through a foundation named Chree-
starchia,19 based in Soest, where they lived next door to each other. The most important goal
of the foundation was the founding of a humanitarian school, which still exists today. Other
activities were organising for teetotalism, propaganda for chaste living (combined with sexual
education), pleading for vegetarianism, against vivisection and for the protection of animals,
naturopathy and latitudinarian religious education.
In 1915 Louis A. Bähler took the initiative for a manifesto asking for the refusal of military ser-
vice, which in a slightly watered down version was supported by the entire political left wing in
the Netherlands. Signing the manifesto brought several members of the higher classes (among
whom quite a few reverends) in jail. Getting acquainted with the prison system rallied reli-
gious anarchists Lod. van Mierop, Kees Boeke and Clara Meijer-Wichmann towards the cause of
abolitionism. To give them some kind of organisational structure the Vrije Menschen Verbond
(Association of Free Humans) was formed along with the initiative of the manifesto.
This association merged with the left wing of the Christian socialists—who never fitted in with
social-democrats—into the Bond van Religieuse Anarcho-Communisten (Association of Religious
Anarcho-Communists) in 1920. In 1932 it was renamed to Bond van Anarcho-Socialisten (Associ-
ation of Anarcho-Socialists), formally open to everyone but still a religious anarchist association.
The organisation was called religious anarchist rather than Christian anarchist to stress its open-
ness to Jews, theosophists, confessors to other creeds and non-religious people who wanted to
adhere to the ideas of the movement. As a pacifist and socialist movement its influence probably
went beyond its small membership, which never exceeded a few hundred. Its journal, De Vrije
Communist, rebaptised Bevrijding (Liberation) in 1923, generally edited by former reverend Bart
de Ligt and with regular contributions by poet Henriëtte Roland Holst, was culturally and politi-
cally more important than the membership of the organisation would suggest, and the latter-day
Pacifist Socialist Party adopted the name for its journal as a token of appreciation.
The Spanish Civil War effectively brought an end to the organisation due to unbridgeable
disagreement about whether the use of violence should be permitted. Plans to revive the organi-
sation were thwarted by the German occupation of the Netherlands in 1940. Organised religious
anarchism did not rise again after this occupation. The story of religious anarchism for several
decades after the occupation is one of individual persons, such as Kees Boeke with his school De
Werkplaats (Workshop) in Bilthoven, Année Rinzes de Jong with the Open Religious Community,
management advisor and psychologist Lieuwe Hornstra. And Felix Ortt, founder of the Dutch
Christian anarchist movement, remained active until his death in 1959.
19
A self-invented Greek word supposed to mean “Dominion of the morally good.”

73
 Some decades later Roman Catholics brought back some life and organisation to the idea of
Christian anarchism in the Netherlands. In 1988 the Ploughshares Movement got a branch in
the Netherlands, along with the Catholic Worker. Roman Catholics were rarer than Jews in the
old movement. Since both the Ploughshares and the Catholic Worker movements originate in
the United States of America for the adherents in the Netherlands it may look as if they are
following a new and imported tradition. But then, both the founders of the Catholic Worker
and of the International Fraternity knew they were spreading ideas which (to paraphrase Peter
Maurin20 ) are so old they always will look like new.

Bibliography

Ariëns, Hans, Laurens Berentsen and Frank Hermans. Religieus anarchisme in Nederland tussen
1918 en 1940: in het rijk der vrijheid. Zwolle: SVAG, 1984.
Bähler, Louis A. Het “christelijk” barbarendom in Europa. Boeddhistische zending. Blaricum: De
Waelburgh, 1903.
Berg, S. van den. De elevator-kwestie, haar verloop en hare beteekenis voor de arbeiderswereld.
Amsterdam: Lodewijk, 1906.
Boersen, Maria W.J.L. De kolonie van de Internationale Broederschap te Blaricum. Blaricum: His-
torische Kring Blaricum, 1987.
Eeden, Frederik van. Happy humanity. [Translated from the Dutch original: De blijde wereld:
reden over mensch en maatschappij.] Garden City, N.Y.: Country Life Press, 1912.
Een Hunner [=J.H. François]. Open brief aan hen, die anders zijn dan de anderen. Den Haag:
Berkhout, 1915.
Gunning, J. H. Anarchisme. Nijmegen: Ten Hoet, 1895.
Hendrix, Henriëtte. Een week in de Kolonie der Internationale Broederschap te Blaricum. Amster-
dam: Cohen, 1901.
Heyting, Lien. De wereld in een dorp: schilders, schrijvers en wereldverbeteraars in Laren en Blar-
icum, 1880–1920. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1994.
Jochheim, Gernot. Antimilitaristische Aktionstheorie, soziale Revolution und soziale Verteidigung:
Zur Entwicklung der Gewaltfreiheitstheorie in der europäischen antimilitaristischen und sozialis-
tischen Bewegung 1890–1940 — unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Niederlande. Assen etc.:
Van Gorcum etc., 1977.
Maurin, Peter. Easy Essays. Washington: Rose Hill, 2003.
Ortt, Felix. Het beginsel der liefde. Haarlem: Vrede, 1898.
—. Christelijk anarchisme. Haarlem: Vrede, 1898.
—. Denkbeelden van een christen-anarchist. Den Haag: Vrede, 1900.
—. De vrije mensch— studies. Amersfoort: Vrede, 1904.
Raaij, André de. “‘De gekruisigde communist van Galilea’: anarchisten op de kansel.” Onvoltooid
verleden 18. www.onvoltooidverleden.nl (accessed March 24, 2009).
—. Onze God is een arbeider. Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1989.
Tolstoj, L.N. Les Temps sont proches. Trad. sur le manuscrit original par P. Boyer et Ch. Salomon.
Paris: n.p., 1897.
20
Peter Maurin, Easy Essays (Washington: Rose Hill, 2003), 37.

74
Verdonk, Dirk-Jan, Het dierloze gerecht — een vegetarische geschiedenis van Nederland. Amster-
dam: Boom, 2009.
Wumkes, G.A. Een mysticus uit de Friesche Veenen. Leeuwarden: Friesch Genootschap, 1914.

75
PART II: CHRISTIAN ANARCHIST
REFLECTIONS
CHAPTER FIVE. LOVE, HATE, AND
KIERKEGAARD’S CHRISTIAN POLITICS OF
INDIFFERENCE
RICHARD A. DAVIS
This chapter suggests one way in which the Danish philosopher theologian Søren Kierkegaard can
be understood as an anarchist. It suggests that Kierkegaard advocates neither love nor hatred of the
state, but indifference, the fruit of a truly Christian life. The argument begins by explaining how
anarchism can be understood as indifference. This indifference is found in Jesus’ own orientation
toward the political structures of his time, and can be seen elsewhere in the Christian tradition.
Indifference is here considered a more radical standpoint than hatred of the state, typified by more
militant anarchists. Kierkegaard’s reputation as a political thinker is then considered, along with
those who would deny that Kierkegaard was indifferent in politics. In placing Kierkegaard’s politics
in the intellectual context of Lutheran Danish Church Establishment and Hegelian Christendom, this
chapter also examines Kierkegaard’s less than indifferent approach to Christendom, the alliance of
church and state that he saw plaguing Denmark and making authentic Christianity scarce. Against
these movements, which risked swallowing the individual into the collective, Kierkegaard opposed
the state in emphasising the individual and their discipleship of Christ. Such a love of God entails a
dissolution of any active relationship to the state, which may be called indifference. Understood in
this way, Kierkegaard’s indifference to the state can be described as anarchist.

Introduction
The literal meaning of “anarchy” is, in political thought at least, to be against the state or “arkys.”1
But why be against the state? Anarchists will probably agree that the state blocks, frustrates or
even opposes true human flourishing and human community. Theologically understood, “Chris-
tian anarchism” sees the state obstructing the redemption of humanity and the possibility of
peace with justice in this life. More generally speaking, then, one’s favoured form of political
organisation will be closely related to how one defines what it is to be human, both individually
and communally, and what stands in the way of our true redeemed humanity. Christians have
a particular view of what it means to be human; but are divided over the political form that best
serves the flourishing of the human, and if, indeed, it matters at all. This chapter will examine
how Danish philosopher theologian Søren Kierkegaard engaged with these issues, and will ex-
plore through his thought the notion that Christian anarchism is best understood as an attitude
of indifference toward the state, rather than active opposition to it.

1
“Arky” is a word invented by Vernard Eller and means “any principle of governance claiming to be of primal
value for society.” Vernard Eller, Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers (Eugene: Wipf / Stock, 1999), 1.

77
 In his battle for authentic Christianity Kierkegaard attacked any target that removed the need
for a direct personal encounter with Jesus Christ. Hence his well known attack on Christendom,
the alliance of church and state that he saw plaguing Denmark and making authentic Christianity
scarce. Kierkegaard’s anti-Constantinian theological writings do not only assail; they positively
promote an indifference to politics that provides a compelling version of Christian anarchism.
This indifference is found in Jesus’ own position toward the political structures of his time, and
can be seen as a model for relations between Christians and the state and perhaps church-state re-
lations as well. Indifference is here considered a more radical standpoint than hatred of the state,
typified by more militant anarchists. This Christian stance is anarchist and radical when derived,
as it is in Kierkegaard, from uncompromising obedience to God and imitation of Christ. The argu-
ment will begin by explaining how anarchism can be understood as indifference. Kierkegaard’s
reputation as a political thinker will then be considered, along with those who would deny that
Kierkegaard was indifferent in politics. Finally, Kierkegaard’s own positions on the state will be
discussed, along with how we should react to the state and overcome its worst impacts though
an emphasis on the individual.

Love, Hate, and Indifference

Indifference in politics is sometimes thought of as a nihilistic quality that works against sociality
and something that must be remedied. This view is often promulgated by those with most to lose
by falling public participation in elections and policy debates. Yet even if one sees voting and
state-centred politics as unimportant, one may have some concern about indifference to, or apa-
thy about, serious social problems and falling participation in other forms of political and social
action. But it is not only political actors that worry about apathy; religion also fears indifference.
For example, Christian anarchist Vernard Eller, writing in his work on Kierkegaard, expresses
a common Christian sentiment: “The live threat to Christianity is not heresy … but indifference.”2
Where the church is in decline is it the lack of relevance of Christianity that keeps people away,
with many people simply indifferent to the church and God. The state’s indifference to Chris-
tianity has also been seen as a threat to the church, although some would equate this with the
neutrality necessitated by liberalism.3 Here, though, the focus is on individuals’ relationship to
the state, and to God. At the individual level, then, Kierkegaard thought that indifference toward
one’s faith meant that one could no longer be called a Christian:
If anyone thinks he has faith and yet is indifferent toward this possession, is neither
cold nor hot, he can be certain that he does not have faith. If anyone thinks he is
2
Vernard Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1968), 134.
3
Everett Fergusson comments that the church should be wary of any posture the state has toward the church.
And while he possibly prefers that the state be indifferent to the church, it really doesn’t matter all that much, the
church must follow its Lord regardless: “For the church truly to be the church, a benevolent state is no less threatening
than an oppressive state. Indeed, the favorable state may be more threatening, for it tempts the church to rely on the
state and its methods for the advancement of the church’s programs. The oppressive state, as seen throughout history,
strengthens the faith of the church and sharpens its identity. There is a current lament that a greater threat than either
oppression or favor to the church is apathy or indifference by the state and society. Only those with the state-church
mentality would think so. Whether the problem be indifference or opposition, the church must trust its Lord and
follow his ways, which are not the world’s ways, in achieving its mission.” Everett Ferguson, The Church of Christ: A
Biblical Ecclesiology for Today (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 398–399.

78
 a Christian and yet is indifferent toward being that, then he really is not one at all.
Indeed, what would we think of a person who gave assurances that he was in love
and also that it was a matter of indifference to him?4

Recalling Revelation 3:16, such a “Christian,” being neither hot nor cold, is rejected. This pas-
sage from Kierkegaard also links indifference with love’s opposite, and thereby enters into the
dialectic of love, hate, and indifference. Here there are three stances: hot, cold, and lukewarm.
One who is “hot” loves God and can be called a true Christian. Being “cold” is to be a hater of
Christianity and in active opposition to the gospel. The “lukewarm” are in the worst position of
all.5 In Kierkegaard’s example above, the “Christian” is a self-deluded fool for thinking they are
a Christian, they are really indifferent; neither hot nor cold, such a person does not truly care
whether they are a Christian or not. Even worse than being delusional about one’s relationship
to God is to become gradually indifferent to God, as Kierkegaard laments:

to be able to lose God in such a way that one becomes utterly indifferent and does
not even find life intolerable—that is disconsolateness and is also the most terrible
kind of disobedience, more terrible than any defiance—to hate God, to curse him, is
not so terrible as to lose him in this way or, what is the same thing, to lose oneself.6

Following Kierkegaard, lukewarmism can be placed in a category of its own; with love and
hate in their own dialectal relationship. Paradoxically, Kierkegaard argues that love and hate are
opposites, but at the same time that hate is a perverted form of love:

Spontaneous love can be changed within itself; it can be changed into its opposite,
into hate. Hate is a love that has become its opposite, a love that has perished. Down
in the ground the love is continually aflame, but it is the flame of hate; not until the
love has burned out is the flame of hate also put out. Just as it is said of the tongue
that “it is the same tongue with which we bless and curse,” so it may also be said that
it is the same love that loves and hates.7

In politics, as well as religion, love/hate and lukewarmism (here called “indifference”) can
describe relations to its objects. What the state and the church share is a desire that people are
not indifferent to them; for while they would prefer to be loved, they would rather be loathed than
not thought of at all. Indifference is a threatening disposition for it renders the object irrelevant
and obsolete to one’s life. Through either love or hate one is bound to the object in an active
relationship; whereas indifference is a kind of non-relation to its object. Politically speaking,
this could be considered an anarchist posture when it holds the state as something irrelevant and
meaningless. Or as Eller puts it, when defining “anarchy:” “the state of being unimpressed with,

4
Søren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995), 26–27.
5
Kierkegaard counts amongst the sorry lukewarm Bishop Mynster and Pastor Grundtvig. See Søren
Kierkegaard, The Moment and Late Writings, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1998), 206–210.
6
Søren Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses: The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, ed. and trans. Howard
V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 90.
7
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 34 (Kierkegaard’s emphasis).

79
disinterested in, skeptical of, nonchalant toward, and uninfluenced by the highfalutin claims of
any and all arkys.”8 Likewise in the church; the danger is that it is simply ignored.9
Kierkegaard identified and enjoyed the paradoxical nature of indifference. It is not indiffer-
ence, for instance, to tell another that one is indifferent to them, with Kierkegaard himself tak-
ing comfort from those who said, “What does anyone care about Magister Kierkegaard? I’ll
show him.”10 To express such indifference in this way is a logical contradiction, but is almost
irresistible. For the Christian it is a worldly temptation, because the Christian does not need the
world to acknowledge its indifference; and to seek this acknowledgement is to defeat the purpose
of such indifference. In the following quotation Kierkegaard lists some of the worldly things the
Christian should be indifferent to, and stresses that they should not be indifferent in a worldly
fashion:

people thought that it was Christian to betray the secret, to express in a worldly way
Christianity’s indifference to friendship, to the family relationships, to love of the
fatherland—which is indeed false, because Christianity is not indifferent in a worldly
way to anything; on the contrary, it is concerned about everything simply and solely
in a spiritual way. But to express one’s indifference in such a way that one is eager
for the relevant persons to find out about it is certainly not being indifferent. Such
indifference is comparable to someone’s going up to another and saying, “I don’t
care about you,” to which the other might answer, “Then why bother to tell me!”
Again it was a piece of childishness; it was a childish way of being distinguished by
Christianity.11

The remainder of this chapter will examine to what extent Søren Kierkegaard is an anarchist of
this sort; believing that indifference to the state is normative for Christians. Such indifferentism
toward politics was not an innovation of Kierkegaard’s, it has been part of the Christian tradition
since the Church Fathers. Saint Augustine, for instance, wrote:

As for this mortal life, which ends after a few days’ course, what does it matter under
whose rule a man lives, being so soon to die, provided that the rulers do not force
him to impious and wicked acts?12

In the twentieth century, Jacques Maritain affirmed this general approach in more structural
terms, writing:

8
Eller, Christian Anarchy, 2.
9
One might say that militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who despise luke-
warm atheists almost as much as Christians, are doing religion a great service by getting people talking about God,
and to consider what kind of relationship they should have to God.
10
Kierkegaard’s response to such people was: “Ah, but showing me that they do not care about me to taking the
trouble to get me to realize that they do not care about me is still dependence … They show me respect precisely by
showing me that they do not respect me.” Søren Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, ed. Howard
V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, and Gregor Malantschuk, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1967), 5, §5979.
11
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 144–145.
12
Saint Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin
Books, 2003), V, 17. Jean Calvin echoes Augustine on this point in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.20.1.

80
 One can be a Christian and achieve one’s salvation while militating in favor of any
political regime whatsoever, always on the condition that it does not trespass against
natural law and the law of God. One can be a Christian and achieve one’s salvation
while defending a political philosophy other than the democratic philosophy, just as
one was able to be a Christian, in the days of the Roman empire, while accepting the
social regime of slavery, or in the seventeenth century while holding to the political
regime of the absolute monarchy.13

What these quotations share is a concern that Christians should not be too anxious about the
political structures they live in, or who their political leaders are. A biblical mandate for this
view can be found in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things
present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else
in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our
Lord.14

Hence, it is possible that one can live a Christian life and be saved while living under any
political regime whatsoever. But it should also be noted that both Augustine and Maritain accept
limits to this indifference, notably where the law transgresses the “law of God,” or compels one
to sin. Kierkegaard shared this view on the possibility of true Christianity and salvation under
any political system; but had concerns about the probability of faith when living in Christendom.

The Politics of Kierkegaard

For many years it was thought Kierkegaard had little to say on social and political matters, given
his existential focus on the individual. That phase of Kierkegaard scholarship seems to be over,
and there has been an increasing number of scholars willing to recognise that Kierkegaard, while
not a political philosopher, was a profound thinker about politics and a severe critic of modern
society.15 Yet while there is agreement on this, there remains debate over whether Kierkegaard
had a positive political programme.
Just as Kierkegaard has been described as a negative theologian, he could also be described as
a negative political thinker. As Merold Westphal rightly observes, Kierkegaard’s politics

emerges indirectly, through a critique of what he believes is the overriding sociopolit-

ical defect of the theory and practice of his times rather than as a positive description
of the institutions of the society he deems most rational.16

13
Jacques Maritain, Christianity and Democracy (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945), 24.
14
Romans 8:38–39. All direct quotes from the Bible are from the New Revised Standard Version.
15
For some of the history of the reception and interpretation of Kierkegaard as a social and political thinker see
the editors’ introduction to George Pattison and Steven Shakespeare, eds., Kierkegaard: The Self in Society (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1998).
16
Merold Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society (University Park: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1991), 33.

81
 Graham Smith has also observed this lack of a positive programme, and notes that
“Kierkegaard cannot describe the details of such a politics precisely because to do so would be
to collapse his critique of the political into politics.”17 Smith’s interpretation leaves room to
think that it is possible that Kierkegaard could offer us a positive politics. But Smith writes that
if Kierkegaard did so he would become part of the problem, which would be trying to find a
political solution to a spiritual problem.
While Smith’s analysis is useful, seeing Kierkegaard as indifferent to the political strength-
ens the position that Kierkegaard would not and could not offer any political programme, be-
cause this would be self-contradictory. What form the political ultimately took mattered little to
Kierkegaard.
Smith’s profitable analysis also points to an illuminating way in which Kierkegaard’s critique
of politics can be read. If one stays within the ethical or political stage of life, one seeks to find
what political ideology is a “better” form of the ethical, as though replacing one political system
with another will solve our problems. Kierkegaard repudiates this approach to politics, believing
that all these debates within the sphere of the ethical miss the real point. What is needed is
the transcendence of the ethical into the religious stages of life. Kierkegaard maintains that
true Christianity is the basis for true human community; not a new way of being ethical. To
remain confined within the ethical stage of life has the result that Christianity has nothing to
offer politics.
The rediscovery of the political nature of Kierkegaard’s thought also comes with a warning
against seeing him indifferent to politics. In some interpreters there can be confusion between
indifference and ignoring the political altogether, as in Westphal, who wrote:

Kierkegaard’s individualism, I have become increasingly persuaded, expresses a rad-

ical politics and is anything but a form of apolitical or antisocial indifference or
withdrawal.18

Robert L. Perkins has also warned against this line of interpretation.19 But he does nothing
to explain the texts where Kierkegaard expresses or advocates political indifference. Yet, these
texts form a not insignificant aspect of Kierkegaard’s concern with the state and the emergence
of Christendom. So while these warnings about oversimplifying or totalising Kierkegaard’s in-
difference should be taken seriously, it is still possible to accept the normative implications of
indifference to political structures and claims.

Kierkegaard on the State

The claim that Kierkegaard was indifferent to political forms is also challenged by his severe
criticism of the state, as seen in passages such as this: “The state is of the evil rather than of the
good.”20 Lying behind such brief passages Kierkegaard had three substantive objections to the
state. These interconnected criticisms were not in the realm of pure political theory. Kierkegaard
17
Graham M. Smith, “Kierkegaard from the point of view of the political,” History of European Ideas 31, no. 1
(2005): 59.
18
Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, viii.
19
Robert L. Perkins, “Kierkegaard’s Critique of the Bourgeois State,” Inquiry 27, no. 2–3 (1984): 208.
20
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4238.

82
was not a political anthropologist attempting to explain the ancient origins of modern politics,
nor did he attempt to provide a theory of the basis of the state, as Hobbes and Locke did. “Instead
of all these hypotheses about the origins of the state etc,” Kierkegaard writes, “we should be more
occupied with the question: given an established order, how can new points of departure be
created religiously.”21 His was a contextual political engagement, linked to nineteenth-century
Denmark.
Firstly, then, what Kierkegaard really disliked was not the state in a purely theoretical sense,
but the modern state as it was emerging in Denmark, being an alliance of church and state.
To Kierkegaard this manifestation of Christendom was opposed to true Christianity, since all
Danes were automatically Christians, without them having to do anything, since citizenship
and being a Christian were made equivalent. Kierkegaard observed that “Christianity does not
exist, at least not in ‘Christendom’ where we are all Christian and all are saved.”22 Kierkegaard’s
neighbours were complacent in their Christianity. Nearly all Danes were baptised and most were
confirmed. But these rites, while making people members of the church, were not enough, in
Kierkegaard’s opinion, to make them real Christians. Danish Christians did not imitate Christ
and his suffering. Theirs was a form of civil religion and not authentic apostolic Christianity.
True Christianity, Kierkegaard thought, was becoming nearly impossible in Christendom, and
with its disappearance went hopes for human community based on love for the neighbour.
Second, Kierkegaard saw that the rise of the modern state in Europe was replacing the old
communities with the hollow notion of the “public.” In this process individuality disappeared
and everyone was levelled down to being a mere human and shorn of their relational identity. In
John Elrod’s words,

the democratic revolutions sweeping across Europe destroyed the concrete and his-
torical community, replacing it with the abstract and ahistorical public. The indi-
vidual is defined no longer by contingent factors like nationality, race, community
and occupation but by his membership in the human race, which is defined in the
universal ideals of democratic liberalism.23

Absorbed into the “public” or mob, people lose their individuality and the possibility of being
an individual and a true Christian. Kierkegaard lamented that,

In the “public” and the like the single individual is nothing; there is no individual …
detached from the “public” the single individual is nothing, and in the public he is,
more basically understood, really nothing at all.24

Darren C. Zook notes that the individual was under threat by the deliberate actions of the
emerging states, which sought to encourage patriotism (love of the nation-state) and to become
meaningful to their subjects:

the Danish state, like so many other European states, had been directing its ener-
gies in earnest at capturing the hearts and minds of “concrete individuals” at least
21
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4205.
22
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4816.
23
John W. Elrod, Kierkegaard and Christendom (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 65–66.
24
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 3, §2952.

83
 from the latter half of the eighteenth century, largely through practices of ceremo-
nial ritual and institutional discipline aimed at transforming subjects of the self into
subjects of the state.25

It was not only the state that judged this a beneficial move. Removed from historical obli-
gations and endowed with natural rights, the citizen could pursue their own egotistical ends,
such as the pursuit of wealth and the domination of others. Finally, then, Kierkegaard criticises
the state as being nothing more than the sum of individuals’ egotism. The state, in this view,
cannot become what individuals are not. Since individuals are naturally envious and egotistical,
the state cannot but be the same. Since the state is nothing but egotism writ large, Kierkegaard
rejects patriotism and the idea that it is virtuous to obey the state, or that that is where virtue
is to be found, as was claimed by Plato and Hegel.26 The state wishes to appear ethical and a
vehicle for love, but Kierkegaard rightly saw through this, and the way in which politics masks
its egotism as virtue: “But politics is egotism dressed up as love, is the most frightful egotism,
is Satan himself in the form of an angel of light.”27 For Kierkegaard then, the state is what we
use to impose our egotism onto others. The state does not become a giving up of the self for the
collective, but a recognition and celebration of self-interestedness. Acceptance of the state and
any implied social contract does not exhibit a giving up of interests selflessly for the common
good, but rather our individual desire for security and safety.
Through his analysis of egotism Kierkegaard describes how humanity had a kind of fall into
politics, in that as God recedes, politics advances. Politics becomes the playground of competing
egotisms and interests focussed not on God, but on ourselves. Hence the egotism that appears in
the state comes from a loss of duty to God and neighbour. Egotism, for Kierkegaard, can be under-
stood as one’s wants and desires, dressed up as duties to oneself, for as he wrote, “Concurrently
as duty to God disappeared, duty to oneself made its appearance.”28
In addition to these historical events and forces, further light can be shed on Kierkegaard’s
politics by understanding the intellectual genealogy of Danish Christendom in Luther and Hegel.

The Lutheran Origins of Danish Establishment

Both Denmark’s state-church and Kierkegaard were Lutheran. His theological training was
Lutheran, and while he was never ordained, he attended worship regularly and preached oc-
casionally. Kierkegaard was also a sometime fan of Luther, praising his sermons and theology
throughout his writings.29 But while Kierkegaard agreed with the basics of Lutheranism and re-
formed doctrine,30 he was sometimes outspoken against Luther himself and the impact and use
of his theology.
The most relevant feature of Luther’s theology here is the theory and practice of his doctrine
of the two kingdoms. Put simply, this asserted that there are two realms in the world, a spiritual

25
Darren C. Zook, “The Irony of it All: Søren Kierkegaard and the Anxious Pleasures of Civil Society,” British
Journal for the History of Philosophy 16, no. 2 (2008): 418.
26
See Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4238.
27
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4206.
28
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 1, §1004.
29
See, for instance, Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 3, §803.
30
Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, 302.

84
one ruled “through the Holy Spirit under Christ,” and a temporal one ruled by lawful secular
authorities. Since both realms were ordained by God, Luther emphasised the duty of civil obe-
dience and the sinfulness of rebellion against political authority. Importantly rulers got their
authority directly from God, not from the Pope, marking a distinction between the two realms
characteristic of Reformed theology. Luther saw that these two realms were distinct and should
not be confused.31
What did Kierkegaard think of Luther’s doctrine and its application to Denmark? One can eas-
ily imagine that Kierkegaard would have liked the doctrine of two kingdoms, seeing its focus on
the separation of the two realms being a bulwark against established churches and Christendom.
Indeed when Kierkegaard calls Christendom “Satan’s invention”32 he may be recalling Luther’s
concern about “confusio regnorum,” one of Satan’s great weapons being the confusion of the two
regiments.33 But much more important was what happened in practice; and this resulted in a
sharp distinction between Luther and Kierkegaard.
Prior to the Reformation the church had significant control over Danish society. Following
nearly two decades of Luther-inspired activism and conflict, evangelical Lutheranism was de-
clared the national religion of Denmark in 1536, replacing the Roman Catholic Church. A new
church structure was issued in 1537 with the participation and endorsement of Luther himself:

All of the new organising principles had been drawn up in close collaboration with
Lutheran theologians and had also been sent to Wittenberg for the approval of Luther
himself and of his inner circle of advisors.34

The effects of this alliance were far-reaching and gave shape to the state church that
Kierkegaard hated so much. Kierkegaard was critical of the role of Luther in seeking polit-
ical help for his reforming project: When Luther introduced the idea of Reformation, what
happened? Even he, the great reformer, became impatient, he did not reduplicate strongly
enough—he accepted the help of the princes, i.e. he really became a politician, to whom victory
is more important than “how” one is victorious.35
Luther’s two kingdoms did not mean, in Danish practice at least, separation of church and
state; they were intermingled from the start. Danish historian Knud Jespersen describes the
changes that followed the Reformation in Denmark:

While previously the Danish clergy had been an independent and powerful group
on equal footing with the aristocracy, the Reformation reduced them to the position
of civil servants, directly answerable for their conduct to the state. As a result of this
subordinated role, the Danish clergy became ever-more instruments of the state over
the following centuries. In fact, they became the most significant mouthpieces of the
state to address the wider public. On Sunday after Sunday, Lutheran dogma about
31
See Martin Luther, “On Secular Authority,” in Martin Luther and Jean Calvin. Luther and Calvin on Secular
Authority, edited and translated by Harro Höpfl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 10–11.
32
Cited in Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 3, §3238.
33
W. D. J. Cargill Thompson and Philip Broadhead, The Political Thought of Martin Luther (Brighton: Harvester,
1984), 55.
34
Knud J. V. Jespersen, A History of Denmark, trans. Ivan Hill (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 88.
35
Søren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard: A Selection, ed. and trans. Alexander Dru (London:
Oxford University Press, 1938), §1166.

85
 the sanctity of authority and unconditional obedience—and attendance at services
was compulsory. Thus, the clergy became the most important tool for the state in
the comprehensive religious and social regimenting of the people, so that they not
only all became faithful Lutherans, but also useful and loyal subjects of the state.36
It is here that Kierkegaard locates a battle between true Christianity and the Lutheran Church.
While both Kierkegaard and Luther both wished to preserve the church they differed over how
that ought to happen, and what the church should look like. Eller summarises neatly the differ-
ence between Luther (the “church”man) and Kierkegaard (the sectary):
If the church is what the “church”man sees it to be, then sectarian radicalism is a real
and present threat to the very existence of the Christian church. But if the church
is what the sectary sees it to be then Luther-type “politics” are a real and present
threat to the very existence of the Christian church.37
This is why Kierkegaard focused on the individual’s direct relationship to God since in Chris-
tendom true Christianity had almost vanished. Hence, he saw his task as introducing Christianity
into Christendom.38 Kierkegaard did not hold Luther responsible for all that Lutheranism became.
He thought that Luther’s ideas suited certain secular interests who exploited him. Luther pro-
vided, ironically, both support for Christendom in Denmark and a means of critiquing it, through
his two regiments doctrine. Kierkegaard despised the former and preferred the later.

Hegel and Modern Christendom

Hegel was a contemporary of Kierkegaard’s and while he did not have the direct impact of Luther
on the church in Denmark, his idealism was influential in offering continued support to the es-
tablished order. Much of Kierkegaard’s body of work addresses what he saw as the negative
influence of Hegelianism on his contemporary world. Hegel was concerned with the breakdown
in community and the lack of a coherent social philosophy that could reverse this trend. He there-
fore gave much attention to what would unify people and rebuild community. He was opposed
to the individualism of the age and its modern individualist morality.39 Hegel saw Christianity
as part of the problem, with faith being privatised and isolated from the world. “Our religion,” he
wrote of Christianity, “wishes to train people to be citizens of heaven with their gaze ever fixed
on high, who will thereby be strangers to human feelings.”40 Following on from Rousseau, Hegel
thought that such a religion was disruptive of social order and community. He favoured a civil
religion that worked toward civil unity.
For Hegel the state is part of the Absolute Spirit, which consumed all ethics, politics and reli-
gion within itself. In such a state the responsible individual follows the community ethic ( Sit-
tlichkeit) and subordinates their individuality to the collective. To be ethical and religious means
36
Jespersen, A History of Denmark, 89.
37
Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, 305 (Eller’s emphasis).
38
Søren Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), 36.
39
See Allen W. Wood, “Hegel’s ethics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, ed. Frederick C. Beiser (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993), 211–233.
40
Cited in Bernard Cullen, Hegel’s Social and Political Thought: An Introduction (New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1979), 6.

86
to follow the group and law. It is easy to see how this promotes the community Hegel sought.
With church and state combined, obeying the state (ethics) is what Christianity amounts to, with
all citizens sharing a basic Christian identity. Hegel demands that the individual becomes part
of the state, giving up their individuality. This is what Kierkegaard loathed, writing:

That the state in a Christian sense is supposed to be what Hegel taught—namely, that
it has moral significance, that true virtue can appear only in the state … that the goal
of the state is to improve men—is obviously nonsense.41

Hence, Kierkegaard accuses Hegel of deifying the established order.42 Hegel himself says, with
a view to preserve social order: “nothing must be considered higher and more sacred than good
will towards the State.”43 The consequence of this is dramatic. In deifying the established order
one who thinks they are above it can be accused of being more than human. Any claim to be
following a higher religious calling, as Abraham did in his religious teleological suspension of the
ethical, would be a source of great offence to society.44 Kierkegaard argues against the deification
of the established order bought about by Hegel, calling it “the continual revolt against God.”45
Since, if the established order is itself divine then it can no longer be under the judgement of
God.46
Kierkegaard continues his critique of Hegel’s deification of the established order, seeing it as
a secular force with civil peace as its end point effectively removing Christianity from society:

The deification of the established order, however, is the smug invention of the lazy,
secular, human mentality that wants to settle down and fancy that now there is total
peace and security, now we have achieved the highest.47

Here we start to see the contrast between the Hegelian ethical order and the Kierkegaardian
individual. While the individual can become something with God as its end, the state becomes
an end in itself that cannot change and constrains the ability of its citizens to become anything.
In opposition to the established order, then, is Kierkegaard’s individual:

And just as the individual human being can aspire to become something, so this
is the something to which the generation aspires; it wants to form the established
order, to abolish God, in the fear of men to browbeat the single individual into a
mousehole—but this God does not want, and he uses the very opposite tactic—he
uses the single individual to prod the established order out of self-complacency.48

41
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4238.
42
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 87.
43
G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, trans. John Sibree (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1857), 468.
44
This a little explored political implication of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. Not surprisingly Hegel and
Kierkegaard diverge on their evaluation of Abraham. See Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society,
61–84.
45
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 88.
46
Westphal, Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society, 77.
47
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 88.
48
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 89–90.

87
 Kierkegaard, therefore, was directly opposed to the Hegelian theory of the state in which God
was displaced by the deification of the state, and in which the individual becomes nothing but
a speck and thus no longer truly exists. Along with Luther, Hegel was a foundation of Danish
Christendom, with its established state church. In this Kierkegaard saw a national religion which
encouraged conformity and suppression of individuality. Citizens were automatically Christians
and were encouraged by the church to submit to the state and conform to Danish culture. How
did Kierkegaard think this state of affairs could be overcome and true Christianity flourish?

Overcoming the State and Recovering the Individual

Overall, Kierkegaard saw the development of the true self as the ethical-religious individual as
the final word in reply to Christendom and political religion. Political indifference will be a mark
of those who achieve this level of individuality and faithfulness. But given the seductive power
of Christendom and project of the state to win adherents, Kierkegaard also flirts with political
change that will make real Christianity easier to attain.
True individuality and indifference is best witnessed, according to Kierkegaard, in the lives of
Socrates and Jesus. This is the highest level of political response and one that is a mark of the
proper religious orientation. The archetypal individual for Kierkegaard was, of course, Socrates.
Through his questioning of social thinking to uncover a higher truth Socrates “expresses the
individual’s emancipation from the state.”49 Socrates was an individual who did not follow the
mob, but fearlessly stood outside society as one who was “discontented with the established
order.”50 Kierkegaard links Socrates’ individuality with his crime against Athens, writing that,

were we to describe his crime in one word, we could call it apragmosyne [indolence]
or indifferentism. Admittedly he was not idle, and admittedly he was not indifferent
to everything, but in his relation to the state he was indifferent precisely by way of
his private practice.51

Socrates’ ironical quest for the infinite and willingness to suffer for it provides the basis for the
offence he caused, and the death he suffered. Additionally, he provided Kierkegaard with a model
attitude toward the Hegelian universal, being unafraid to be in conflict with, or cause offence to
society’s ethics. For Kierkegaard such an attitude is dangerous to any established order:

it is obvious that Socrates was in conflict with the view of the state—indeed, that
from the viewpoint of the state his offensive had to be considered most dangerous,
as an attempt to suck its blood and reduce it to a shadow.52

Kierkegaard found a similar disposition in Christ. Jesus’ indifference to political authority is

best exemplified, for Kierkegaard, in the tax test from the synoptic gospels where Jesus is asked

49
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 2, §1968.
50
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4246.
51
Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates: Together with Notes of Schelling’s
Berlin Lectures, ed. and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 193.
52
Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates: Together with Notes of Schelling’s Berlin
Lectures, 178.

88
the trick question of whether it is right to pay taxes to the Emperor.53 About Jesus’ reply: “Then
give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s,” Kierkegaard exclaims,

What infinite indifference! It is utterly indifferent to him whether the emperor

is called Herod or Shalmanezer, whether he is Roman or Japanese. But on the
other hand, what an infinite, chasmic difference he confirms between God and the
emperor—“Give to God what is God’s!” In a worldly way they wanted to make it
into a God-question, whether it was permissible to pay tax to the emperor; this is
the way the worldly mentality is so fond of prinking itself up into godliness, and
this is the way they had also mixed God and the emperor together in the question,
as if the two straightforwardly and directly had something to do with each other,
as if they perhaps were rivals of each other and as if God were a kind of emperor.
In other words, in the question they actually had covertly taken God in vain, had
secularized him. But he makes the distinction, the infinite distinction, makes paying
tax to the emperor a matter of the greatest indifference, which means something one
must do and not waste one word or one moment on talking about it—in order, then,
to have more time to give to God what is God’s.54

The lesson here is that the individual should not waste time worrying about government, but
focus on God, maintaining a stark distinction between God and state. Again we see indifference
to the relatively unimportant political sphere, but radical concern with the difference between
statist politics and Christianity. This is also seen in Kierkegaard’s comment on Romans 13:1:
“Christianity is political indifference; engrossed in higher things, it teaches submission to all pub-
lic authorities.”55 This could never be taken as always obeying the emperor for we should never
give what is God’s to the emperor. We can only belong to and worship God. For Kierkegaard
this is the offence that Christians cause the state. Since for Kierkegaard the imitation of Christ is
true Christianity, the Christian is to have the same indifference that Christ had toward politics,
which Kierkegaard summarised as follows: “Christianity is indifferent toward each and every
form of government; it can live equally well under all of them.”56
Yet the question remains, if indifference to politics was Kierkegaard’s true position, why was
he so bothered about Christendom and the Danish alliance of Church and state? Why wasn’t
he indifferent to them? The answer must be that a lot was at stake, for while Kierkegaard be-
lieved that true Christianity, or a Socrates or Jesus, could not be helped or harmed by any form
of the state, or the policies it might adopt, he did see danger to individuality in Christendom.
Kierkegaard believed that Christendom was an obstacle to true Christianity and the imitation of
Christ. Being a real Christian is based in individuality of the kind denied in Christendom. How,
then, could Christendom be overcome? While Kierkegaard argued that Christendom needed
another Socrates,57 he also advocated for the breakdown of the alliance between Church and
state. This was essential for the emergence of the individual, which is the foundation of commu-
nity based on love for the other. Radical indifference could only be possible for the individual
Christian, but they must first emerge from the mob and the crushing weight of Christendom.
53
See Matthew 22:15–21; Mark 12:13–17; Luke 20:20–26.
54
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 169–170.
55
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4193.
56
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 4, §4191.
57
Kierkegaard, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 1, §373.

89
 Practically speaking, Kierkegaard thought that the cause of real Christianity could be helped by
the clergy not acting as agents of the state and in refusing to preach patriotism and unconditional
obedience to the state. Changes in policy here would make a real difference to people being
able to gain real Christianity. To overcome the state and let the individual flourish Kierkegaard
wanted the Church and state to be separate. This would force upon the individual the decision
whether to become a disciple of Christ. But disestablishment of Lutheranism could not be the
total answer, since the culture of Hegelian Christendom also needed to be overcome.58 But,
as Kierkegaard observed, the established order has an interest in maintaining structures that
levelled people into the mob, since the individual could be a political threat to the establishment,
as were Socrates and Jesus. Kierkegaard, seeing the negative effects of Hegelian doctrine here,
put his fears in these words:

The established order will not put up with consisting of something as loose as a
collection of millions of individuals, each of whom has his relationship with God.
The established order wants to be a totality that recognizes nothing above itself but
has every individual under it and judges every individual who subordinates himself
to the established order.59

Kierkegaard worried was that the state would become a mediator or sit between God and
the individual, or even deify itself, acting as a saviour figure. This is the basis of Kierkegaard’s
penetrating analysis of Danish political religion, that the self-deified state becomes the saviour
of humanity, standing in for Christ. He recognised that the state wanted to be loved, and that
to be loved meant that one would love the state in place of God. Here Kierkegaard’s analysis of
inter-personal love from Works of Love is also relevant to anything (including a state) that seeks
the love of a human being:

When a human being seeks another human being’s love, seeks to be loved himself,
this is not a giving of oneself; that would consist in helping the other person to seek
God. To be able to seek love and oneself to become the object of love, yet without
seeking one’s own, is reserved for God alone. But no human being is love. Therefore,
if a human being seeks to become the object of another human being’s love, he is
deliberately and fraudulently seeking his own, inasmuch as the only true object of a
human being’s love is love, which is God, which therefore in a more profound sense
is not any object, since he is Love itself.60

This is the foundation of political religion itself, with the state or nation seeking the love that
properly belongs to God alone. A state, rather than seeking love for itself, should deflect love
from itself, and help its citizens love God. From the side of the citizenry, they should not give
their love to a ruler or political body that has no proper divine claim on our love. On the relativity
of love, Kierkegaard wrote, in commentating on Matthew 10:37 and Luke 14:26, that even love
of our families should be as hate when compared to the love of God. He continued that:

58
Eller, Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship, 293–294.
59
Kierkegaard, Practice in Christianity, 91.
60
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 264–265 (Kierkegaard’s emphasis).

90
 If someone has a legitimate claim, has a sacred claim, has first claim on your love,
then to love someone else, even if this means only becoming indifferent to that first
one, is indeed like hating him, simply because he has a claim on your love.61

So to love one’s family, nation or state to the degree that one becomes indifferent to God, is
like hating God and losing oneself.
Kierkegaard could foresee a time, like ours, when the state would not need the support of
the church. But today he would probably retain a theological critique, in which perhaps liber-
alism, rather than Christendom, becomes true Christianity’s rival. While focussed on Denmark,
Kierkegaard’s universal lesson is that there will always be something to distract one away from
the true encounter with Jesus Christ. Or in other words, something to which we can direct our
love other than God.
The state could also, for Kierkegaard, become a barrier between God and the individual, even
to the point where God cannot penetrate the mediating bulk of the modern state in trying to
reach the individual:

But it is better to abolish God in such a way that he becomes a titular deity or a fuss-
budget who sits in heaven and cannot do anything, so no one notices him because
his effect touches the single individual only through the solid bulk of intermediary
causes, and the thrust therefore becomes an indetectable touch! It is better to abol-
ish God by having him decoyed into natural law and the necessary development of
immanence! No, all respect for the penance of the Middle Ages and for what outside
of Christianity is analogous to it, in which there is always the truth that the indi-
vidual does not relate himself to the ideal through the generation or the state or the
century or the market price of human beings in the city where he lives—that is, by
these things he is prevented from relating himself to the ideal—but relates himself
to it even though he errs in his understanding of it.62

Kierkegaard saw that true Christianity needed to be recovered from both the Lutheran es-
tablishment and the Hegelian universal. Disestablishment, while useful, would only go so far
toward correcting establishment’s contribution to the fall of the church. Cultural and philosoph-
ical change was also needed to recapture the individual from the clutches of the universal. It is a
paradox of Kierkegaard’s that indifferent, offence-causing individuals, such as a Socrates, were
needed to help break down Christendom, yet it was Christendom itself that held individuals
down.
Indifference to politics is, therefore, both a fruit of true individuality and a means of it coming
about.

61
Kierkegaard, Christian Discourses: The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress, 183.
62
Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, ed. and trans. Howard V.
Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), I, 543. He continues: “Because of the jumbling
together with the idea of the state, or sociality, of community, and of society, God can no longer catch hold of the
single individual. Even if God’s wrath were ever so great, the punishment that is to fall upon the guilty one must
make its way through all the courts of objectivity—in this way, with the most affable and most appreciative philo-
sophical terminology, people have managed to smuggle God away.” Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to
Philosophical Fragments, I, 544.

91
Conclusion
For Kierkegaard the state is a congregation of egotistical individuals. Merged with the Church
in Christendom it destroys the individual and the likelihood of true faith, for all but the most
Socratic of individuals. This is the impetus for Kierkegaard’s writing on the state—to preserve
the possibility of authentic individual faith. Yet, Kierkegaard would affirm that state interference
in Christianity cannot harm true faith, since faith will always relativise the state’s claims through
the kind of indifference displayed by Socrates and Jesus. Kierkegaard, however, cannot quite be
totally indifferent to the state, since in its alliance with the church it provides a deception, leading
people to believe that they are Christians when they have not done or suffered anything to claim
that name.
In concentrating on the claims of God to the exclusion of all claims of the state Kierkegaard’s
understanding of indifference, in its purest form, could be considered the archetypal Christian
anarchist approach. While such an attitude undermines the claims of an absolutist state,
Kierkegaard does not seek to abolish the state altogether. He wrote: “Christianity has not
wanted to topple governments from the throne in order to place itself on the throne.”63
Kierkegaard’s anarchism is therefore at odds with the secular anarchist, who is an enemy of
the state, and in whose place they would erect self-government. This distinction was noted by
Eller, who observed that secular anarchists value autonomy through self-love, based on the
assumption that “I am the one who best knows myself and knows what is best for myself.”64 But
in this process, according to Eller, they impose upon themselves a “heteronomous arky.”65 But
for Eller this is to forget that

I am a creature (a sinful creature, even) and that there is a Creator who, being my
Creator (and also being somewhat smarter than I am), knows me much better than
I ever can know myself.66

Kierkegaard eschewed such a sovereignty of the self, as is found among some secular anar-
chists, and advocates instead the self-giving love of neighbour as the foundation of true commu-
nity.
To return, finally, to the logical relations between love, hate, and indifference, it is worth
reflecting on this passage from Augustine: “A people is the association of a multitude of ratio-
nal beings united by a common agreement on the objects of their love.”67 Political societies are
formed around the shared love of a political body. Patriots, for instance, are united in their love
of the nation-state. Conversely, anarchists are united in their hatred of the state. Yet both are in
active relationship to the state. In commenting on this passage by Augustine, Oliver O’Donovan
suggests that “every determination of love implies a corresponding hatred. For a community
to focus its love on this constellation of goods is to withdraw its love from that.”68 While this

63
Kierkegaard, Works of Love, 135.
64
Eller, Christian Anarchy, 2.
65
Eller, Christian Anarchy, 2.
66
Eller, Christian Anarchy, 2–3.
67
Augustine, City of God, XIX, 24.
68
Oliver O’Donovan, Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community: The 2001 Stob
Lectures (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 22 (O’Donovan’s emphasis).

92
has some logical appeal (and the support of Matthew 6:2469 ) in that one must either love or hate
something, such as the state, Kierkegaard begs Christians to have neither of these affections for
the state, but to remain indifferent to the state in the face of the one true and worthy love—the
love of God. In loving God, who has the only true claim on our love, one may not love other gods
or things that pretend to be God. But it need not logically follow that in withdrawing love from
these impostors, one must hate them; rather it may result in the dissolution of any active rela-
tionship, which may be called indifference. Understood in this way, Kierkegaard’s indifference
to the state means a disintegration of connection to it, and in this way he could be understood
to be a Christian anarchist.

Bibliography

Augustine, Saint. Concerning the City of God against the Pagans. Translated by Henry Bettenson.
London: Penguin Books, 2003.
Calvin, Jean. Institutes of the Christian Religion. The Library of Christian Classics. Edited by John
T. McNeill. Translated by Ford Lewis Battles. London: S.C.M. Press, 1961.
Cullen, Bernard. Hegel’s Social and Political Thought: An Introduction. New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1979.
Eller, Vernard. Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers.
Eugene: Wipf / Stock, 1999.
—. Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship: A New Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1968.
Elrod, John W. Kierkegaard and Christendom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Ferguson, Everett. The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today. Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1996.
Hegel, G. W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of History. Translated by John Sibree. London: Henry
G. Bohn, 1857.
Jespersen, Knud J. V. A History of Denmark. Translated by Ivan Hill. Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2004.
Kierkegaard, Søren. Christian Discourses: The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress. Edited
and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1997.
—. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments. Edited and translated by Howard
V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
—. Fear and Trembling; Repetition. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
—. Practice in Christianity. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Prince-
ton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Love, Hate, and Kierkegaard’s Christian Politics of
Indifference 105

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The parallel text, Luke 14:26, is discussed at length in Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling; Repetition, ed.
and trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 72–74.

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—. Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers. Edited by Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, and Gre-
gor Malantschuk. Translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1967.
—. The Concept of Irony, with Continual Reference to Socrates: Together with Notes of Schelling’s
Berlin Lectures. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989.
—. The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard: A Selection. Edited and translated by Alexander Dru. Lon-
don: Oxford University Press, 1938.
—. The Moment and Late Writings. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998.
—. Works of Love. Edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1995.
Luther, Martin and Jean Calvin. Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority. Edited and translated by
Harro Höpfl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Maritain, Jacques. Christianity and Democracy. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945.
O’Donovan, Oliver. Common Objects of Love: Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community:
The 2001 Stob Lectures. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.
Pattison, George and Steven Shakespeare, eds. Kierkegaard: The Self in Society. Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1998.
Perkins, Robert L. “Kierkegaard’s Critique of the Bourgeois State.”Inquiry 27, no. 2–3 (1984):
207–218.
Smith, Graham M. “Kierkegaard from the point of view of the political.” History of European Ideas
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Thompson, W. D. J. Cargill and Philip Broadhead. The Political Thought of Martin Luther. Brighton:
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Westphal, Merold. Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 1991.
Wood, Allen W. “Hegel’s ethics.” In The Cambridge Companion to Hegel, edited by Frederick C.
Beiser, 211–233. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Zook, Darren C. “The Irony of it All: Søren Kierkegaard and the Anxious Pleasures of Civil
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94
CHAPTER SIX. RESPONDING TO THE
STATE: CHRISTIAN ANARCHISTS ON
ROMANS 13, RENDERING TO CAESAR,
AND CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
ALEXANDRE J. M. E. CHRISTOYANNOPOULOS
The two Bible passages most frequently cited against Christian anarchism are Paul’s assertions in
Romans 13 and Jesus’ recommendation about “rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.” Surely,
the argument goes, these two passages conclusively prove, once and for all, the Christian anarchist
fallacy to be mistaken. A closer look at Romans 13, however, suggests that Paul is in fact interpret-
ing Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount—perhaps the founding Bible passage for Christian anarchism—and
simply applying the turning of the other cheek to the state, therefore that Paul is not actually contra-
dicting Christian anarchism but in fact articulating the peculiarity of its forgiving response to the
state. Similarly, a closer look at Jesus’ saying suggests that very few things actually do belong to
Caesar, and that it is just as—if not a lot more—important to also render to God what belongs to God.
Christian anarchists also take note of Jesus’ bizarre instruction, in Matthew 17, to seek the coin for
the temple tax in the mouth of a fish, because the reason Jesus gives for doing so is to avoid causing
offence. In short, for Christian anarchists, none of these passages defeats their radical political inter-
pretation of Jesus’ teachings. To the contrary, they confirm it and further elaborate it. At the same
time, the question of the limits of acceptability of any civil disobedience remains somewhat unre-
solved: while a few Christian anarchists see civil disobedience as problematic, many others consider
it unavoidable in certain circumstances. Above all, however, all Christian anarchists tend to agree
that obeying or disobeying the state is irrelevant next to the primary commitment of obedience to
God.
Christian anarchists interpret the Gospel to imply a critique of the state and an invitation to
make it redundant. Their response to the state’s contemporary prominence likewise consists of
two fairly distinguishable concerns: on the one hand, Christian anarchists seek to work out a
way in which to interact with the prominent state, a modus vivendi that honours Jesus’ teaching;
and on the other, they seek to exemplify the Christian alternative to it, to embody and to thereby
demonstrate the possibility of the sort of stateless community life which they understand Jesus
to be calling them to. The focus of this chapter, which is based on a section of my doctoral
thesis, is limited to the former. A discussion of the latter is offered in a separate chapter in my
thesis (which is due to be published soon with Imprint Academic). The present chapter therefore
collects a broad range of Christian anarchist writings on responding to the state in order to both
summarise the current shape of Christian anarchist thinking on the topic and encourage further
discussion on it in the future.

95
 Both in that thesis and in this chapter, Christian anarchist theory is defined rather broadly to
include all the writings that advance the Christian anarchist thesis. The most famous producer of
such writings is undoubtedly Leo Tolstoy—he is often the only example of Christian anarchism
cited in the academic literature on anarchism. Among the aficionados, however, Jacques Ellul is
also very famous, and people usually also know about Vernard Eller and Dave Andrews. Also well
known are some of the figures associated with the Catholic Worker movement (especially popular
in the United States), in particular Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, and Ammon Hennacy. The Chris-
tian anarchist literature is also enriched by contributions from thinkers at its margins, who are
perhaps not the most vociferous fanatics of pure Christian anarchism, or perhaps not Christian
anarchists consistently (perhaps writing anarchist texts for only a brief period of their life), or
perhaps better categorised as pacifists or Christian subversives than anarchists but whose writ-
ings complement Christian anarchist ones. These include Peter Chelþický, Nicholas Berdyaev,
William Lloyd Garrison, Hugh Pentecost, Adin Ballou, Ched Myers, Michael Elliott, and Jonathan
Bartley among others. John H. Yoder is also cited in this chapter because, despite being a pacifist
Mennonite who was keen to dissociate himself from the anarchist conclusions that his argument
has been said to lead to, his writings do further reinforce certain flanks of the Christian anarchist
critique. Finally, Christian anarchism also has its anarcho-capitalists, like James Redford and
James Kevin Craig.1 This chapter does not draw on every one of these thinkers and writers, but
extracts from them some of the main arguments they put forward when discussing the question
at hand.
Pondering the Christian anarchist response to the state brings to the fore two important New
Testament passages: Paul’s instructions to the Christians in Rome that they “be subject unto
higher powers,” and Jesus’ saying about rendering to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Both pas-
sages are often seen as problematic for Christian anarchism since they appear to contradict its
basic proposition—after all, do they not clearly instruct Christians to concentrate on spiritual
matters, to submit to the authority of the state, and to let the state and its politicians deal with
political affairs? Also, there are substantial disagreements among Christian anarchists on how to
approach these passages—are not these disagreements further confirmation that their interpreta-
tion is false and unfounded? By bringing together a wide range of Christian anarchist writings
on the subject, this chapter suggests a negative answer to of both these questions. That is, de-
spite some real differences, a generic and not too incoherent Christian anarchist interpretation
(or set of interpretations) can be sketched out, and according to this reading, it is the standard
interpretation of these passages that turns out to be false and dishonest.
The first section of this chapter discusses Romans 13—more specifically: Christian anarchists’
opinion of Paul, their actual exegesis of the passage, and what they make of similar passages
elsewhere in the New Testament. In the second section, the two instances where Jesus is giving
advice on payment of taxes are interpreted from a Christian anarchist perspective: first the “ren-
der unto Caesar” passage from Mark 12, then the curious recommendation about collecting the
temple tax from the mouth of a fish, from Matthew 17. The third and final section outlines the
divergent Christian anarchist positions on civil disobedience: the case against it, the case for it,
and the paramount importance of obeying God whatever the case may be.
1
Craig is the person behind the otherwise anonymous Vine and Fig Tree websites; see for instance Ninety-Five
Theses in Defense of Patriarchy (Vine and Fig Tree), members.aol.com (accessed 20 April 2007). There are also many
Christian anarcho-capitalist contributors to three key websites: www.lewrockwell.com, www.strike-the-root.com and
www.libertariannation.org.

96
Paul’s Letter to Roman Christians, Chapter 13
In his study of New Testament passages relevant to the state, Archie Penner summarises the
conventional view when he asserts that “The most elaborate and specific body of teaching in
the New Testament on the Christian’s relation to the state is Romans 13,” where Paul writes the
following:2

1. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of
God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
2. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and
they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
3. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be
afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the
same:
4. For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil,
be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a
revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
5. Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience
sake.
6. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending
continually upon this very thing.
7. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to
whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.3

Of course, the Christian anarchist literature argues (as does Penner) that there are many other
passages in the New Testament that have inherent implications for the state, but Romans 13 is
probably the one with the most explicit reference to it. A few other scattered verses also refer
directly to the state in a similar vein, but as noted in more detail below, what they say is largely
encompassed by Romans 13. As a result, as Eller puts it, a thinker’s “handling of Romans 13
(along with Mark 12) is the litmus test” of his Christian anarchism.4
Mainstream theologians have made the most of this passage to legitimise the church’s support
of the state. Ellul thus claims that “the official church since Constantine has consistently based
almost its entire ‘theology of the state’ on Romans 13 and parallel texts in Peter’s epistles.”5
Based on Romans 13, established theologians have argued that Christians ought to submit to
state authorities, even to wield the sword when these request it, because God clearly intends the
2
Archie Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State (Hagerstown: James Lowry/Deutsche Buch-
handlung, 2000), 76.
3
Romans 13:1–7. King James Version.
4
Vernard Eller, Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy over the Powers (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 1987), 114–115.
5
Jacques Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity,” in Jesus and Marx: From Gospel to Ideology, trans. Joyce Main
Hanks (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 166–167. See also Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, trans.
George W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1991), 79; Enrico C. S. Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelþický’s
Life and a Translation from Czech of Part One of His Net of Faith, ed. Tom Lock (Oberlin: www.nonresistance.org,
2006), www.nonresistance.org (accessed 28 March 2007), 108; John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus
Noster, Second ed. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1994), 193.

97
state to be His main tool to preserve social order and stability—in other words, that the state is
sanctified by God, and that Christians should welcome that and collaborate with the state. For
many Christian anarchists, however, such an interpretation betrays the subtle meaning of this
passage. It does not take its context into account, and anyway, it leaves the church with the
difficulty of dealing with the “embarrassment” of “tyrants.”6 Just like with many other Bible
passages, therefore, Christian anarchists are suspicious of traditional exegeses, and instead, they
articulate an alternative interpretation of their own.

Paul’s Weaknesses
Before this alternative interpretation can be outlined, it is important to note that Paul himself is
also viewed with suspicion by some Christian anarchists.
For a start, several Christian anarchists note that Paul himself did not always submit to Roman
authorities, and they demonstrate this by listing his many recorded acts of disobedience.7 Red-
ford even remarks that Paul proudly cites his punishments for such disobedience as proof of his
commitment to Jesus.8 Was Paul guilty of “evil works”? Was he not doing “that which is good”
by spreading the good news? Why then did he incur the “wrath” of rulers? It would seem that
either Paul did not abide by his own pronouncement, or that what he meant in Romans 13 must
be slightly different to what he is traditionally interpreted to have meant.9
Either way, some Christian anarchists also make the point that Christians ought in the first
instance to follow Jesus, not Paul, since unlike Jesus, “The apostles can err in their acts.”10 Indeed,
for Tolstoy, the church’s “deviation” from Jesus’ teaching begins precisely with Paul.11
Hence both Tolstoy and Hennacy (who was strongly influenced by Tolstoy) frankly dislike Paul
and see him as at best confusing Jesus’ message, at worst betraying it.12 As to Elliott, he contends
that Paul’s advice to submit to authorities was informed by his “expectation of Christ’s imminent
return.”13 For him, Paul advised submission because he mistakenly expected “the present order”
to be soon “swept away.”14 The “tragedy,” he argues, is that for the church, Paul’s instruction

6
Many theologians have sought to argue that somehow Romans 13 does not really apply to tyrants and dictators,
but only to peaceful and just forms of government—especially democratic ones—but Ellul has little respect for such
“strange casuistry” which anyway does not appear founded on the passage. Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 79.
7
Dave Andrews, Subversive Spirituality, Ecclesial and Civil Disobedience: A Survey of Biblical Politics as Incar-
nated in Jesus and Interpreted by Paul, anz.jesusradicals.com (accessed 17 July 2006), 18–22; Ellul, Anarchy and Chris-
tianity, 90; Roy Halliday, Christian Libertarians (Libertarian Nation Foundation), www.libertariannation.org (accessed
8 November 2007), para. 23–24; Penner, 98–100; James Redford, Jesus Is an Anarchist: A Free-Market, Libertarian
Anarchist, That Is— Otherwise What Is Called an Anarcho-Capitalist, praxeology.net (accessed 14 August 2006), 13–14.
8
(He also remembers that Joseph and Mary disobeyed Herod to protect baby Jesus.) Redford, 13–14.
9
Eller, 198–199.
10
Penner, 98. See also Halliday, para. 23.
11
Leo Tolstoy, “Church and State,” in On Life and Essays on Religion, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford
University Press, 1934), 336.
12
Dorothy Day, Selected Writings: By Little and by Little, ed. Robert Ellsberg (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2005), 142;
Ammon Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, ed. Jim Missey and Joan Thomas, Second ed. (Baltimore: Fortkamp, 1994),
301–302, 475; Aylmer Maude, The Life of Tolstóy: Later Years (London: Oxford University Press, 1930), 39–40; Leo
Tolstoy, “Introduction to an Examination of the Gospels,” in A Confession and the Gospel in Brief, trans. Aylmer
Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 107–108.
13
Michael C. Elliott, Freedom, Justice and Christian Counter-Culture (London: SCM, 1990), 52.
14
Elliott, 77–78.

98
“takes precedence over the witness of Jesus.”15 Hence for Christian anarchists like Tolstoy, Hen-
nacy and Elliott, Jesus is the important teacher, and Paul is just an erring follower who has been
given too big a role by the tradition. Beyond this, these particular Christian anarchists have little
else to say on Romans 13.
Not all Christian anarchists, however, dislike Paul or view him with similar suspicion. Some
point out that he seems to be edging towards anarchism when he says that for Christians, “there is
no law.”16 Others remember his advice to contend against the principalities and powers.17 Others
still try to defend him against allegations that he sought protection from the state—obviously
anathema to any genuine anarchist.18 Either way, not all Christian anarchists see Paul as a
traitor. Several try to make sense of Romans 13 rather than reject it outright as dishonest and
inauthentic.19 Their resulting exegesis, they argue, actually ends up paradoxically confirming
rather than contradicting the Christian anarchist position.

The Christian Anarchist Exegesis: Subversive Subjection

One Christian anarchist interpretation of Romans 13, posited by Redford, is to argue that this is an
“ingenious case of rhetorical misdirection.”20 For him, Romans 13 must not be interpreted literally
because Paul is not speaking his true mind (partly for reasons mentioned in the next paragraph).21
Similar arguments have been made by others: Carter, for instance, suggests that Paul is using the
“classic ironic technique of blaming by apparent praise.”22 He sees Paul’s apparent reverence for
authorities as “deeply subversive” because of this “ironic edge.”23 Both Carter and Redford point
to examples of Paul disobeying authorities as proof of him not really meaning that Christians
should obey. Such interpretations of Romans 13, however, can—rightly or wrongly—sound more
like justifications to brush the text aside than patient attempts to grapple with it and give it a fair
hearing.

15
(He uses the word “tragedy” in the plural.) Elliott, 78 (see also 89).
16
Unfortunately, the anarchist interpretation of this passage is nowhere elaborated in great detail—it is usually
just cited as evidence of Paul’s anarchist credentials. Day, 343; Simon Watson, “The Catholic Worker and Anarchism,”
The London Catholic Worker, issue 15, Lent 2006, 8. (Galatians 5.)
17
For instance, Eller, 198; Penner, 77. A discussion of this theme is available in Alexandre J. M. E. Christoy-
annopoulos, Christian Anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2010).
18
Ballou looks in detail at each episode in which Paul appears to seek help from, or be helped by, the state, and
concludes that in no instance does Paul not behave as a Christian non-resistant should have—which is not the same
thing as saying that Paul was a consistent anarchist, of course, but at least, according to Ballou, he always abided by
the doctrine of non-resistance to evil which is also at the root of Christian anarchism. Adin Ballou, Christian Non-
Resistance in All Its Important Bearings, Second ed. (Oberlin: www.nonresistance.org, 2006), www.nonresistance.org
(accessed 28 March 2007), 38–40. See also Penner, 99–100.
19
According to Goddard, in struggling with this passage, Ellul “probably changed” his interpretation over time.
Andrew Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World: The Life and Thought of Jacques Ellul, ed. David F. Wright,
et al. (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2002), 287–288 (in the footnote). As to Chelþický, Wagner asserts that he “never
doubted” the “authenticity” of Romans 13. Murray L. Wagner, Petr Chelþický: A Radical Separatist in Hussite Bohemia
(Scottdale: Herald, 1983), 50.
20
Redford, 14.
21
Redford, 13–20.
22
Timothy Carter, “Commentary: The Irony of Romans 13:1–8,” Third Way, issue 28, May 2005, 21. (I am grateful
to Keith Hebden for sending me this interpretation.)
23
Carter, 21. See also Jason Barr, Radical Hope: Anarchy, Christianity, and the Prophetic Imagination,
propheticheretic.files.wordpress.com (accessed 11 March 2008), 10.

99
 Yet both Redford and Carter also note something that several other Christian anarchists take
note of as well: Paul’s letter is addressed to the Christian community in Rome—the very heart of
the Roman empire. It is written at a time when Christians are already being persecuted across
that empire. For several Christian anarchists, therefore, Paul is deliberately very cautious in
his wording, as his letter could easily be used by Roman authorities as a pretext to step up this
persecution.24 Hence for some Christian anarchists, Paul’s advice is largely “pragmatic rather
than philosophical:” by submitting to the authorities’ wishes, Roman Christians might be able to
develop good relations with their persecutors and thereby avoid further conflict.25 The historical
context of Romans 13 is thus an important aspect to pay attention to. It helps explain why Paul
would have deliberately addressed the question of Christians’ relations to the authorities in the
first place, and indeed even perhaps why he may have opted for that “rhetorical misdirection” or
“irony” alleged by Redford and Carter.
The textual context of Romans 13:1–7 is even more important, as it throws light on what Paul
has in mind when writing these particular verses. Along with Yoder, several Christian anarchists
insist that “chapters 12 and 13 in their entirety form a single literary unit.”26 In both chapters,
Paul is writing about love and sacrifice, about overcoming evil with good, about willingly offering
oneself up for persecution. Interpreting Romans 12 and 13 as a coherent whole, Ellul notes that
there is a progression of love from friends to strangers and then to enemies, and this is where the
passage then comes. In other words, we must love enemies and therefore we must even respect
the authorities.27
Eller agrees: these authorities “are brought in as Paul’s example of those to whom it will be the
most difficult to make the obligation apply.”28 They are “a test case of our loving the enemy.”29 In
any case, for Yoder, “any interpretation of 13:1–7 which is not also an expression of suffering and
serving love must be a misunderstanding of the text in its context.”30 Hence Paul’s message in
Romans 13 is to call for Christians to subject themselves to political powers out of love, forgiveness
and sacrifice.
Seen in that light, Romans 13 is not a betrayal of Jesus’ revolutionary Sermon on the Mount
(as Tolstoy would have it), but actually an exegesis of it: Romans 12–13 is an “eloquent and

24
Nekeisha Alexis-Manners, Deconstructing Romans 13: Verse 1–2, www.jesusradicals.com (accessed 28 October
2005), 1; Andrews, 10; Peter Brock, The Political and Social Doctrines of the Unity of Czech Brethren in the Fifteenth
and Early Sixteenth Centuries (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1957), 47–48; Carter, 21; Molnár, 109, 137; Redford, 14–15;
Yoder, 200.
25
[Justin Meggitt], “Anarchism and the New Testament: Some Reflections,” A Pinch of Salt, issue 10, Summer
1988, 11.
26
Yoder, 196. For others making that same point, see Alexis-Manners, 1; Barr, 12; Eller, 197; Penner, 80. Ellul, for
his part, calls upon an even broader context from Romans 9–11, in which Paul makes “a detailed study of the relations
between the Jewish people and Christians,” to Romans 14, in which “some details are offered as to the practice of love
(hospitality, not judging others, supporting the weak),” and concludes that “It seems so odd, so out of joint, in this
larger context that some exegetes have thought that it must be an interpolation and that Paul himself did not write
it.” Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 80–81.
27
He adds that Paul “is reminding Christians that the authorities are also people (there was no abstract concept of
the state), people such as themselves, and that they must accept and respect them, too.” Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity,
81. See also Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity,” 170.
28
Eller, 197. Note that Redford disagrees with the “fallacy” that “higher powers” necessarily implies “mortal
governments that exist on earth.” Redford, 16.
29
Eller, 197.
30
Yoder, 198.

100
passionate statement” of the Sermon applied to the case of the state.31 In the Sermon, Jesus calls
for his followers to love their enemies, to give not only the requested coat but the cloak also,
and to bless their persecutors. In Romans 12–13, Paul is doing the same, and applying Jesus’
commandments to the authorities.
At the same time, Eller emphasises that to “be subject to” does not mean to worship, to “recog-
nise the legitimacy of” or to “own allegiance to.”32 For him,

It is a sheerly neutral and anarchical counsel of “not-doing”—not doing resistance,

anger, assault, power play, or anything contrary to the “loving the enemy” which is,
of course, Paul’s main theme.33

Hence Paul is not counselling “blind obedience.”34 As explained below, if what the authorities
demand conflicts with God’s demands, then Christians ought to disobey the former—but also
then submit to any punishment.35 Ultimately, a Christian’s allegiance is only to God, not to the
state.
Yet Paul goes on to write that “the powers that be are ordained of God.”36 Does this not
suggest divine sanctification of state authorities? Does it not imply that political powers are
always endorsed by God? For Christian anarchist writers, it only means that God “allows” it,
not that “he agrees with it” or that these authorities are “good, just, or lovable.”37 Here, they
recall 1 Samuel 8, where despite his disappointment with the Israelites’ request for a king, God
grants them their wish.38 Chelþický furthermore argues that “The earthly rulers and the state
authorities are the punishment of God for disobeying His laws.”39 Thus God does indeed “appoint”
state authorities, but reluctantly, only because his commandments are being ignored. It does not
31
Why I Worship a Violent, Vengeful God Who Orders Me to Be Loving and NonViolent (Vine and Fig Tree), mem-
bers.aol.com (accessed 4 November 2005), para. 5 (for the quoted words); Alexis-Manners, 2; Yoder, 210. See also
Penner, who argues that the opposite of the Greek for “be subject to” is the Greek used in the Bible for “resist,” so that
Paul is indeed repeating the commandment not to resist which Jesus uttered in the Sermon on the Mount. Penner,
90–94.
32
Eller, 199. See also God Sends Evil: Why Calvinists Are Anarchists (Vine and Fig Tree), members.aol.com (ac-
cessed 9 November 2005); Ninety-Five Theses in Defense of Patriarchy, thesis 40.
33
Eller, 199.
34
Walter Wink, Jesus’ Third Way (Philadelphia: New Society, 1987), 59. See also Alexis-Manners, 1; Ellul, Anar-
chy and Christianity, 89; J. Philip Wogaman, Christian Perspectives on Politics, Revised and expanded ed. (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2000), 68–69.
35
Andrews, 10.
36
Romans 13:1. Redford reads this to mean that “the only true and real authorities are only those that God
appoints, i.e., one cannot become a real authority or ruler in the eyes of God simply because through force of arms one
has managed to subjugate a population and then proclaim oneself the potentate. Thus, by saying this Paul was actually
rebuking the supposed authority of the mortal governments as they exist on Earth and are operated by men!” Redford,
15 (Redford’s emphasis). Tennant proposes a very similar reading in Michael Tennant, Christianarchy? (Strike the
Root), www.strike-the-root.com (accessed 21 November 2007), para. 15–17.
37
For the first two quotes, see Alexis-Manners, 3. For the last one, see Ellul, who writes that “We have to
remember that the authorities have attained to power through God. Yes, we recall than Saul, a mad and bad king,
attained to power through God. This certainly does not mean that he was good, just, or lovable.” Ellul, Anarchy and
Christianity, 81.
38
Alexis-Manners, 2; Eller, 199–200; Molnár, 139–140. A summary of Christian anarchist interpretations of this
passage can be found in Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos, “Christian Anarchism: A Revolutionary Reading
of the Bible,” in New Perspectives on Anarchism, ed. Nathan Jun and Shane Wahl (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009),
135–152; Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism.
39
Molnár, 95 (paraphrasing Chelþický).

101
imply that anything the authorities do is willed by God, or that, as Penner puts it, “God’s moral
character is in any way imprinted on the state.”40 Again, “appointing” or “ordaining” is not the
same thing as “approving” or “agreeing with.”41
Nonetheless, since people have lost faith in him and instead place their faith in political author-
ities, since people will not listen to him anymore, God does use the state as one of his “servants”
in his mysterious ordering of the cosmos.42 Several Old Testament passages describe God us-
ing state authorities to punish sins and injustices.43 The state, it seems, is one of God’s tools to
maintain some order where his commandments are not being heard.44
It is probably in that sense that “rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.”45 The
authorities should be feared by those who do evil, but not by those who do good works. Perhaps
there is a suggestion that despite doing good works and nevertheless being persecuted by the
state—which they were—Christians should not fear the state.46 This particular phrase, however,
is often steered clear from in the Christian anarchist literature: Christian anarchists never really
seem to fully make sense of it. What they do point out, however, is that it cannot mean that these
authorities do not persecute good people: they crucified Jesus, Paul himself was beaten by them,
and Christians were being persecuted just as Paul was writing these lines.47 Besides, elsewhere,
Paul criticises these authorities, and warns Christians of further persecution.48 Therefore, this
verse cannot mean that the state always praises good works and only ever punishes evil ones.
What it perhaps does imply is that persecuted Christians should not fear these authorities because
in the eyes of God, the works that they do are good, and even if they die, at least their “martyrdom”
will “magnify their glory”—much like Jesus’ death did.49

40
This touches on an important debate regarding God’s ultimate responsibility for the actions conducted by
political authorities, a debate which Christian anarchists do not venture into in any detail and which is therefore left
out of the main body of this chapter (although a few reflections related to this are offered further below in this section).
Suffice it to say here that this debate concerns not just Christian anarchists, but all Christian theologians, and that
most would agree that God cannot be fully responsible for every act ever conducted by political authorities, as this
would imply the unacceptable conclusion that God killed Jesus. For more on this, see for instance Penner, 65–66,
89–90, 119 (for the quote).
41
Alexis-Manners, 3.
42
Ninety-Five Theses in Defense of Patriarchy, thesis 40; Praying through Romans 13 (Vine and Fig Tree), mem-
bers.aol.com (accessed 9 November 2005); Ballou, 32–38; Eller, 200–203; Molnár, 110–111, 119–123, 145; Penner, 65–66,
83–90; Wagner, 98, 135.
43
Ballou, 34–37; Eller, 200–203; Molnár, 121; Penner, 88–89. (They cite the following Bible passages in their
argument: Isaiah 10:5–15; 13:3–5; 41:2–4; 44: 28; 45:1–13; Jeremiah 25:8–12; 27:6–13; 43:10.)
44
Sometimes, therefore, these authorities are indirectly and unconsciously doing God’s work, and according to
Eller, if, as a Christian, you were to resist them, “You could find yourself resisting the particular use God has in mind
for that empire; at the very least, you definitely are trying to take over and do God’s work for him.” Eller, 203. See
also Molnár, 137.
45
Romans 13:4.
46
Praying through Romans 13.
47
Carter, 21; Molnár, 118.
48
Redford, 16–17. (1 Corinthians 2:6–8; 2 Timothy 2:8–9, 3:12.)
49
Chelþický (whose words are borrowed here) actually goes even further, saying that “if they were killed, it was
in accordance with His will; He wanted to test His servants and to magnify their glory through their martyrdom”
(which again touches on the debate over God’s ultimate responsibility for actions perpetrated by political powers).
Molnár, 119 (quoting Chelþický).

102
 In any case, even state leaders are subject to God’s judgement, and are warned of this (for
instance) in Acts 28:20.50 These leaders do not know the precise purpose God has in mind for
their actions: “like a plough in the hands of the ploughman,” Chelþický writes, the ruler “does not
know what the ploughman intends.”51 God uses state authorities as “instruments in the grand
economy of his providence,” but at the same time, state leaders “[act] entirely out of [their]
own perverse and wicked inclinations” and are “punished” by God accordingly, writes Ballou.52
It is therefore unknowingly that state authorities are acting as God’s servants. In turn, their
actions and intentions are examined by God, and, where their work is evil, they will themselves
eventually incur God’s providential wrath.53
Yoder moreover recalls that according to Paul, the principalities and powers, “which were
supposed to be our servants, have become our masters and our guardians.”54 They “were created
by God,” but they “have rebelled and are fallen” because “they claimed for themselves an absolute
value.”55 Yoder then argues that instead of God “ordaining” these powers, a better interpretation
of the text would see him as “ordering” them.56 That is, “God is not said to create or institute
or ordain the powers that be, but only to order them, to put them in order.”57 Yet while God
“orders” them and uses them for good, they remain rebellious and fallen nonetheless.58 That
God puts them in order does not mean that they “do no wrong, commit no sin, and deserve no
punishment.”59 They remain living evidence of humanity’s rebellion against God.
It is crucial to bear in mind, then, that if God ordains state authorities, it is only to maintain
order among those who have refused to follow his commandments. In other words, the state may be
valid for non-Christians, but if “all truly followed in Christ’s footsteps it would wither away.”60
God uses the state in his ordering of the cosmos only because his commandments for a peaceful
and just society are not being followed. In a community of Christians, however, these authori-
ties and powers would be redundant. Thus for several Christian anarchists, the state remains a
regrettable necessity among non-Christians, but only because they refuse to follow Jesus’ com-
mandments. The state is violent and unchristian, and God wants all humans to overcome it; but
as long as Jesus’ alternative is not embraced, the state remains God’s only way to somehow re-
dress sins and injustices. The state is a symptom of human imperfection, tolerated by God only
because he accepts that we have rejected him.

50
Molnár, 120. Tennant also draws a parallel with the Book of Samuel. He writes: “Samuel made it plain that
‘If you fear the Lord and serve and obey him and do not rebel against his commands, and if both you and the king
who reigns over you follow the Lord your God—good! But if you do not obey the Lord, and if you rebel against his
commands, his hand will be against you, as it was against your fathers’ (1 Sam. 12:14, 15). Similarly, Paul in Romans
13:4 asserts that the human ruler ‘is God’s servant to do you good,’ which therefore implies that the ruler is to abide
by God’s law and to enforce it upon the ruled.” Tennant, para. 9.
51
Molnár, 120 (quoting Chelþický).
52
Ballou, 35.
53
God Sends Evil; Molnár, 119–123.
54
Yoder, 141.
55
Yoder, 142.
56
Yoder, 201. On page 172 onwards, he also agrees with the view that to “be subject to” would be better translated
as to “subordinate oneself to.”
57
Yoder, 201 (Yoder’s emphasis). Note that Alexis-Manners also quotes this passage in her exegesis. Alexis-
Manners, 3.
58
Yoder, 141–144.
59
Ballou, 34.
60
Brock, 48.

103
 Of course—and disappointingly for non-Christian anarchists—this does imply that Christian
anarchism is only prescribing anarchism for Christians.61 Among non-Christians, the state is an
acceptable, though regrettable and imperfect, servant of God’s justice. This does not diminish in
any way the many criticisms Christian anarchists mount against the state.62 After all, Christian
anarchists want to see Jesus’ teaching taken up by all—they want the whole society to convert
to true Christianity. But at the same time, according to Paul, they are to tolerate the presence of
the state as an unfortunate symptom of society’s rejection of God.63 Christianity overcomes the
state, but it tolerates it among heathens. That, for several Christian anarchists, is what Paul is
implying in Romans 13. He is reminding Christians of the reasons for the state’s existence, but
he is also calling them to patiently endure and forgive this pagan rejection of God.
The message behind this, therefore, is to make it plain “that Christians were not a sect out to
overthrow Caesar and force their religion on everyone else.”64 Paul’s concern is for Christians not
to engage in any violent insurrection—despite their persecution.65 He is telling the Christians
in Rome to “stay away from any notion of … insubordination,” and instead to adopt a loving,
“nonresistant attitude towards a tyrannical government,”66 an attitude which would therefore
“set an example of humility and peaceful living for others.”67 In other words, Romans 13 “seeks
to apply love in a context where Christians detested the authorities.”68 It does not legitimise the
state, but it also makes a point of not legitimising any insurrection against it.69 It is reminding
Christians that Jesus refused to engage in that type of revolutionary politics, that the Christian
revolution is to happen by setting an example of love, forgiveness and sacrifice instead.
Thus the Christian is to remain indifferent, so to speak, to particular forms of political author-
ity.70 However evil or tyrannical any one of them may be—and there is no denying that they
can be very brutal—a follower of Jesus should overcome evil by good: by loving enemies, by
turning the other cheek, and by submitting to persecution and possible crucifixion. It is not for
the Christian to avenge human injustices, however horrible any one of them may be. In Romans
12:19, Paul recalls that God said: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” That is, vengeance is denied

61
See, for instance, Eller, 12.
62
Again, for details of these, see Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism.
63
It should be noted that while this view summarises the conclusion reached by those Christian anarchists who
give Paul a chance and see his Epistles as genuinely compatible with Jesus’ teaching, it is not one that those who
reject him outright—Tolstoy in particular—would subscribe to. For someone like Tolstoy, who universalises Jesus’
commandments by grounding them in universal reason, the state is evil and should not be tolerated but overcome—
period. Then again, in a sense, for all Christian anarchists, non-Christians are arguably those who have not fully
understood or seen the truth. Moreover, all Christian anarchists prescribe tolerance, love and forgiveness of those
who err on the side of evil. In the end, therefore, the difficulties which those who reject Paul would feel with the
conclusions derived by those who do not are probably less serious than might first appear.
64
Tennant, para. 19.
65
Molnár, 110.
66
Yoder, 202. See also Ninety-Five Theses in Defense of Patriarchy, thesis 40; Penner, 90–94; Wink, 60; Yoder,
185–187.
67
Tennant, para. 19.
68
Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity,” 170.
69
Eller argues that Paul here focuses particularly on delegitimising a violent revolution precisely because of the
similarity of Jesus’ subversive message with the message of violent revolutionaries. Eller, 11, 41, 115, 121–125. Ellul
makes a similar point in Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity,” 170; Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 86–90.
70
Eller, 43, 46–47, 155, 159–161; Molnár, 109. See also Yoder, 198–199.

104
to the Christian because it belongs to God.71 Eller also interprets Paul as telling Christians not to
“set their minds on high things”—that is, for Eller, not to get concerned and distracted by specific
political ideologies or utopias.72 Instead, the only priority is to abide by Jesus’ commandments.
Hence, according to Christian anarchists, Romans 13 cannot be interpreted as divine sancti-
fication for the state.73 It accepts the state as ordained by God, but only for those who have
rejected God. Thus “It carefully declines to legitimize either Rome or resistance against Rome.”74
For Ellul, “we have no right to claim God in validation of this order,” and therefore “This takes
away all the pathos, justification, illusion, enthusiasm, etc” that can be associated with specific
political authorities.75 Moreover, to quote Tennant, “an exhortation to obey authorities does not
imply that those authorities are required to exist in the first place… If there is no state, there is no
need to obey it.”76 Besides, as Chelþický remarks, while the passage does counsel submission to
the state, it does not provide a justification for Christians to become rulers themselves.77 Indeed,
when Paul was writing this, all authorities were pagan—Romans 13 never considers “Christian”
authorities.78 What Paul is saying in Romans 13 is that Christians should love and forgive state
authorities—not that they should participate in their sins.79
This does not imply uncritical passivity. Where the state infringes upon God’s commandments,
the Christian should—as always—side with God, not with the state. Indeed, submission to the
state is only a consequence, a derivative of submission to God and God alone.80 When Christians
submit to the state, it is because they are submitting to God. If the state demands something that
conflicts with God’s commandments, then the state should be disobeyed.
Thus, in apparent reference to Mark 12, Paul concludes Romans 13:1–7 by calling for Christians
to “Render therefore to all their dues.”81 This is examined in more detail in the next section, but
the gist of it for Christian anarchists is that Christians ought to give to the state what it asks, unless
doing so conflicts with what God demands.82 What is required, then, is “passive subordination”

71
God Sends Evil; Why I Worship a Violent, Vengeful God; Adin Ballou, NonResistance in Relation to Human Gov-
ernments (www.nonresistance.org), www.nonresistance.org (accessed 28 March 2007), 10–11; Eller, 124–126; Yoder,
198; John Howard Yoder, “The Theological Basis of the Christian Witness to the State,” (Elkhart: Associate Mennonite
Biblical Seminary, 1955), 14.
72
The passage thus paraphrased by Eller is from Romans 12:16, and, in the KJV, reads as “Mind not high things.”
Eller, 118–121.
73
See, for instance, Eller, 196; Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 86–88; Molnár, 108; Wagner, 97–98; Yoder, The
Politics of Jesus, 198–203.
74
Eller, 204.
75
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 88. See also Eller, 124–125.
76
Tennant, para. 18.
77
Brock, 47; Molnár, 108; Wagner, 51. See also Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance in All Its Important Bearings, 34.
78
Molnár, 117.
79
The last section of this sentence is paraphrased from Molnár, 116 (paraphrasing Chelþický).
80
The ideas summarised in the paragraph can be found in Alexis-Manners, 3; Ballou, Non-Resistance in Relation
to Human Governments, 4–6; Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 88.
81
Romans 13:7. For the case arguing for the parallel between these two texts, see Yoder, The Politics of Jesus,
207–208.
82
Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance in All Its Important Bearings, 37; Eller, 11–12; William Lloyd Garrison, “Dec-
laration of Sentiments Adopted by the Peace Convention,” in The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays, by Leo Tolstoy,
trans. Aylmer Maude (New Delhi: Rupa, 2001), 8; Molnár, 114–117; Wagner, 50–51, 136; Wink, 60; John Howard
Yoder, “The Limits of Obedience to Caesar: The Shape of the Problem,” unpublished Study Conference Paper (Elkhart:
Associate Mennonite Biblical Seminary, June 1978); Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 203–209.

105
but not “pious obedience to the state.”83 The state should be treated with love and due respect,
but “Obedience to secular power has definite limits. In matters contrary to the law of God, the
Christian is obliged to refuse obedience” and “must willingly suffer whatever penalties the state
imposes.”84 As explained elsewhere, this means that Christians must disobey “Directives such as
those to wield the sword, to swear an oath, or to enter a public court to settle a dispute.”85 What
is less straightforward is the question concerning the payment of taxes—which is addressed in
detail below.86
The important point is that, as Ballou writes, “The Christian has nothing to care for but be a
Christian indeed.”87 The state is a pagan distraction, to be treated with love and respect, but only
because doing so is in line with Jesus’ teaching of love and forgiveness—and it is that teaching
only which the Christian is really abiding by even when submitting to the state. It certainly has
nothing to do with any duty to protect certain freedoms or maintain some order in a chaotic war
of all against all.

Similar Passages in the New Testament

Christian anarchists interpret shorter passages elsewhere in the New Testament along the same
lines.88 The most important of these minor passages is probably 1 Peter 2:13–25, since as Alexis-
Manners claims, it is “usually used by supporters of obedience to the government as a trump
card” if defeated on Romans 13.89 For Christian anarchists, however, it is actually just repeating
the Sermon on the Mount and Romans 13. Peter’s plea for Christians to show respect for the
king, for instance, is in line with Romans 13.90 Even Peter’s call for slaves to submit to their
masters—which Paul also makes elsewhere—mirrors Romans 13: it is not a defence of slavery,
but a call to subvert it by accepting one’s subjection to it out of love and forgiveness.91 Moreover,
just as for Paul, Christian anarchists point out that Peter seems not to have always fully abided
by his pronouncements—at least not if they are taken to imply total and unquestioning obedience
83
Wagner, 51.
84
Wagner, 136.
85
Wagner, 136. This is explained in the longer version of the present chapter, in Christoyannopoulos, Christian
Anarchism.
86
For Christian anarchists commenting on taxes in the context of Romans 13:6–7, see for instance Eller, 127;
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 81–83. Note that Redford considers any insinuation by Paul that Roman Christian
should pay taxes to be yet again a case of “rhetorical misdirection.” Redford, 17–18.
87
Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance in All Its Important Bearings, 37.
88
To cite just one of the minor examples, Titus 3:1–2 is taken by both Redford and Penner to be repeating Romans
13 (even though the two of them do not actually come to the same conclusion on that meaning). Penner, 97; Redford,
19–20.
89
Alexis-Manners, 3.
90
Alexis-Manners, 3–4; Penner, 79, 105–111; Redford, 21–23. Note that Ellul claims that the common exposition
of 1 Peter 2:13 as preaching “obedience and submission of Christians to political authorities” in fact “displays great
ignorance regarding the political institutions of the period,” because the Greek word Peter uses for “king” was not the
word then used for the head of the Roman state. Instead he surmises (and admits it is just a “hazardous hypothesis”)
that Peter could have been referring to the Parthian king—in which case Peter’s pronouncement could imply “scorn,”
“total repudiation” or “condemnation” of political power or of Roman power. Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 75–77.
91
The Predestined Pencil (Vine and Fig Tree), members.aol.com (accessed 9 November 2005); Penner, 106; Redford,
27–32; Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 179–187. (1 Peter 2:18–25.) For Christian anarchists, the same applies to other New
Testament passages on slavery and on accepting one’s unfortunate position in life (such as Paul’s epistle to Philemon,
or 1 Corinthians 7:20–24). See Stephen W. Carson, Biblical Anarchism, www.lewrockwell.com (accessed 8 November
2007), para. 17–20; Eller, 159; Redford, 27–32; Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 179–187.

106
to authorities.92 Like Paul, Peter’s allegiance is first and foremost—indeed only—to God, and the
respect he shows to the state is never absolute.
The other New Testament passage cited by a Christian anarchist in parallel to Romans 13 is
Revelation 13—despite these two being often cited as an example of contradicting passages.93
For Eller, the Beast does not represent just the Roman empire but the spiritual essence of what
he calls “arkydom”—in other words, the state.94 Revelation, he says, “does not go on to suggest
that Christians should therefore resist, withhold their taxes, or do anything else in opposition
to this monster;” but instead, “they are asked to bear patiently whatever injustice and suffering
comes upon them by keeping faithful to Jesus,” and at the same time to “come out of the arkys,”
to “separate [themselves] (spiritually and psychologically) lest [they] get [themselves] entangled
and go down with them.”95 For Eller, therefore, there is no opposition between Romans 13 and
Revelation 13: neither differentiates between “good” or “bad” states (they refer to “arkydom” in
general) and both advise patience and submission rather than violent revolution.96
Thus, however surprising or outrageous it might at first seem, several Christian anarchists
argue that Romans 13 calls for Christians to accept and forgive the state, but without granting it
any absolute authority.97 For them, this does not in any way compromise Jesus’ implicit criticism
of the state or his call for humanity to overcome it, but it simply confirms that Jesus calls for
Christians to subvert it through love, service and sacrifice.

Jesus’ Advice on Taxes

The other New Testament passage often quoted by supporters of the state as proof of the error
of Christian anarchism is the following:

13. And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch
him in his words.
14. And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou
art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but
teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not?
15. Shall we give, or shall we not give? But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said unto
them, Why tempt ye me? bring me a penny, that I may see it.
16. And they brought it. And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and super-
scription? And they said unto him, Caesar’s.
17. And Jesus answering said unto them, Render to Caesar the things that are Cae-
sar’s, and to God the things that are God’s. And they marvelled at him.98
92
Halliday, para. 25–28; Penner, 111–112; Redford, 21–23.
93
Eller, 42–43.
94
Eller, 43–44.
95
Eller, 44–45 (Eller’s emphasis).
96
Eller, 43–47.
97
Such an interpretation is indeed one that is bound to result in “angry objection” from both liberal and conser-
vative quarters, as Yoder reports to have faced in response to the first edition of his book. Yoder, The Politics of Jesus,
188 (for the quoted expression)-192.
98
Mark 12:13–17 KJV. Tolstoy’s rendering of this episode can be found in Leo Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,” in
A Confession and the Gospel in Brief, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 227–228.

107
 This passage has often been cited by church theologians to suggest that when pushed on the
question, Jesus defended the state’s tax system. It has also been used to develop the notion
of a division of realms between state and church, whereby the state would be concerned with
the material and temporal realm (politics), and the church, with the spiritual and eternal one
(religion).99 For Christian anarchists, both interpretations are illegitimate: Jesus is neither “siding
with the establishment,”100 nor dividing realms between politics and religion.101 Again, therefore,
Christian anarchists put forward their own, different interpretation.

Caesar’s Things and God’s Things

To begin with, Ellul argues that Jesus must have had “a reputation of being hostile to Caesar”
for this question to be asked in the first place.102 He was already seen as a political threat, and
the authorities were trying to entrap him: if he had answered “yes, give tribute to Caesar,” then
this would have dealt a blow to his following; but answering a clear “no” would have made
him liable for immediate arrest.103 For some Christian anarchists, therefore, Jesus’ response is a
“politically astute” response to a contentious question, an ingenious reply to avoid the trap set
by his detractors.104
Furthermore, some Christian anarchists claim that the image and superscription on the coin
were a clear infringement of the first and second commandment—in other words, a case of idol-
atry.105 Hence Jews caught with the coin were arguably violating the Decalogue.106

99
Nicolas Berdyaev, The Realm of Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, trans. Donald A. Lowrie (London: Victor
Gollancz, 1952), 69; William T. Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1998), 190–191; Elliott, 51; David McLellan, Unto Caesar: The Political Relevance of Christianity (London:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 4; David McLellan, “Unto Caesar: The Political Relevance of Christianity,” in
Religion in Public Life, ed. Dan Cohn-Sherbok and David McLellan (New York: St. Martin’s, 1992), 112; Ched Myers,
Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), 312–313; Yoder, The
Politics of Jesus, 44–45.
100
Eller, 76 (for the quoted expression); Penner, 49; Ronald Sampson, “Christian Soldiers?,” A Pinch of Salt, issue
14, March 1990, 10.
101
Berdyaev, 69; Cavanaugh, 190–191; Eller, 11; Elliott, 51; Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity,” 167; Myers, 312–
313; Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 44–45.
102
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 59. A similar point is implied in Cavanaugh, 190–191; Yoder, The Politics of
Jesus, 44–45.
103
Some commentators note that the issue of payment of taxes was a sensitive political issue both when Jesus
said this and at the time during which Mark is estimated to have written his Gospel (during the Jewish-Roman war
of A. D. 66–70). In both contexts, Jesus’ answer would clearly and pointedly distance him and his followers from the
Zealots who favoured armed rebellion against Rome. Eller, 78–80; Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 61; Myers, 312–314;
Penner, 50.
104
Elliott, 52 (where the expression “political astuteness” appears), 72; Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 59; Halliday,
para. 12; [Meggitt], 11; Myers, 352; Tennant, para. 11–13. Similarly, Redford sees it as another case of “rhetorical
misdirection.” Redford, 10–11. As to Hennacy, he rather audaciously writes that “Whether [Jesus] winked as much
as to say that any good Jew knew that Caesar did not deserve a thing … , no-one knows.” Hennacy, 432.
105
The Rigorous Intuition Board, p216.ezboard.com gynetanarchistjesuspdf/frigorousintuition-
frm10.ShowMessage?topicID=6754.topic (accessed 20 April 2007), post by Lysander Spoonder on 11 April 2006;
Myers, 311. These first two commandments are: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and “Thou shalt not make
unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth” (Exodus 20:3–4; KJV’s italics removed).
106
Incidentally, the episode does indeed suggest that Jesus himself did not possess a coin. Eller, 77.

108
 Ellul moreover explains that “in the Roman world an individual mark on an object denoted
ownership.”107 Therefore the coin did indeed belong to Caesar—money does belong to the state.108
If Caesar wanted his coin back, then this coin should be given back to him.109 The important
question, then, is to define what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God—because Jesus does
also emphasise that what belongs to God should be given to God.110 For Ellul, what belongs to
Caesar is simply

Whatever bears his mark! Here is the basis and limit of his power. But where is
his mark? On coins, on public monuments, and on certain altars. That is all… On
the other hand, whatever does not bear Caesar’s mark does not belong to him. It all
belongs to God.111

Thus, for instance, Caesar has no right over life and death. That belongs to God. While the
state can therefore expect us to return its coins and monuments when requested, it has no right
to kill dissidents or plunge a country into war.112
Christian anarchists indeed maintain that what belongs to God is much broader than what
belongs to Caesar: to Jesus’ Jewish audience, the debt owed to God is incomparably greater.113
Besides, money is “the domain of Mammon.”114 For a faithful Jew, the higher obligation is always
to God, and, against this, Caesar’s claim is almost irrelevant. Myers therefore contends that by
his careful answer, Jesus

is inviting them to act according to their allegiances, stated clearly as opposites.

Again Jesus has turned the challenge back upon his antagonists: What position do
they take on the issue? This is what provokes the strong reaction of incredulity
… from his opponents—something no neat doctrine of “obedient citizenship” could
possibly have done.115
107
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 59.
108
(A close look at the small print of most bank notes reveals that the same logic still applies today.) Note that
Christian anarcho-capitalists like Redford disagree on this: for him, Caesar’s face on the coin does not make the coin
his. Redford, 10–11.
109
Barr, 10; Eller, 11, 77; Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 60; Penner, 51–52.
110
Eller reports Hengel’s thesis that this crucial second part of the sentence is what “left them ‘amazed,’” and that
“the Greek of the connective should be translated ‘but’ in place of the usual ‘and’: ‘Render to Caesar the things that
are Caesar’s—but to God the things that are God’s.’” Eller, 77.
111
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 60. See also Brock, 49.
112
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 60–61. To cite a few more examples of separate “belongings,” Ellul writes that
the only things which belong to Caesar are those things which he himself “creates;” Myers notes that the land of Israel
belongs to God; Penner argues that the verse only admits taxes among things to be rendered to Caesar, and that one
could perhaps infer that being made in the image of God, the Jews “owed themselves to God;” and Tolstoy suggests
that money and property belong to Caesar, but one’s soul, to God. On a different note, Hennacy quotes Day, who said
(quoting St. Hilary): “The less of Caesar’s you have, the less you have to render.” Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity,”
167–168; Hennacy, 298 (see also 317, 431); Myers, 312; Penner, 52; Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,” 228; Leo Tolstoy,
“The Teaching of Jesus,” in On Life and Essays on Religion, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press,
1934), 371–372.
113
It is Myers who explains that the word “render” evokes this reference to “debt.” Myers, 312. See also Philip
Berrigan, Jesus the Anarchist (Jonah House), www.jonahhouse.org (accessed 10 April 2007), para. 2; Ellul, “Anarchism
and Christianity,” 168; Hennacy, 432.
114
Ellul, cited in Eller, 11 (see also 195).
115
Myers, 312 (Myers’ emphasis).

109
 In other words, as Ellul insists, “Jesus does not say that taxes are lawful.”116 Instead, according
to Penner, he uses to occasion “to point the Jews to the fact that they had, in effect, accepted the
supremacy of Rome, when He made them acknowledge whose coinage they were using.”117 His
detractors had not been giving to God what belongs to God: they had betrayed God by their de
facto allegiance to Caesar.
For Eller, therefore, the apparent choice between Caesar’s things and God’s things is “fake,”
because “Whether a person chooses God or not is the only real issue.”118 By uttering those words,
Jesus “makes the distinction between the one, ultimate, absolute choice and all lesser, relative
choices.”119 Questions like the payment of taxes “are ‘adiaphora’ [Greek for ‘indifference’] in
comparison to the one choice that really counts”—the choice of God above Caesar.120 We are
told several times in the New Testament that we “cannot serve two masters,” and the message
of this passage is “to absolutize God alone and let the state and all other arkys be the human
relativities they are.”121 Seen in this light, Jesus’ answer is not so much a defence of the tax
system or of the division of realms, but a counsel of subversion by indifference (as discussed in
Richard Davis’ contribution to this volume).
Thus, for Christian anarchists like Eller, “civic responsibility is a proper obligation only insofar
as it does not threaten our prime responsibility of giving God what belongs to God.”122 In other
words, “let Caesar take his cut,” says Eller, “so that you can continue to ignore him.”123 Hence
if Jesus seems to recognise as appropriate the payment of taxes, it is because that concern is
insignificant compared to the one concern that really matters.124 At the same time, however,
what must be denounced is Caesar’s attempt to compete with God: the state’s tendency to seek
to dethrone God and be worshipped and served in his place—precisely because that touches on
the much more important issue of rendering to God what belongs to God.125

The Temple Tax and Fish Episode

Christian anarchists read the other main passage in which Jesus refers to paying taxes in much
the same way. The progression of the dialogue in Matthew 17:24–27 is even more interesting in
this case:126

116
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 60.
117
Penner, 51.
118
Eller, 11 (also: 77).
119
One example which Eller lists of such a “relative choice” is whether to collaborate with or resist the Romans.
Eller, 82.
120
Eller, 83. On this notion of indifference to the state, Eller was strongly influenced by Kierkegaard. He acknowl-
edges this throughout his book, and this is also explained in Richard Davis’ contribution to the present volume.
121
Eller, 83. See also Linda H. Damico, The Anarchist Dimension of Liberation Theology (New York: Peter Lang,
1987), 90–91.
122
Eller, 196.
123
Eller, 196 (Eller’s emphasis).
124
Note that Christian anarcho-capitalists refuse to recognise any validation by Jesus of any form of taxation
since, as far as they are concerned, taxes are pure theft. See for instance The Rigorous Intuition Board, post by Lysander
Spoonder on 11 April 2006; Redford, 10–11, 18–19, 48–49; Tennant, para. 11–13.
125
The Christmas Conspiracy (Vine and Fig Tree), thechristmasconspiracy.com (accessed 10 April 2007); Ninety-
Five Theses in Defense of Patriarchy, thesis 18 (for instance); Berdyaev, 78–79; Eller, 84, 165; Elliott, 52; Ellul, Anarchy
and Christianity, 61; Myers, 427.
126
Eller shows the importance of the progression of the dialogue by paraphrasing it in Eller, 205–208.

110
 24. And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money
came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?
25. He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him,
saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take
custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?
26. Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children
free.
27. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an
hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his
mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me
and thee.127

Ellul thinks that too much attention has focused on the curious and miraculous side of this
prescription.128 For Christian anarchists, it is clear from the dialogue that the state has “no
legitimate jurisdiction over Christians, yet that Christians should nonetheless pay taxes “to avoid
offense”129 —that is, “so as not to stir up trouble.”130 If Jesus ends up asking for Peter to pay the
tax, Eller therefore writes, it is “for reasons entirely extraneous to the recognition of any arky.”131
Eller then compares the justifications given in Romans 13, Mark 12 and this passage as follows:

In Mark 12, the stated reason was “Let Caesar have his coin so he will get off your
back and leave you alone to be giving to God what belongs to him.” In Romans 13,
it was “Let Caesar have his coin so that you won’t be drawn into the disobedience
of failing to love him.” Now, in Matthew 17, it is “Let Caesar have his coin so as not
to be guilty of causing ‘offence.’”132

The priority is always to follow God and his commandments, and any submission to the state
is peripheral to that.
Yet Eller also points out that in some other instances, Jesus does not seem to mind causing
offence.133 The difference, he argues, is between causing offence “deliberately” and “acciden-
127
Matthew 17:24–27 KJV. Tolstoy’s rendering of this episode can be found in Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,”
227–228.
128
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 63–64. Ellul’s interpretation of that fantastic story of fishing out a coin is
that, in making that prescription, “Jesus held power to ridicule,” that “an absurd miracle” is performed “to show how
unimportant the power is.” Ellul, “Anarchism and Christianity,” 167; Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 64.
129
Ninety-Five Theses in Defense of Patriarchy, theses 77–78. Craig here applies the verses to the state even though
they describe the paying of tax to the temple. Other Christian anarchists follow that trend—partly perhaps, as Eller
remarks, the author of these verses “gives no attention at all to the tax’s ‘temple’ aspect.” In any case, the distinction
between the authorities’ religious and political functions was less clear during Jesus’ time than it is today, therefore
extending the meaning of these verses to the state does not seem too inappropriate. Eller, 204.
130
Redford, 11, 49. See also Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 64. Tolstoy, for his part, argues in one place that Jesus
asks for the tax to be paid in order not to resist evil, and in another, “in order not to tempt men.” Tolstoy, “The Gospel
in Brief,” 227; Tolstoy, “The Teaching of Jesus,” 371.
131
Eller, 206.
132
Eller, 208.
133
He writes: “Who is this Jesus who can tell us not to cause offense (thirteen times in seven different books
of the New Testament such wording is found) when much more frequently the scriptural word “offense” is used to
report the offense he himself causes—to the point that both Romans and 1 Peter name him as ‘the Rock of Offense’?”
Eller, 208.

111
tally.”134 The difference is in what constitutes the main motive. To repeat, what matters is always
giving priority to God, and abiding by his commandments. In doing so, one should indeed avoid
causing offence to others. Sometimes, however, people might be offended at one’s actions when
giving priority to God—but if so, “that’s their business,” says Eller, because offence was never
intended and because the only purpose was “to obey God.”135 What should be avoided is the
causing of intentional offence. For Eller, therefore, the proper Christian attitude with respect to
taxes is to pay them, because withholding them would turn the causing of offence into a political
instrument and thus lose sight of what is much more important: obedience to God.136

Pondering the Role of Civil Disobedience

The above exegeses open up the question of the limits of acceptability of any civil disobedience.
On this issue, however, Christian anarchists are somewhat divided.

Against Civil Disobedience

The main Christian anarchist who argues against any form of civil disobedience is Eller.137 For
him, one should not engage in “deliberately illegal action” in attempting to counter any partic-
ular evil in society.138 Too often, he says, Christians who try and fail to persuade others react
by “turning up the volume,” at the “high end” of which is civil disobedience.139 Such disobedi-
ence, according to Eller, presumes that effectiveness is enhanced by “offense-causing.”140 Yet for
him, civil disobedience helps neither the “content” nor the “persuasiveness” of the “witness and
protest” because it “does not call attention to the truth content of the witness and protest but
to the offensive behavior of the witness-protester.”141 For him, “failure of others to accept” the
“truth” does not justify “recourse to questionable methods.”142
One of Eller’s problems with such tactics is that typically, they result in “two worldly arkys
condemning each other”—that is, a political climate of mutual, zealous and self-righteous con-

134
Eller, 208–210.
135
Eller, 209.
136
He sees “tax payment” (or “an allowing of Caesar to take his taxes”) as “the model of all the offense-causing
actions of Jesus,” which only aims to obey God and has “total disregard of the arkys;” and “tax withholding” as an
“arky-faith action” which “[uses] offense as a tactic for influencing events.” Eller, 208–209 (emphasis removed).
137
Eller, especially chap. 4, 8, 10.
138
Eller, 210. Here, Eller is not alone: some Christian anarchists seem to agree that however evil the laws of
the state might be, Christians should avoid taking part in illegal activity. See for instance Ballou, Non-Resistance in
Relation to Human Governments, 8; Hugh O. Pentecost, Anarchism, www.deadanarchists.org (accessed 22 November
2007), para. 12; Wagner, 51.
139
Eller compares this “turning up with volume” to what Ellul calls “dramatization.” Eller, 210–214.
140
For Eller, offence is caused partly because “in almost every case, the law that is actually broken is an innocent
one which all parties would agree is perfectly just and which no one could claim reasons of conscience for violating.”
Eller, 214.
141
Eller, 213. The same point is made in Dick, “Pure Quakerism and Ploughshares,” A Pinch of Salt, issue 8, October
1987, 11.
142
Moreover, according to Eller, however evil the state is (and he repeat that he continues to believe it is), at least
democratic laws do make it possible to use more honourable ways of being heard. Eller, 216.

112
demnation that polarises society into rival political views.143 What is lost in the process is the
higher aim of obedience to God. For him, any civil disobedience should be accidental to that
primary goal. Obedience to God, rather than effectiveness in persuasion, should always remain
the guiding principle.144 Hence one should avoid compromising with power politics. According
to Eller, direct action is not the only way to bring about change.145 Another way, and for Eller
the only Christian way, is “voluntary self-subordination.”146 Eller admits that the outcome of this
method is uncertain, but that is nonetheless precisely the alternative which Jesus and his early
followers taught and lived.

For (Non-violent) Civil Disobedience

For other Christian anarchists, Eller’s position is a “total cop-out.”147 It is “naïve,” and in effect,
it “accepts” or “condones” oppression.148 They say that “we are called to resist, … to actively
confront evil and hatred and violence”—though loving and non-violent means should of course
be adopted in that struggle.149 For these Christian anarchists, the “arrogant state” simply must
be confronted, unmasked and subverted.150

143
Eller, 217. On pages 87–101, Eller illustrates this point by analysing what he calls the “zealotism” of the peace
movement (and he explains that he chose the peace movement precisely because its concerns are likely to be close to
those reading his book).
144
Eller, 218–219.
145
He claims to “understand why so many Christians find some sort of arky faith to be absolutely essential to
their creed,” because it “assumes there is only one possible way social good can happen,” but he maintains that “The
direct-action method of messianic arkys is hardly recommended by its track record,” and that “although the results
are neither quick nor spectacular, it may be that social service has a better record in effecting even structural change
than has revolutionism.” Eller, 237–239.
146
Eller, 239. In the remaining pages (239–248) of that chapter, Eller interprets as an example of a story of
such “voluntary self-subordination” Paul’s epistle to Philemon about the latter’s slave, Onesimus. He understands
Onesimus to have been a runaway slave who voluntarily submitted himself back to his master, and he suggests
(following John Knox) that this same Onesimus could well have become the great Bishop which Ignatius so keenly
praises in his later writings. If so, then this would be a story of eventual emancipation through initial voluntary self-
subordination. To Eller, this illustrates perfectly the Christian alternative to class warfare through the cultivation of
patient and loving one-to-one relationships with any given oppressor.
147
These words are Stephen Hancock’s, the editor of the first fourteen issues of A Pinch of Salt, in his review of
the book, in [Stephen Hancock], “Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy over the Powers (Book Review),” A Pinch of Salt,
issue 8, October 1987, 9, 13. Eller’s book is also reviewed in the following issue, where Hancock’s conclusions are
agreed with. Justin Meggitt, “One of Three Letters,” A Pinch of Salt, issue 9, Spring 1988, 7.
148
For the accusations of “political naivety” and “condoning” of “oppression,” see [Hancock], 13. Although not
referring to Eller, Elliott seems to share this view. Elliott, 176. As to Ellul, he writes that “Christian radicalism …
cannot counsel the poor and the oppressed to be submissive and accepting … without at the same time constraining
the rich to serve the poor.” Jacques Ellul, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, trans. Cecilia Gaul Kings
(London: SCM, 1970), 150–151 (Ellul’s emphasis).
149
The ending of the full sentence of the latter passage is important: “We are called not to be passive, but to actively
confront evil and hatred and violence with love of enemies, forgiveness and self-sacrifice,” hence also the insistence on
nonviolence. “The Power of Non-Violence,” London Catholic Worker, issue 12, January 2005, 2–3 (writer’s emphasis).
See also Day, 304.
150
Adin Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance (Friends of Adin Ballou), www.adinballou.org (accessed 12 February
2007), chap. 1, para. 7; Simon Barrow, Rethinking Religion in an Open Society (Ekklesia), www.ekklesia.co.uk (accessed
17 January 2008), para. 27; Keith Hebden, “A Subversive Gospel,” The London Catholic Worker, issue 20, Autumn 2007,
14; Molnár, 39 (where the notion of “arrogant state” is mentioned), 57; Myers; Penner, 43; Greg Watts, “Following
Jesus in Love and Anarchy,” The Times, 29 February 2008, www.timesonline.co.uk (accessed 29 February 2008); Roger

113
 Moreover, doing so is not unchristian: Jesus himself challenged the authorities, spoke out
against them, broke a few rules (on the Sabbath) and even sometimes engaged in militant (but
non-violent) direct action.151 He also warned that Christians will be persecuted and that this will
be an “opportunity to bear witness.”152 Furthermore, the cross is “a symbol of resistance to evil,”
so following Jesus and taking up the cross implies at least some form of resistance as well.153
Besides, when God and the state require contrary things, Christians are clearly called to obey
God, not the state, which would then indeed imply some form of disobedience to the state—but
also patient endurance of the consequences.154 Hence rather than seeing it as civil disobedience,
for them, one should see it as obedience to God.155
Some Christian anarchists even speak of acts of disobedience or witness against the state in
the language of liturgy.156 Thus civil disobedience becomes “a prayer,” and the confronting of
state power a sort of “casting out of demons.”157
Then again, Ellul insists that civil disobedience must not become a political strategy to achieve
political goals—whether or not it can indeed be effective as a political strategy.158 As discussed
below, Christians can sympathise with and participate in movements of civil disobedience, but
their goal must always remain solely to follow God’s commandments.
Moreover, the state’s punishment for such disobedience should be fully accepted. Day says of
Hennacy that

Young, A Plea to Christians: Reject the State! (Strike the Root), www.strike-the-root.com (accessed 21 November 2007),
para. 3.
151
Retta Fontana, Citizen Jesus (Strike the Root), www.strike-the-root.com (accessed 21 November 2007), para.
8–16; Halliday, para. 11; David Mumford, “The Bible and Anarchy,” A Pinch of Salt, issue 14, March 1990, 8; Myers,
161–162, 436–437; Tim Nafzinger, “Marks of a Resistance Church,” London Catholic Worker, issue 13, April 2005, 8.
152
“The Power of Non-Violence,” 3. (Luke 22:12–13.)
153
Berrigan, para. 3.
154
This sentence is heavily paraphrased from Ballou, Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments, 4; Adin
Ballou, “Non-Resistance: A Basis for Christian Anarchism,” in Patterns of Anarchy: A Collection of Writings on the
Anarchist Tradition, ed. Leonard I. Krimerman and Lewis Perry (Garden City: Anchor, 1966), 141–142. Note that
even Eller admits that in his argument, he has not analysed this very possibility of the state demanding something
that is contrary to the will of God—in which case he is clear that the only course of action is obedience to God and
“accidental” disobedience to the state. He then even proposes a “litmus test for making the distinction: If an action of
lawbreaking is done solely as obedience to God, then, plainly, whatever media exposure occurs is entirely incidental
to the purpose. If, however, media exposure is sought and valued, the action must have a political, arky motivation
that goes far beyond simple obedience to God.” Eller, 218–219 (Eller’s emphasis).
155
This paraphrases Archbishop Raymond G. Hunthausen, who said: “Some would call what I am urging
‘civil disobedience.’ I prefer to see it as obedience to God.” Multi-Denominational Statements (Jesus Radicals),
www.jesusradicals.com (accessed 5 November 2006), under “Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle”.
156
Cavanaugh makes the case for seeing such actions as liturgy in Cavanaugh, 12, 273–277. Bartley also mentions
this in passing in Jonathan Bartley, Faith and Politics after Christendom: The Church as a Movement for Anarchy (Milton
Keynes: Paternoster, 2006), 68.
157
“A Vote for the State Means…” A Pinch of Salt, issue 12, March 1989, 9; Jim Douglass, “Civil Disobedience as
Prayer,” A Pinch of Salt, issue 3, Pentecost 1986, 8–9. See also, for instance, Scott Albrecht, “The Politics of Liturgy,” The
London Catholic Worker, issue 14, Advent 2005; [Stephen Hancock], “Interview with Dan Berrigan,” A Pinch of Salt,
issue 11, Autumn/Winter 1988, 11; Myers, 452–453; Ciaron O’Reilly, Remembering Forgetting: A Journey of Non-Violent
Resistance to the War in East Timor (Sydney: Otford, 2001), 21, 50, 63, 95 (for instance); Watson, 11.
158
Goddard, 180–181.

114
 His refusal to pay federal income tax does not mean disobedience since he has al-
ways proved himself to be ready to go to jail, to accept the alternative for his convic-
tions.159

The penalty for disobedience should thus be patiently and forgivingly endured. Besides, for
Christian anarchists, prison is a kind of resting place in today’s world, a “new monastery” in
which Christians can “abide with honour.”160
In any case, there can be no denying that there is a tension here, between Jesus’ call to
turn the other cheek and his cleansing of the temple, between what Eller calls “voluntary self-
subordination” and civil disobedience. Yet even so, the tension should not be over-exaggerated:
for Christian anarchists, even turning the other cheek is defiantly trying to unmask an evil (the vi-
olence that has just been inflicted), and Jesus’ cleansing of the temple was an equally non-violent
attempt to unmask another evil (the concentration of power in the temple).
As to Tolstoy, as discussed elsewhere, he seems to have quite genuinely read (perhaps indeed
misread) Matthew 5:39’s “non-resistance to evil” as “non-resistance to evil by evil”—not unlike
Walter Wink.161 This ambiguity was picked up by his detractors,162 and many of his admirers
cling on to the non-violent resistance which Tolstoy’s reading allows for.163 As explained again
below, Tolstoy himself was happy to disobey and “to fight the Government by means of thought,
speech, actions” and the like, and called for Christians to desist from participating in the me-
chanics of the state’s power.164 He was keen to protest and disobey, though always in a strictly
non-violent way.

159
Dorothy Day, “Foreword,” in The Book of Ammon, by Ammon Hennacy, ed. Jim Missey and Joan Thomas
(Baltimore: Fortkamp, 1994), ix.
160
Douglass, 8 (where the expression “new monastery” comes from); Hennacy, 132 (from where the expression
“abide with honour” is borrowed); Molnár, 130.
161
Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos, “Turning the Other Cheek to Terrorism: Reflections on the Contempo-
rary Significance of Leo Tolstoy’s Exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount,” Politics and Religion 1/1 (2008), 39–41; E. B.
Greenwood, “Tolstoy and Religion,” in New Essays on Tolstoy, ed. Malcolm Jones (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1978), 170; Aylmer Maude, “Editor’s Note,” in A Confession and the Gospel in Brief, by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Aylmer
Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), xv; Maude, The Life of Tolstóy, 250–251; Wink.
162
For instance: Edith Lyttelton, “Introduction to a Confession and What I Believe,” in A Confession and the Gospel
in Brief, by Leo Tolstoy, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), viii.
163
For instance: Terry Hopton, “Tolstoy, God and Anarchism,” Anarchist Studies 8 (2000), 44; Peter Marshall,
Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (London: Fontana, 1993), 378; Max Nettlau, A Short History of
Anarchism (London: Freedom, 1996), 251; David Stephens, “The Non-Violent Anarchism of Leo Tolstoy,” in Government
Is Violence: Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, by Leo Tolstoy, ed. David Stephens (London: Phoenix, 1990), 17–19;
George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 217.
164
George Kennan, “A Visit to Count Tolstoi,” The Century Magazine 34/2 (1887), 256; Leo Tolstoy, “An Appeal to
Social Reformers,” in Government Is Violence: Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, ed. David Stephens, trans. Vladimir
Tchertkoff (London: Phoenix, 1990), 63; Leo Tolstoy, “Christianity and Patriotism,” in The Kingdom of God and Peace
Essays, trans. Aylmer Maude (New Delhi: Rupa, 2001), 450; Leo Tolstoy, “The End of the Age: An Essay on the
Approaching Revolution,” in Government Is Violence: Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, ed. David Stephens, trans.
Vladimir Tchertkoff (London: Phoenix, 1990), 24, 40, 41, 50; Leo Tolstoy, “On Anarchy,” in Government Is Violence:
Essays on Anarchism and Pacifism, ed. David Stephens, trans. Vladimir Tchertkoff (London: Phoenix, 1990), 79 (where
the quote comes from).

115
Obedience to God
So who is right? Are Christians called to engage in civil disobedience? It seems that there can
be no nicely detailed and predefined answer to these questions.165 In the end, the highest princi-
ple and ultimate reference on which all Christian guidelines are based is love. Jesus frequently
repeats that love of God and of one’s neighbour are the two most fundamental commandments
on which the rest of the law subsequently hangs.166 It follows that if to love God and to love
one’s neighbour sometimes requires disobeying the state (when obedience to the state would
imply a violation of any of these two fundamental commandments), then there might be a case
for moderating the purest interpretation of the subsequent command not to resist.
Besides, if Wink is right in interpreting the original Greek as criticising violent resistance and
rebellion only, and indeed since (according to Christian anarchism) Jesus does call us to react to
state violence and injustice, it seems that some degree of civil disobedience is inevitable for his
followers in certain specific situations. At the same time, what for Christian anarchists remains
clearly contradictory to Jesus’ commandments is violent resistance.167 It is whether non-violent
resistance can sometimes be tolerated that is less clear. Evil certainly calls for a response, but for
Christian anarchists, this reaction can never be violent. The spectrum of possible responses to
evil ranges quite narrowly from non-resistance to non-violent resistance—but also, in the latter
case, submission to any consequent penalty for this resistance.168 Anything outside this narrow
range, however, would seem to amount to a disobedience of Jesus’ law of love.
Nevertheless, Eller’s warning seems important enough to heed. For example, Tolstoy’s own
reaction to violence was to spread his gospel in various essays, plays and novels: his protests
were largely verbal; Gandhi, who was inspired by Tolstoy, applied the principle of non-violence
much more confrontationally; King and later pacifists pushed it even further into tactical political
activism. Similarly, the Catholic Worker movement only adopted more confrontational methods
of civil disobedience over time, partly under the influence of Hennacy.169 What these and other
examples suggest is that there is perhaps a tendency for what begins as fairly strict non-resistance
and obedience to God to move along the spectrum of possible actions ever closer to politically-
driven civil disobedience—and beyond. Eller’s fear about turning up the volume might be worth
remembering: doing so tends to reveal a gradual relegation into power politics and a concomitant
loss of sight of God.
Thus, even if a variety of actions are in line with a Christian anarchist reading of the Bible, one
must perhaps always remain on guard to avoid the sort of degeneration spotted by Eller. Every
context might result in different actions being most appropriate to continue to serve God and not
the state, but it is crucial to always keep service to God as not just the primary but indeed the
only concern that informs such non-violent and (in that sense) accidental civil disobedience.170

165
The discussion in this section is very similar to Christoyannopoulos, “Turning the Other Cheek to Terrorism,”
39–42.
166
For example, Matthew 22:36–40; Mark 12:30–31; John 13:34–35.
167
For a discussion of Jesus cleansing of the Temple (often said to legitimise Christian violence) from a Christian
anarchist perspective, see Christoyannopoulos, “Christian Anarchism”; Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism.
168
Ballou, Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments, 8.
169
Tom Cornell, “Air Raid Drills and the New York Catholic Worker,” The Catholic Worker, issue 73, May 2006, 1;
[Hancock], “Interview with Dan Berrigan,” 10–11 (where Berrigan explains that Day “had qualms” and was initially
“quite shocked” at the slightly more assertive tactics adopted in the late 1960s).
170
Eller, 218–219.

116
Indeed, for Christian anarchists, as this discussion and exegesis of Romans 13 and “Render to
Caesar” has argued, whether obeying or disobeying, a Christian response to the state is always
incidental to the Christian obedience to God.171

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—. “The Teaching of Jesus.” In On Life and Essays on Religion, translated by Aylmer Maude,
346–409. Vol. 12, Tolstóy Centenary Edition. London: Oxford University Press, 1934.
“A Vote for the State Means…” A Pinch of Salt, issue 12, March 1989, 9.
Wagner, Murray L. Petr Chelþický: A Radical Separatist in Hussite Bohemia, Studies in Anabaptist
and Mennonite History. Scottdale: Herald, 1983.
Watson, Simon. “The Catholic Worker and Anarchism.” The London Catholic Worker, issue 15,
Lent 2006, 8–11.
Watts, Greg. “Following Jesus in Love and Anarchy.” The Times, 29 February 2008.
www.timesonline.co.uk (accessed 29 February 2008).
Why I Worship a Violent, Vengeful God Who Orders Me to Be Loving and Non-Violent. Vine and
Fig Tree members.aol.com (accessed 4 November 2005).
Wink, Walter. Jesus’ Third Way. Philadelphia: New Society, 1987.
Wogaman, J. Philip. Christian Perspectives on Politics. Revised and expanded edition. Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 2000.
Woodcock, George. Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1975.
Yoder, John Howard. “The Limits of Obedience to Caesar: The Shape of the Problem.” Unpub-
lished Study Conference Paper. Elkhart: Associate Mennonite Biblical Seminary, June 1978.
—. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. Second edition. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans,
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—. “The Theological Basis of the Christian Witness to the State.” Elkhart: Associate Mennonite
Biblical Seminary, 1955.
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www.strike-the-root.com 3.html (accessed 21 November 2007).

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CHAPTER SEVEN. BUILDING A DALIT
WORLD IN THE SHELL OF THE OLD:
CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN DALIT
INDIGENOUS PRACTICE AND WESTERN
ANARCHIST THOUGHT
KEITH HEBDEN
Taking as a starting point Colin Ward’s contention that anarchic behaviour is evident all the time
and in all types of society, I use select criteria to compare western anarchism with eastern indigenous
religion. I examine the anthropological work of missionaries and theologians working in rural Indian
contexts with respect to “worship” and “religious conversion.” Through indigenous forms of worship,
Dalit communities show anarchic practice and values that challenge western assumptions about the
importance of the state to modern Indian society. Further, a Dalit approach to conversion is different
to the Western Christian approach, and the contrast illustrates the polyvalent and communitarian
nature of Dalit life and thought. Nonetheless, even though we find evidence of anarchic values and
practice, we do not find a perfect example of anarchic religion in that of the Dalits.

How would you feel if you discovered that the society in which you would really like
to live was already here, apart from a few little, local difficulties like exploitation, war,
dictatorship and starvation?1
—Colin Ward

The purpose of this chapter is to test Colin Ward’s contention that an anarchist society is al-
ready “in existence, like a seed beneath the snow” of the state.2 I consider the likelihood that the
seeds of dissent are as multivalent as nature herself and include the seeds of primitive religious re-
volt and social reconstruction. The context for the hypothesis is India and specifically rural Dalit
communities who retain what has not been co-opted of their culture into the hegemony of mod-
ernist Hinduism. More specifically the way Dalits worship together and how they understand
the “event” and “intent” of conversion in religious and political terms. To do this we need simple
anarchist criteria from which to begin. These criteria will act as a dialogical partner rather than
a measure, allowing conversation between the cultural practices of an indigenous people—the
Dalits—and the theoretical assumptions of a western enlightenment ideology—anarchism.
The sources will be justified and conversational criteria explained below. It will be necessary
then to define the parameters of the subject: the Dalits. Something of their context and self-
identification will help to make it clear which communities are being surveyed as well as making
1
Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action (London: Freedom Press, 1982), 14.
2
Ward, 14.

121
the simple distinction between anarchist and anarchism. Broadly speaking there follows two
sections that flesh out the context of the test: worship and conversion. The ways in which Dalits
organise and execute their acts of worship tell us something of both their spirituality and politics.
The ways in which Dalits approach relations with the other through adoption or conversion tells
us something of how Dalit religion is subversive in its adaptability.
The key sources for this conversation are long-established anarchist thinkers, the anthropology
of Christian liberationist theologians in India, and the journal Anarchist Studies. In Volume 14:1
of Anarchist Studies the special focus is a response to Sharif Gemie’s critique of Monde Libertaire,
a French anarchist newspaper, and the reactionary tone of many articles within it to “the veil”
as used by Muslim women. The papers that were written in answer to Gemie’s timely criticism
begin to unpack the unsteady relationship between religion and anarchism so making a useful
introduction to this chapter. For example, Beltrán Roca argues that anarchism, as a system of
thought rooted in the enlightenment, is “unable to meet the challenges of today’s society.”3 It
is useful to look at this enlightenment anarchism in relation to primitive religion. Religion has
great but imperfect valence with post-modernism and anarchism therefore it is a useful critique
of the latter in the cool shade of the former. Indian liberation theologians, trying to make sense of
both their post-colonial baggage and the primitive religious context to which they are pastorally
drawn have done a great deal to reflect on the Other of the Dalits in a meaningful and useful way.
Furthermore Dalit Christian theology, with its heritage of Marxist tools of social critique, begins
to unpack the power-relation imbalances that Dalit religion subverts.
It is helpful that Harold Barclay has already addressed the instinctive caution among anar-
chist thinkers when looking to conversation with religion, especially majority world religions.4
Barclay points out that “anarchism” as a diverse set of ideological tools and “anarchy” as a phe-
nomenon are distinguishable.5 It is conceivable that Dalit religion is anarchic in the latter sense if
not the former. Barclay asserts that if we cannot make such comparisons “we are left with a pro-
liferation of neologisms which become pure jargonise.”6 For Barclay anarchy can be understood
as “primitive” in a way which is comparable with Marxist theorising of “primitive communism.”7
Thus it is to aboriginal, which is Dalit, religious communities that we turn for an understanding
of primitive religious anarchism.
Roca, in his response to the French debate about the veil, points out that pre-Constantine
Christianity, overlapping anarchist and Christian thinking around the time of the enlightenment,
and Christian dissent throughout the last two millennia have highlighted the role of primitive
Christian religion in defying the tyranny of the state. He goes on to suggest that Islam also
contains a “multiplicity of liberatory elements.”8 The responses to Gemie’s paper seem at least
generously ambivalent toward the potentially liberating agency of religion and often positively
enthusiastic. Peter Kropotkin in his seminal work on mutuality made the same point on the
way primitive religion yields a subversive and vital key to human potential for building a society

3
Beltrán Roca, “The Shadows of the Enlightenment: Some Foucaultian Perspectives on the French Law and the
Veil,” Anarchist Studies 14, no. 1 (2006): 30.
4
Harold Barclay, People without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy (London: Kahn and Averill, 1990).
5
Barclay, 18.
6
Barclay, 18.
7
Barclay, 15.
8
Roca, 34.

122
based on non-reciprocal mutuality.9 It is the mutuality found in primitive religion that is tested
below, with the Dalit as a case study.

Conversational Criteria
The three conversational criteria rooted in the anarchist tradition are: playful spontaneity, lead-
erless mutuality, and deviancy / subversion. These criteria do not provide an exhaustive un-
derstanding of anarchist thought yet they are useful to this study of religious practice as Dalits
attempt to live free within a complex post-colonial and hegemonic state. That these communities
and practices have survived colonisation should alert us to their value as subversive groups.
First, playful spontaneity: Colin Ward refers to “Play as an Anarchist Parable” and “The The-
ory of Spontaneous Order.” For brevity these two can be treated together as playful spontaneity.
Play, as much as necessity is the mother of invention, the mother of spontaneous order. Ward
uses children’s playgrounds as a model for anarchist society claiming that the same “diversity
and spontaneity” and “unforced co-operation … and communal sense” derived by children in
play is illustrative for anarchists of society without coercion.10 If Ward is correct and Dalit reli-
gion is anarchic then childlike playfulness and spontaneity will be traceable in the Dalit colony
where pre-invasion and pre-colonial practice and values have been preserved. The theory of
Spontaneous Order assumes that a community if acting in open co-operation will find its way,
if haltingly, towards order.11 This theory not only allows but embraces the chaos that is part
of the continuous journey toward new and fluid ideas and orders of things. Rural Dalit com-
munities are pre-literal or oral communities. The advantage of oral/aural communities is that
there are no scribes to privately decide on and interpret what an ordered event should be like so
the community is more likely to be included in the process of its own recreation and recreation
(play).
The second criterion, leaderless mutuality, leans the study toward seeking out forms of com-
munity that subvert the state by providing an alternative view of the world model on a micro-
community of equality rather than the macro nation state of privileged or aspiring individualism.
Ward quotes Bakunin on the transient role of leaders in anarchist theory: “Each directs and is
directed in his [ sic] turn.”12 The extent to which this is true is a measure of the anarchic ten-
dency of a community, although this is not the whole story. Leadership must be discerned from
rule, and the role of consensus in leadership is vital to ensuring its non-reified state. For a basis
of mutuality we have the foundational writings of Peter Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
Kropotkin’s thesis is that “better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by
means of mutual aid and mutual support.”13 Kropotkin goes on to link competition with the co-
ercion of an increasingly centralised practice of European states. Kropotkin concludes that this
mutuality can be found in primitive versions of world religions.14 Therefore it makes sense to
search for a similar mutuality-based value system in the primitive religion of the Dalits.

9
Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London: Freedom Press, 1998), 222.
10
Ward, 92.
11
Ward, 28.
12
Bakunin, quoted in Ward, 39.
13
Kropotkin, 5.
14
Kropotkin, 234.

123
 Finally, deviancy/subversion, a composite criterion, moves the assessment from the construc-
tion of an anarchic alternative to the destruction or undermining of the modern political system.
Oscar Wilde claims that disobedience is “man’s [ sic] original virtue” and sees in deviancy the
seed of social progress and the struggle a struggle for justice.15 Nicolas Walter outlines different
forms of disobedience in anarchist tradition. Disobedience, in a western anarchist context may
often mean either “direct action” or “propaganda of the deed.”16 In either case the act of deviancy
involves an overt and conscious, sometimes spontaneous, confrontation with the oppressor in
order to highlight injustice or bring about reform. However, other forms of deviance are part of
the spectrum of anarchist action too, from nihilistic terrorism on the one hand to forming com-
munities intended to subvert by practice the way society is structured on the other. The latter is
a particular characteristic of many western religious movements and has been for thousands of
years.17 Walter also refers to what he calls “Permanent protest” as a pessimistic form of anarchist
deviancy:

Permanent protest is the theory of many former anarchists who have not given up
their beliefs but no longer hope for success; it is also the practice of many active
anarchists who keep their beliefs intact and carry on as if they still hoped for success
but who know—consciously or unconsciously—that they will never see it.18

Walter is critical of this lack of eschatological hope, although he would not use such religious
language he does write optimistically that “no one can tell when protest might become effective
and the present might suddenly turn into the future.”19 A strategy that has given up hope for
change must have some stake in the status quo in order to survive; there is a refusal to risk the
present injustice for the sake of an impossible future justice.

Ascribing Dalitness
There is some debate about whether Tribals20 should be considered Dalits. While it may be
illuminating to have a conversation between tribal religion and anarchism it is simpler and more
accurate to make a distinction between the two groups. Dalits and Tribals feel their selves distinct
from one another and are geographically and anthropologically different.
It would be meaningless to say that Dalits are or were anarchists and the problem of applying a
western enlightenment term to ancient eastern peoples in a post-colonial context is a perennially
academic one. However, it is not impossible to see in Dalit religion a worldview and practice
that resonates with anarchism and with which anarchists can meaningful engage and vice versa.
India is a sub-continent that has lived with the homogenising impact of empire and state for over
15
George Woodcock, ed., The Anarchist Reader (Hassocks: Harvester / Humanities Press, 1977), 72.
16
Woodcock, 168–169.
17
Nicolas Walter only refers as far back as the Middle Ages; however, Buddhists and Christians have been
forming counter-cultural communities for much longer than this. See Woodcock, 170.
18
Woodcock, 171.
19
Woodcock, 171.
20
The Tribals or Adivasis are another ethnic group in the subcontinent that predate the Aryan migration. They
are often non-hierarchical communities with a strong subsistence based and spiritual, relationship with the land.
Tribals are neither caste communities nor outcaste untouchables. Tribal communities have often been impoverished
by governmental resettlement programs and are politically and in other ways marginalised in the modern nation state.

124
five hundred years. It is not surprising then that it is informed, among the marginalised, by a
pre-invasion indifference to the state that can become co-opted, passive or subversive and does
all three at different times and in different places. The purpose of this chapter is to refer to Dalit
literature and worship thus discovering in what ways Dalit communities and movements may
be considered anarchic and how the anarchic elements of Dalit religion both address their own
dilemma and speak to the contexts of the Other.
In the rural context Dalits do not live in the village with the caste Hindus but in a colony
outside the bounds of the village they serve. Dalits are often landless labourers, tanners, weavers,
drummers at funerals, undertakers, and those who remove carrion from the land. In other words,
they do the work that no one else wants and that makes them ritually impure, which in turn
considerably limits their political rights. The scenario is more complicated than this: there has
been a Dalit president and there are many impoverished Brahmins. Recent land reforms mean
some Dalits have been able to gain property rights for now. Simple class analysis of power-
structures is rarely useful tools in India. This is one reason why and anarchist treatment of the
subject is useful.
Some Dalits call themselves Harijans, others claim to be Scheduled Caste, or Backwards Class,
and still others refuse to acknowledge caste heritage, seeing it as failure to divest externally
imposed prejudice. It was Jyotirao Phule (1827–1890), a social reformer, who first applied the
word Dalit to the outcaste communities.21 In order for the community and the individual to have
freedom at any level it must be at the level of choosing their own name. Even for the sake of
practical convenience, theologians cannot refer to all those who necessarily fit into the bracket
of Dalit as Dalits. Universally applying the term would undermine the process of self-naming,
more important than the actual name that is chosen. Self-naming initiates but also reviews the
process of creating a Dalit identity of protest. In a sense this thesis ascribes this identity, since the
Dalits identify themselves in terms of what others have done to them. However, in protesting
against what was done to them they accuse caste Hindus of oppression and violation of Dalit
identity, thereby identifying with the struggle if not the term.
If a Dalit’s identity is passively ascribed she allows others to give her meaning and purpose,
or allows herself to be defined only in terms of other people’s sense of identity. If a person as-
serts her identity, she becomes an active agent in choosing her own meaning, a liberating and
empowering experience, which allows the individual to examine her own potential and worth.
The etymological meaning of the word “Dalit” is important to academics, and often frames an
article or provides the introduction to a book on the subject. The etymological meaning of “Dalit”
also has theological implications as well. The term Dalit is popularly understood to be a Sanskrit
term meaning “Crushed, oppressed, broken”22 and refers to the state that the Dalits find them-
selves in, on abstract and physical levels equally. Jyotirao Phule, Bhim Rao Ambedkar, other
academics, activists, and countless Dalit communities have used it with this meaning. However,
it has a Marathi meaning which is very different, and according to some scholars is: “of the soil
and earth.”23 As with any form of Liberation theology, the challenge comes in identifying the
crushed people of the soil. However, any linguistic identity has limitations and amount in the end
21
Samuel Jayakumar, Dalit Consciousness and Christian Conversion: Historical Roots for a Contemporary Debate
(New Delhi: ISPCK, 1999), 5.
22
James Massey, ed., Indigenous People: Dalits (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), 6.
23
M.Krishnan, “Project and Series Editor’s Note,” in Bama, Karukku (Chennai: Macmillan India Limited, 1992),
v.

125
to “a cluster of descriptions”24 which can be interpreted and re-interpreted endlessly. One might
legitimately ask: who cares? Some theologians obviously do care what the word Dalit means
and it has provided many essays with a nice introduction to the topic. It has not, however, illu-
minated either the reality or the reflective possibilities of being Dalit or being a Dalit Christian.
The term Dalit is an empty vessel; self-ascription does not necessarily lead to self-definition or
liberation.
Anarchism acknowledges both the transcendent and the contextual flux of human tempera-
ment. Humans are a part of their circumstance, but can equally rise above it; it is a matter of
latency. Central to an anarchist understanding of the transcendent “I” is a universal “notion of a
will to power:” egoism.25 However, egoism is counterbalanced by an equally innate inclination
toward “sociability.” Contemporary anarchists like Dave Morland go as far as calling these incli-
nations “propensities which may be said to lead to good or evil.”26 This appears to be a somewhat
deontological observation for anarchism but it illustrates that an external concept of wrongness
is not necessarily at odds with an internal consciousness of it. Acknowledging these two propen-
sities makes it incumbent upon the anarchist to see society perpetually allowing of either good
or evil.
The Vedic concept of sin is related closely to duty and honour. So abandonment of duty is a sin:
breaking with traditional roles in the village, for example. The Dalit communities have adopted
this Hindu moralising from their caste oppressors. Since there is protest in Dalit theology there
must be a corresponding concept of sin, of evil. This evil tends to be located corporately or in
circumstances, so that the caste-system is evil, purity-pollution laws are evil, and proscribing
duty is evil. Morality, in the individuated sense, is alien to the Dalit community. Were we to
choose between an anarchic or Vedic reading of Dalit identity the former is a better model of
understanding it: the human in community has divergent propensities.

Worship
Some of the most useful anthropological work on studying Dalit worship has been done by con-
temporary progressive Indian Christians. Dalit Christians are going through the process of dis-
covering the radical roots of both primitive Christianity and primitive Dalit religion. Dalit the-
ologians J. T. Appavoo and Sathianathan Clarke are good examples.
Clarke discovered that the exclusivist conservatism of rural Dalit congregations was a veneer
for his benefit. He sought to understand Dalit religion in its own right in order to better un-
derstand Dalit Christians and their relation to it. Appavoo is a Dalit Christian who, as priest,
re-visited Dalit religion as a source of his own spirituality.
Worship is an important socio-theological expression in Dalit communitarianism but the lo-
gocentric Western approach to theology impoverishes this.27 The central act in Dalit worship
is Food Fellowship. The Dalit approach to Food Fellowship contrasts with that of Brahminic

24
Don Cupitt, The Religion of Being (London: SCM, 1998), 28.
25
David Morland, “Anarchism, Human Nature and History: Lessons for the Future,” in J. Purkis, and J. Bowen,
eds., Twenty-first Century Anarchism: Unorthodox Ideas for a New Millennium (London: Cassel, 1997), 13.
26
Morland, 16.
27
James Theophilius Appavoo, “Dalit Ways of Theological Expression,” in V. Devasahayam, ed., Frontiers of Dalit
Theology (New Delhi: ISPCK, 1997), 283.

126
Prashad: while the latter is “begged from god,” the former is brought as an offering to the com-
munity. Equal sharing and classless participation are consistent hallmarks of Dalit worship.28
No priest officiates and all models of leadership are service-oriented.

Once I asked a Dalit, why they had postponed the worship. He said that one member
of the community had very important business. I said, “Why don’t you leave that
person and worship?” He said, “That will be like cutting our fingers.” Thus the Dalits
when they worship are one family with an organic unity. Their Deity is the mother
of that family.29

This organic unity gives a clue to the theological poly-centrism of Dalit theology. The commu-
nity is indivisibly “One” but with many centres, similarly to god. A seam of information about
Dalit worship is provided by the theologian and Christian priest Sathianathan Clarke who, when
he realised that rural Dalit congregations were covertly continuing to practice indigenous wor-
ship with the rest of their colonies, sought to better understand these religious practices in their
own right and discern their meaning for Dalit for the formation of Dalit communities in relation
to the village.
Anarchism is not merely a critique of the state and its abuse of power but the suggestion that
alternatives must be found. The state has its totems, rituals, and symbolic actions that reinforce
the status quo but anarchist communities sometimes fail to value these in building local alterna-
tives of communities of resistance and reconstruction. Dalit mutuality is an important reminder
that local cohesion comes about partly in the constant revisiting and rehearsing of the symbolic
together, and that, without the whole communities’ presence in some way, such a re-narration is
weakened. All communities, whether self-defining as religious or not, have ritual symbols that
either reinforce the atomisation of society or its cohesion in different ways. Atomisation leads
to exploitation as the axiom “divided we fall” illustrates. Cohesion along the lines of a Dalit com-
munity leads to the possibility of liberation because the community is liberative. However, there
is always a caveat. Patriarchy is rife even among rural Dalit communities. Like all patriarchal
societies women are not actively considered to be human in the same way that men are and so
the process of dehumanisation of the most marginalised goes on even within a marginal commu-
nity. Nonetheless the Dalit community has its own internal resources with which to challenge
patriarchy once named as a social evil.
Referring again to Roca’s critique of anarchism as an ideology born out of enlightenment think-
ing: Roca points out that “the enlightenment placed the individual at the centre of its concept
of ‘rights.’”30 Roca claims that anarchists forget the role that religion often plays in serving the
oppressed classes in their desire to subvert illegitimate power. In reinforcing collective acting,
play-acting, and decision making, Dalit religion subverts the individualism of enlightenment sys-
tems, including, on occasion, anarchism, and helps to safeguard communities from the tyranny
of the charismatic or otherwise powerful individual or sub-group.
Any Paraiyar31 Dalit can select, switch, and combine devotion to a number of deities during
her lifetime. The devotion to a deity need not be fenced in to boundaried loyalty which con-
28
Appavoo, 284.
29
Appavoo, 286.
30
Roca, 33.
31
A particular Dalit community found in South India.

127
tinues regardless and need not be rationalised.32 Furthermore, festivals are both cyclical and
spontaneous, arising out of need or agreement.33 All this gives rise to a religion in which re-
newed order is constantly arising and being pulled down by the whole community. It is both a
religion of continuity, respecting the traditions of ancestors, and a religion of spontaneity which
is therefore self-subverting.
Charismatic spontaneity is evident and located in particularly gifted Saamiyaars34 or in ran-
domly gifted dancers or Saamiyaadis35 at cultic festivals. The latter is most pertinent since it does
involve a permanent priestly role of translator of a divine will but can be any member of the com-
munity for a brief moment. Devotees are “transitorily possessed” by the goddess and under her
influence dance and utter oracles to the community.36 James Theophilius Appavoo points out
that the Dalit deity is not “chained to the ‘symbol’” because of its transitory mode of visitation
onto random community members.37 “[For Sanskrit religion] the deity is the possession of the
priest, whereas in the Dalit religion the worshippers are in the possession of the deity.”38
Since Clarke does not detail the content of these oracles it is useful to compare this event with
those described by theologian Aloysius Pieres. Pieris takes seriously the need to theologise from
a Buddhist perspective. While Pieres’ study is based on a Buddhist village in Sri Lanka it provides
material for theologising from an explicitly Dalit Buddhist perspective as well. Pieris tells the
story of an exorcism he witnessed in a rural Buddhist community. The aim of the elaborate
rite was to expose a deception against the community. In this instance the priest reveals that a
local grocer has been cheating people by selling them damaged milk cartons at full price—the
money-demon is ridiculed and the injustice is exposed, “calling the devil by its name.”39 Although
the grocer is not present, simply by naming the sin the community is set free from its power.
Appavoo also confirms that there is often room for protest in Dalit ritual as the people use the
oracular event as opportunity to denounce oppression.40 This role of mediator of sanction is
spontaneous and de-linked from centralised power. Barclay makes this important distinction
between two types of religions: “those religious sanctions which require human mediation and
those which are ‘automatic.’”41 Dalit religion operates sanctions that fall into the latter category
and, according to Barclay’s measure are “not incompatible with anarchy.”
At the end of a major festival the entire community joins together in spontaneous play, throw-
ing coloured water on each other, eating and generally messing around. There is no respect for
age or sex in this play and it serves to unite the colony in unruly mischief.42 Throwing colourful
water is also part of Hindu tradition at the time of Hori. There is spontaneity, ritual, and some
32
Sathianathan Clarke, Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 73.
33
Clarke, 73.
34
Saamiyaars are individual charismatic oracles not elected or hereditary but discerned by the community in
response to a sense of vocation.
35
Saamiyaadis perform the same role, or similar, to the Saamiyaars but may only perform this function at a
single event in their lives. One is a Saamiyaadi briefly in a moment of ritual ecstasy.
36
Clarke, 87–88.
37
James Theophilius Appavoo, “Dalit Religion,” in Massey, 117.
38
Appavoo, “Dalit Religion,” 117.
39
A. Pieris, “Prophetic Humour and Exposure of Demons,” Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection, 60, no. 5
(May 1996): 311–314.
40
Appavoo, “Dalit Religion,” 118.
41
Barclay, 30.
42
Clarke, 84.

128
of the virtue of carnival that Mikhail Bakhtin reminds us of: the use of mutually mocking play
and discord to temporarily suspend all forms of gender, sub-caste, and economic disparity allows
Dalits to momentarily hold up a vision of a ruler-less and joyful future.
Clarke proposes that theology offers the critique for interaction that goes on between the Dalit
community and the Divine.43 This approach takes the emphasis of construction of theology far
from the theologian and places it with the particular community.44 Clarke emphasises “living
collectively under the Divine.”45 Corporate responses to god’s involvement with the community
create Dalit Theology. The response affirms god’s active involvement in the community and the
community’s desire to express its relationship with god. This affirmation contradicts the Vedic
tradition that the Dalits are beneath god’s interest and have no license to interact with the Divine.
God as matriarch—a dominant female personality—is evident in Dalit theology and makes
sacred the ideals of extended family and mutual responsibility. The consort-free femaleness of
god also acts to some extent as an antidote to the otherwise patriarchal tendency of Dalit life. God,
in turn, is both female and male; god is both parent and child. Priesthood is alien to this idea of
community a mediator between parent and child would not make sense. Appavoo claims there is
“no priest-caste”46 among Dalits but this is too generous a position. However, the assertion that
the priestly function is often performed on rotation and by men and women equally suggests a
model of leadership that deliberately protects the community from centralisation of cultic power.
Although Clarke often refers to the role of a priest in religious ritual it is important to note that
what is meant is very different from the Christendom schema of Priest as executor of the divine
will of the state. The priest in the Dalit context is shaped in his actions entirely by the will of the
community and holds a status either beneath or equal to the community as a whole. Furthermore,
animal sacrifices are shared equally between all members of the community rather than given to
a cultic leadership as was the case with temple-Judaism.
Major Dalit festivals are funded collectively47 and organised by consensus48 of the whole
colony, where particular roles are assigned they are roles that are subservient to the corporate
will of the colony. A “priest” is directed constantly during ceremonies by well-meaning heckling
community members.49 Ward contrasts this emerging orderliness with western expectations of
how order is rather maintained.

There is an order imposed by terror, there is an order enforced by bureaucracy (with

the policeman in the corridor) and there is an order which evolves from the fact that
we are gregarious animals capable of shaping our own destiny. When the first two
are absent the third is infinitely more human and humane form of order and has an
opportunity to emerge.50

This means that meaning and practice are constantly being negotiated and the shape and mean-
ing of the colony is the product of the whole community’s spiritual and political sense of well-
43
Clarke, 2.
44
Clarke, 28.
45
Clarke, 28.
46
Appavoo, “Dalit Religion,” 120.
47
Appavoo, “Dalit Religion,” 120.
48
Clarke, 125.
49
Clarke, 81–84.
50
Ward, 37.

129
being. In this process we find an example of Proudhon’s principle that liberty is the mother of
order.
Meanwhile, theologian George Oomen notes that the “witch doctors” of the Pulaya Dalits used
their powers of sorcery primarily to bring harm to landlords and bosses:

Pulayas believed in the all pervasive dominion of the spirits on human affairs and
held the sorcerers in awe and esteem. The upper castes dreaded these agents of
the demons and the ghosts. Some social control over the excesses of the high caste
landlords was exercised through the threat of Pulaya black magic in Travancore.51

For these Dalits the spiritual and political are integral to one world view and an act of dissent in
one dimension equates entirely to an act of rebellion in the other. Importantly, their oppressors
make the same equation. The question of how far these acts of supernatural revolt can be pushed
remains open. The use of magic as a means of theatrically or covertly sourcing power back from
a ruling community offers an inviting source of creative resistance for any community.
The Dalit drum offers just an icon of creedal dissent. For Clarke, the drum “depicts the core
of [Dalit] religious activity” and is a symbol of “emancipatory theography.”52 In other words,
it connects the Dalits with the divine and with the heritage of pre-Hindu spirituality. It is at
the service of both outcaste and caste community, but it is also an exclusively Dalit symbol of
relationship with the feminine divinity.53 As a tool of social and spiritual cohesion the drum is
used, with different rhythms in various settings: for auspicious processions; to signify blessing
and the benediction of the goddesses’ presence; to invoke and inspire the goddess to display and
manifest her power among the devotees; to communicate news to neighbouring villages; to drum
up a party atmosphere.54 This is especially typical of south Indian Paraiyars, but it illustrates how
Dalit symbols can go beyond the visual and verbal and can express more than a reconstructive
history of the Dalits ever could.
Clarke makes two suggestions regarding the relevance of this theographic enterprise: the
beating drum is not concerned with apologetics and semantics of creeds and formulas of faith
yet it is a concrete affirmation of a Divine concern for the Dalits. Furthermore, in its ambiguity,
the use of the drum allows for myriad interpretations; it is pluralistic in intent.55
Clarke claims that the “resistance and contestation of the religious legitimacy of the dominant
caste communities” is in evidence in Dalit worship but that this is done in a way that commu-
nicates “Compliance.”56 In other words, Dalits give the impression of passive acceptance of re-
ligious homogenisation while subverting and reclaiming their own myths and structures. He
goes on to argue that “overt mimicking” of the religion of the oppressors can act both as “fertile
ground for the germination of resistive strategies.” Perhaps by this Clarke means that satire and
subversion of the text of oppression is incorporated into the religion of the Dalits. Compara-
ble evidence can be seen in early Christian documents that subvert the language of the Roman
Empire but in the latter case it was rarely covert.
51
George Oomen, “Re-reading Tribal and Dalit Conversion Movements: The Case of the Malayarayans and
Pulayas of Kerala,” Religion-Online, www.religion-online.org (accessed October 1, 2008).
52
Clarke, 109.
53
Clarke, 119.
54
Clarke, 113–118.
55
Clarke, 198–199.
56
Clarke, 129–130.

130
 Dalit worship reinforces leaderless mutuality through normative yet fluid rites and sponta-
neous mystic experiences. The relationship between religion and land also suggests that private
ownership of property is anathema to the indigenous rural Dalit community. The need for the
whole community to be present for corporate worship underlines the responsibility of the group
to the individual and vice versa and since worship and shared food fellowship are integral to
one another the total corporality of worship equals an economic corporate being that subverts
modern economic and competitive models of both belonging and resourcing.
The role of the mystic in worship acts both to signify the availability of oracular knowledge
to the whole community and as a means of funnelling messages that challenge imbalances of
power that may have crept into the life of the community.

Religious Conversion
Dalits have a complex, liberal, and fluid set of loyalties to deities based largely on aesthetics,
an understanding of the efficacy of the god, and a neighbourly loyalty to the other as well as
to kin.57 The arithmetic of Dalit cosmology is not for rationalising either. Clarke finds that
if a Dalit is asked how many deities there are the same will reply variously “one,” “seven” or
list any number of named gods.58 The goddess is both one and all in all; rather than rely on a
systematic theology Dalits have complex narratives and ambivalent language and action with
which to move their notions of spiritual meaning. This is an exciting and deviant approach
to theology that refuses to be contained by the more controlled theology of the village and its
Brahminic text-based hegemony.59 No one tells a Dalit how to worship, she is led by both kin
loyalty and personal preference. This local yet multivalent approach to worship and loyalty feeds
into a particular approach to conversion that is alien to the western mindset—prejudiced as it is
by Christian models of conversion.
The most conspicuous form of religious phenomena with a deliberately political intention in
the Indian context remains mass conversion of the Dalits.

Converts have adopted religious systems, which have [e]quality as their profession
of faith; initially Buddhism and Islam and later Sikhism and Christianity.60

Conversion raises many issues of event and intent. Commentators are unclear as to why
Dalits convert and as to what has taken place in the process of conversion on both a social and
a religious level. Statistics on Dalit conversion are unreliable because the government offers
preferable welfare and rights to Dalits who register as “Hindu” on the grounds that Dalit is a
Hindu term and therefore non-Hindu Dalits are no longer Dalits at all.
If the phenomenon of conversion is to be used for the purpose of this chapter to join the conver-
sation between Dalit religion and anarchism it must first be clarified as to whether conversion
is a religious event: an outworking of the religious mindset of the Dalit community. In other
words, is conversion an act of conversion an act of dissent rooted in the Dalit religious tradition?
57
Clarke, 72–73.
58
Clarke, 71–72.
59
Clarke, 125.
60
Sanjay Vairal, “Religious Conversion and Dalit Identity,” in Ambrose Pinto, ed., Dalits: Assertion for Identity
(New Delhi: Indian Social Institute, 1999), 129.

131
 The fact that conversions happen—and they usually happen corporately—is telling of the Dalit
understanding of her relationship with socio-spiritual existence. We have already found that
Dalits as individuals are liable to worship more than one god and even give loyalty to the god
of the Hindu village to which they are indebted and by whom they are marginalised. We have
also found that Dalits may be casual about the number of gods they refer to and alter their
loyalties: Dalit religion allows for magical mobility. Conversion therefore does not necessary
mean a change of religion, worldview, or even allegiance, and can be often based on aesthetics
and the perceived efficacy of a deity at a given time. It is wrong to assume that Dalit conversion
means conversion from Hinduism to another religion. For Dalits are neither automatically Hindu
(a “catch all” term with no accurate meaning) nor of another religion since conversion is more
present and fluid than such a model would allow. Conversion for Dalits does not mean the same
as conversion in orthodox Christianity. The false assumption that conversion implies a leaving
off entirely of a cultural and religious worldview in favour of an alien one was promoted as a
paradigm by readings of Paul’s autobiographical accounts of conversion in which he considers
all things as loss compared to knowing Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:8).61 Western anthropology,
where it does not examine its methodology in the light of post-colonialism, remains in danger of
reading religion through the Christendom lens so it is vital to highlight this difference of meaning
at the outset.
However, even when Dalits convert on their own terms the initiative is sometimes taken off
them by religious groups ideologically predisposed to individualism and subordination to the
state. Paul Chambers’ dualism between “religions of power” and “religions of revolt” is useful
here.62 According to sociologist Lancy Lobo, rather than being emancipated, the Dalit converts
to Christianity specifically were domesticated by a passive and political conservative theology re-
ceived from missionaries;63 little wonder so few saw conversion to Christianity as an attractive
proposition. The Christian missionaries, with their religion of power took the initiative away
from the Dalits with their religion of revolt and transformed Dalit Christianity into another do-
mestic enlightenment religion. Yet, within primitive Christianity and primitive Dalit religion
there lays the seeds of revolt. Thus the engagement between religions at the point of Dalit con-
version can be catalyst for deviancy/subversion. Those who first converted and stimulated mass
conversion had no direct material motive for doing so, although they had seen the material ad-
vantages of allegiance to this novel religion. It may be that second generation field workers had
as many material reasons as spiritual ones for joining themselves to the work and may have
frustrated missionaries, whose zeal caused them to leave their homeland. Missionaries wrote
in surprise or suspicion of mass conversion, the former while the phenomenon took place, the
latter when trying to make pastoral sense of it.64
For Dalits, conversion is an act of corporate dissent. B. R. Ambedkar, political and religious
leader for hundreds of thousands of Dalits, believed that the abolition of caste required the con-

61
Philippians 3:8 (New Revised Standard Version).
62
Paul Chambers, “Anarchism, Anti-clericalism and Religion,” Anarchist Studies 14, no. 1 (2006): 38.
63
Lancy Lobo, Religious Conversion and Social Mobility: A Case Study of the Vankars in Central Gujarat (Surat:
Centre for Social Studies, 2001), 42.
64
A. Copley, Religions in Conflict: Ideology, Cultural Contact and Conversion in Late Colonial India (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1997), 54.

132
scious rejection of Hinduism.65 Ambedkar saw in modern Hinduism the integral partnership be-
tween emerging religious hegemony and the emerging nation state. Ambedkar was rarely brave
enough to consider the possibility of an anarchist society, although his writings occasionally
explicitly endorsed an anarchist country with non-coercive police and decentralised leadership.
He was aware of anarchism as a political idea buy appears wary of its practicality and perhaps
his legal training as a barrister prevented him from properly considering anarchic modes of so-
cial transformation. Ambedkar was a man in a hurry and constitutional provision for the poor
seemed to him the quickest way to bring about reform, alongside deliberate protest through mass
conversion.
When B. R. Ambedkar publicly converted to Buddhism, on 14 October 1956, in Nagpur, 300,000
Dalits converted with him.66 Many thousands of Dalits have converted to Buddhism since and
continue to do so. This is telling of how Buddhist thought and practice resonates with Dalit
religiosity and how important conversion is as part of Dalit religious experience. Furthermore,
conversion is demonstrably a corporate, public, and political act of protest. It is a deviant act of
defiance against the homogeneity of so-called Hinduism. V. T. Rajshaker, a Shudra Hindu who
converted to Ambedkarite Buddhism, complains that not all converts eat beef as a part of their
conversion ceremony.67 The eating of beef in such a public and symbolic way is an unambiguous
act of defiance against Hindu religious purity-pollution systems and even deliberately offensive
to Hindus.
B. R. Ambedkar announced in 1935 that he was planning to convert out of Hinduism and
began his search for an alternative. Notably he was not interested in considering indigenous
Dalit religion. He was looking for a religion that treats all humans as equal and did not subject
them to any form of humiliation. B. R. Ambedkar asserted that only Buddhists follow the real
national religion of India not Hindus. The deistic faiths were unlikely to satisfy his pragmatic
humanistic outlook. His abhorrence of subjection to a religious representative of god, in the
Brahmin caste, made him suspicion of both priest and any divinity that appears to lessen the value
of personhood. He rejected Christianity on the basis of its indifference, its powerlessness, and
the apathy of missionaries toward Dalits. Furthermore he was disgusted by the caste prejudice he
observed in churches and disappointed by a lack of change in religious practice of many converts
away from worship of images.68
John Webster notes that Dalit communities do not ostracise converts to other religions but
neither does mass conversion of the whole group follow automatically.69 Mass movements were
and continue to be the unsolicited initiative of members of the converting community. The role
of missionaries, in regard to mass conversions to Christianity, was always after the event and, as
Clarke Paul has shown, limited in its attempts to conform their religion but as Lobo has shown,
effective in pacifying their political expectations.

65
Gail Omvedt, Dalits and the Democratic Revolution: Dr. Ambedkar and the Dalit Movement in Colonial India
(New Delhi: Sage, 1994), 224–258.
66
Indian Bibliographic Centre, Christianity and Conversion in India (Varanasi: Rishi Publications, 1999), 204.
67
V. T. Rajshaker, Caste, A Nation within a Nation: Recipe for a Bloodless Revolution (Bangalore: Books for Change,
2002), 81.
68
Rajshaker, 206.
69
Webster, 55–58.

133
Conclusion
It would be misleading to suggest that Dalits are anarchists; such has never been the contention of
this chapter. Nonetheless a study of Dalit religious practice, including the practice of conversion,
reminds us that the parameters of god-talk and politics-talk are different in a non-western context
from which anarchism was founded and continues to have the weight of its gravity. Dalit religion
offers in practice what many anarchists aspire to in theory and does so even in the shadow of
an often violent nation state whose citizenry actively seek their marginalisation at both practical
and ideological levels of play.
Anarchist thought needs to pull up its anchor from western frames of reference if it is to survive
and thrive in the post-modern global context it now finds itself. Anarchism is not the preserve
of anarchists. In order to make this shift away from colonial prejudice anarchists can revisit the
broad minded optimism of writers such as Peter Kropotkin and Colin Ward who found in practice
that anarchist society is not simply that which claims to be so. Furthermore, the language and
vehicles of meaning that religions of revolt provide for their communities may be useful even for
those who reject for themselves any purpose in religion.
Dalit religion cyclically preserves and presents the values of playful spontaneity, leaderless
mutuality, and deviancy in ways that show that another world is not only possible but can be
narrated presently and in its ritual narration is constantly being brought about. Dalit religion is
not utopian or a perfect and hermetically sealed example of anarchy and resistance. However, it
offers the keen observer an insight into the symbolic language of resistance and is suggestive of
the possibility that, in our post-modern west, the reconstruction of a mythic world may aid the
struggle for liberty and good order.
The integration of spiritual and political spheres gives anarchist practice a new front on which
to challenge the ideologies of state and liberal capitalism through grass roots re-imaging and
play that is rooted in the religious psyche of local communities. To reject political protest on
the grounds of its religiosity is no less bourgeois than to foster a religion of power and oppres-
sion. Such a rejection is unhelpful and does not match the perceived reality of the marginalised
communities that are attempting to be the “seeds beneath the snow” that Colin Ward hopes for.

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Rajshaker, V. T. Caste, A Nation within a Nation: Recipe for a Bloodless Revolution. Bangalore:
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135
CHAPTER EIGHT. THE CHURCH AS
RESISTANCE TO RACISM AND NATION: A
CHRISTIAN, ANARCHIST PERSPECTIVE
NEKEISHA ALEXIS-BAKER
In this chapter I examine the relationship between the history of race as an idea and the making
of the nation-state. In so doing, I demonstrate the ways in which race and racism are essential for
conceptualising, creating and sustaining nations into the present. Furthermore, I argue that current
efforts to challenge the idea of race and to dismantle racism should also include resistance to the
nation-state. With that in mind, I look to Scripture to describe how the Church can participate
in this struggle, despite its conflicted and compromised history. For when the Church lives out its
identity as both a transnational body of people who are reconciled to one another and to God across
social boundaries and as a political body whose loyalty lies with the upside-down kingdom of God
and the way of Christ, it can resist racism at its primary source.
Race—the method of classifying human beings based on alleged biological differences—is a sci-
ence fiction. Yet it remains entrenched in our language, our institutions and our societies. How
is it possible that systems of racial power and privilege continue to strangle societies across the
globe when the biology of race has been discounted? How does racism persist without a valid
scientific foundation? In this chapter, I argue that because race and nation developed simulta-
neously during the modern period, influencing and informing each other as they evolved, race
and racism will persist as long as nations are the dominant model for organising societies. Subse-
quently, one critical approach to dismantling racism is to resist the mythology of the nation-state
and the social structures that support it. Because I believe we can best understand how racism
functions by understanding its history as an idea, I provide a historical sketch of racial theo-
rising between the seventeenth and nineteenth century and an overview of how these theories
shaped the nation-state. Finally, I examine the idea of the Church1 as a community that can
oppose racism when it is true to its call to be a reconciled body whose loyalty to the way of Jesus
transcends all other allegiances, including the nation-state.

Race Theorising: A Historical Overview

Early Race Theories
Contrary to popular belief, the concept of race as we know it today is not an age old idea. Instead
it emerged during the modern era as scientific thinking developed and people from the West be-

1
Whenever the word “Church” is capitalised in this chapter, it refers to the church universal.

136
gan exploring the world beyond their shores.2 Well-travelled French physician François Bernier
first categorised the diverse peoples he encountered in a paper he published in 1684. Based on
facial features, hair texture, build and other characteristics, he counted four or five species or
races of men in particular whose difference is so remarkable that it may be properly made use of
as the foundation for a new division of the earth.3
Attributing their differences in skin colour to climate, Bernier grouped Indians and Egyptians
with Europeans because “those individuals … take care of themselves, and are not obliged to ex-
pose themselves so often as the lower class, [and] are not darker than many Spaniards.”4 Bernier’s
categories show that, from the beginning, race described more than skin tone and physical ap-
pearance: it also reflected traditional aristocratic assumptions about proper behaviour and preju-
dices toward the lower classes.5 Although Bernier was the first to publicly describe people in this
way, he neither used the term precisely nor placed his races within a broader philosophical or
scientific framework. Nevertheless, Bernier broke with the standard travel literature of his age
and with the traditional view of history as a Biblical genealogy.6 His system of organising hu-
manity according to physical traits as well as personal and class prejudices started a shift toward
a modern anthropology that was dominated by race.
While Bernier was dividing humanity into different races, Enlightenment thinkers like John
Locke were promoting a cosmopolitan humanism in which all people were “equal and indepen-
dent” and that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”7 The
prevailing thought during this period was that all people could become rational, intelligent be-
ings with proper education and training, and that differences between human populations were
caused by external agents like climate or geography.8 For example, George Louis Leclerc Buf-
fon argued that if “negroes” were brought to Europe, “their descendants would gradually lighten
in color, eventually to a shade ‘perhaps as white as the natives of the climate.’”9 Furthermore,
people still had a persistent belief that God instituted the laws of nature, resulting in continued
attempts to harmonise science with Christian faith. The vast majority of racial ideology between
1750 and 1850
2
Philip Nicholson, Who Do We Think We Are?: Race and Nation in the Modern World (Armonk, N. Y.: M. E.
Sharpe, 1999), 10. In his broad overview of premodern societies, Nicholson finds no evidence of either the concept of
race or of social organisations like the nation-state.
3
François Bernier, “A New Division of the Earth,” in The Idea of Race, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Tommy Lott
(Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), 1–2. Originally printed as “Nouvelle division de la terre par les
différentes espèces ou races qui l’habitant.” Journal des Scavans 12 (April 24, 1684): 148–55. Translated by T. Bendyshe
in Memoirs Read Before the Anthropological Society of London, Vol. 1, 1863–64, 360–64. See also Thomas F. Gossett,
Race: The History of an Idea in America (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963), 32.
4
Bernier, “A New Division of the Earth,” 2. Bernier did not label his races as “Europeans” or the like. I am using
that term to designate what we today refer to as Europe and shorthand for Bernier’s lists of people.
5
For example, medieval poet Oswald von Wolkenstein (death 1445), referred to peasants and serfs as “deformed,
black, and ugly,” albeit industrious. Decades later, theorists would use similar descriptors for the “inferior races.” See
Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 20.
6
Most sixteenth and seventeenth century writers categorised the peoples of the world by language, religion,
customs, and political regime, but did not make much of the different physical features. In addition, previous writers
classified people according to a biblical typology (the sons of Noah, the lost tribes of Israel), but Bernier does not
mention that typology. See Siep Stuurman, “Francois Bernier and the Invention of Racial Classification,” History
Workshop Journal 50 (Autumn 2000): 2, 5.
7
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 9.
8
Neil MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 1870–2000 (Hampshire, N. Y.: Palgrave, 2001), 13.
9
Gossett, Race, 36.

137
 upheld the descent of all races from a single original group, and in so doing, was in
conformity with both Biblical tradition and with the Enlightenment concept of the
essential unity or brotherhood of man.10

Optimism about human development was so high that any attempt to rank races according to
ability or to suggest that racial traits were permanent would not have been popular.11
While most early race theories were moderate in their treatment of non-European people, this
stage of “humanitarian racism”12 was not without its problems or detractors. For example, some
people argued that humanity’s primitive ancestors were white and that other races developed
in part from slow but steady decline. Meanwhile, influential philosophers like Thomas Jeffer-
son and Voltaire rejected the idea of equality among races, advanced the hypothesis that each
race originated from distinct human types (polygenesis) and insisted that racial differences were
biological.13 In spite of this variety, the work of Johann Freiderich Blumenbach represents the
majority of racial thought in this period. Although he is most famous for dividing humans into
Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American and Malay races in his 1795 work On the Natural
Variety of Mankind, Blumenbach still affirmed a common human ancestry, refused to organise
racial categories hierarchically and believed that darker races could be civilised.14 Enlightenment
humanism, which was marked by Jewish emancipation throughout Europe, the American and
French Revolutions, and the abolition of the slave trade, mediated the study of race.15

Race Theories in Transition

By the late nineteenth century, early race theories had grown increasingly intolerant and more
complex.16 This paradigm shift was already apparent in 1850 when anatomist Robert Knox in-
sisted, “Race is everything: literature, science, art, in a word, civilization depend on it.”17 In The
Races of Men, he argued that race is biological, hereditary and thus could not be altered by ex-
ternal stimuli. All the traits exhibited by a person or a group—from intelligence, physical build
and morality to one’s definition of liberty or government—were determined by race. Knox, who
espoused the polygenesis position, was so certain that racial characteristics were permanent that
he insisted that each race could only thrive in its native land and climate. Neither climate nor
geography nor any other social or environmental pressures could change one’s racial category.
Knox not only challenged what he saw as the flawed racial theories of his peers; he also ad-
vanced new hypotheses. Perhaps most notably, he divided Bernier and Blumenbach’s major
racial categories into distinct sub-species and scoffed at the idea of a singular European race.

10
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 12–13. See also Gossett, Race, 34.
11
Gossett, Race, 34. See for example, John Locke’s statement that all people share “in one community of nature,
[so that] there cannot be supposed any such subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another,
as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for ours.” Locke, Second Treatise of
Government, 9.
12
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 13.
13
Gossett, Race, 42–47.
14
Gossett, Race, 37–39.
15
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 12–13.
16
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 6.
17
Robert Knox, The Races of Men: A Fragment (Philadelphia: Lea & Blanchard, 1850; reprint, Miami: Mnemosyne
Pub. Co., 1969), 18.

138
In The Races of Men, he provided detailed expositions on five European races, including Saxons,
Slavonians and Germans, while reserving a single chapter for all the darker races. In his view,

the Caledonian Celt of Scotland appears as a race as distinct as the Lowland Saxon
of the same country, as any two races can possibly be: as Negro from American;
Hottentot from Caffre; Esquimaux from Saxon.18

He also classified Jews as a distinct race instead of as a religious and cultural community—
a shift that increased in popularity as antisemitism19 developed throughout this era. Because
each race was its own self-contained species, Knox strongly opposed interracial marriage and
reproduction as detrimental and unsustainable. He identified what he called a “physiological
law” that destined “people composed of two or more races” to extinction20 —a process these “mu-
lattoes” could only slow by continuously mixing with members of the strongest race in their
lineage.21 Because these hybrid breeds were monstrosities of nature, Knox predicted they would
become increasingly infertile like mules. He was also convinced that all races had a natural
antipathy toward one another, making it even more difficult for mixed breeds to ensure their
survival through intermarriage.22
In a move that became increasingly popular among early theorists, Knox also used race to ex-
plain European history. For example, he re-conceived the conflict between the French and British
in Canada as a war between the Celt and Saxon races respectively. He imagined the Celts as a
race with a “furious fanaticism; a love of war and disorder; a hatred for order and patient indus-
try” and a natural inability to comprehend the meaning of liberty or to be industrious in the new
world.23 Meanwhile, the “tall, powerful, athletic” Saxons were natural democrats with the best
understanding of liberty.24 Their innate independent spirit made them “dislike the proximity of a
neighbour” and compelled them to broaden their territory.25 Given these racial distinctions and
the natural law that prohibited racial mixing, Knox saw the Celt and Saxon contest for Canadian
territory as an unavoidable race war, saying,

This struggle can only cease when the Saxon has become the preponderating race
in Lower Canada … inextinguishable hatred of races is in full play; unite they never
will; one must become extinct.26

In this way, race was not only useful for classifying observable human differences; it could
also explain military conflict and conquest.

18
Knox, The Races of Men, 7.
19
I have adopted Alana Lentin’s spelling over the more common “anti-Semitism.” She argues that antisemitism
is directed exclusively at Jews and does not include hatred of other “Semitic” races, and because on its own “Semitism
has no meaning.” See Alana Lentin, Racism: A Beginner’s Guide (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008), 58.
20
Knox, The Races of Men, 42, 52–53.
21
Knox, The Races of Men, 66.
22
Knox, The Races of Men, 52–53, 66–67.
23
Knox, The Races of Men, 26–27, 176.
24
Knox, The Races of Men, 41, 43.
25
Knox, The Races of Men, 41.
26
Knox, The Races of Men, 177.

139
The Age of Modern Racism
In 1870, there was a definitive shift to “a more radical and modern form of racism,” which was
characterised in part by White European “anxiety about its own racial substance, and a fear of
physical degeneration.”27 Despite missing the cut-off point by a year, Francis Galton’s Hered-
itary Genius (1869) is a noteworthy example of these preoccupations. Like Knox, Galton was
certain that intelligence, physical strength and other personal traits were inherited, and that no
amount of education or training could overcome one’s natural limitations.28 In an effort to prove
this hypothesis, he examined the lineages of English judges, premiers, artists, writers and other
prominent people, calculated how many “eminent men”29 were part of their family trees, extrap-
olated his findings to the rest of the population, and developed an elaborate system to compare
“the worth of different races.”30
In light of his study, Galton identified what he saw as a pressing need for English people to
improve their racial standing. From his vantage point,

The needs of centralisation, communication, and culture, call for more brains and
mental stamina than the average of our race posses. We are in crying want for a
greater fund of ability in all stations of life; … Our race is over-weighted, and appears
likely to be drudged into degeneracy by demands that exceed its powers.31

In order to keep up with the demands of modernity, Galton proposed ways to increase the
intelligence, creativity and abilities of his race. First, stronger members of the race needed to
marry and have children at a faster rate than weaker ones. Over time, the elite would “produce
more generations within a given period, and therefore the growth of a prolific race … would be
vastly increased.”32 If the “vigorous classes” shirked this responsibility, however, it would “cause
the race of the prudent to fall … into an almost incredible inferiority of numbers to that of the
imprudent, and … bring utter ruin upon the breed.”33 Second, Galton also advocated actively
attracting “eminently desirable refugees, but no others”34 to the society and, encouraging less
desirable men within the population to relocate to the colonies.35 His approach differed from
Knox, who predicted doom for any nation composed of separate races.36 Instead, Galton saw
an influx of prominent fellow Europeans that would be naturalised, start families and raise the
overall calibre of the nation as an opportunity, not a curse. His inspiration in this regard was
ancient Athens—a society that produced “a magnificent breed of human animals” and sustained

27
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 29.
28
Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences (London: Macmillan, 1869;
reprint, Cleveland: The World Pub. Co., 1962), 57.
29
Galton defined an eminent man as “one who has achieved a position that is attained by only 250 persons in
each million men, or by one person in each 4,000” (53). His list included military commanders, poets, artists, scientists
and wrestlers to name a few.
30
Galton, Hereditary Genius, 393.
31
Galton, Hereditary Genius, 400.
32
Galton, Hereditary Genius, 406–407.
33
Galton, Hereditary Genius, 410.
34
Galton, Hereditary Genius, 413.
35
Galton, Hereditary Genius, 413–14.
36
Knox, The Races of Men, 194

140
its greatness as long as it did not indiscriminately open its arms to settlers, but instead attracted
men of the highest quality.37
As previously noted, Galton’s racial theories were rooted in a persistent fear of racial decline
that threatened superior races and the entire human species. Racial “degeneration” referred to

a whole range of social pathologies that threatened the biological substance of the
European races, from alcoholism, tuberculosis and venereal disease to lack of physi-
cal training, cretinism and sexual perversion.38

French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau wrote extensively about degeneration in The Inequality
of Human Races (1853), a text that later influenced Nazism. He believed that degeneration oc-
curred when different races intermarried and produced children, and over time diluted the pure
ancestral blood that flowed through their veins.39 Like many of his contemporaries, Gobineau be-
lieved that mixing the blood of superior and inferior races threatened the former with extinction.
Given the severity of the situation, Gobineau shared Galton’s view that racial inferiors should be
segregated, excluded and eliminated when possible.40
A major breakthrough in racial theorising came on the heels of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of
Species (1859). Although his research focused on how nonhuman species changed and adapted
over time, Darwin’s theory of evolution was nonetheless useful for scientists seeking to explain
how racial differences developed. In particular, race scientists applied the ideas of natural selec-
tion to human relationships at all levels of society. They imagined a world in which people from
different classes, races and nations were locked in a battle for survival and supremacy. Far from
being a problem, racial theorists believed that this struggle was “nature’s indispensable method
for producing superior men, superior nations and superior races.”41 By the late nineteenth cen-
tury, Social Darwinism had spread across Europe and the United States, transforming racial dis-
course and creating new racial pseudo-sciences. The most influential of these new disciplines
was eugenics:

the science of improving stock … which especially, in the case of man, takes cog-
nizance of all the influences that tend … to give more suitable races or strains of
blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable.42

Race theorising was a dynamic process in which academics and aristocrats systematised the
wider public’s attitudes and beliefs about race.43 Academic literature of the kind published by
Galton, Knox and Gobineau reflected and reinforced the content of travel journals, plays with
eugenic themes, and postcards depicting savage darker races and unscrupulous Jews. Scholarly
articles and public lectures joined popular novels like Jekyll and Hyde, Heart of Darkness and
Robinson Crusoe, magazine articles in Harper’s and Scribner’s, movies, and missionary literature
37
Galton, Hereditary Genius, 396.
38
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 33.
39
Arthur Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, trans. Adrian Collins (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915),
25.
40
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 22.
41
Gossett, Race, 145.
42
Francis Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development (London: Macmillan, 1883), 25n1.
43
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 7.

141
in propagating ideas on racial superiority and inferiority. Race scientists eagerly translated their
technical ideas into simpler language in order to reach a broader audience. From the mainland
to the colonies, modern Western society was saturated with a racialised worldview.44 As racial
theories became increasingly sophisticated, fear of degeneration and extinction heightened, and
the possibility of managing racial decline and supremacy became more conceivable, race also
began to influence how states were imagined and organised.

Race and Nation-Building

Nations emerged out of a complex web of social, political and economic developments that oc-
curred across Europe from the 1500s through the 1800s. Unlike social organisations before it,
the nation is characterised in part by policies and practices that regulate citizenship, by soli-
darity among disparate groups that surpass loyalty to kin, tribe or other associations; by sharp
geographic borders that separate insiders and outsiders; and by bureaucratic institutions that
manage people who live within and attempt to enter those national boundaries. From the sev-
enteenth to the nineteenth centuries in particular, dominant voices in Western society used race
to explain the inconsistencies and unexpected consequences of the modern era. These at least
included increased competition in domestic and international relationships, militarisation, geo-
graphic expansion, tightening territorial controls and economic turmoil. Race was also especially
crucial for conceiving and establishing the nation-state.

Naturalising the Nation

As the modern period progressed, the age of Enlightenment was supplanted by what historians
call the Romantic period. Romantic thinkers “called for the state to be driven by common purpose
of a people, sharing a common ancestry, and thus a single destiny.”45 Thinkers across Europe
wrote works demonstrating that the blood of the people determined the rise or fall of the state.46
Influenced by Social Darwinism, scholars described nations in natural and scientific terms.47 For
example, Social Darwinist Karl Pearson defined the nation as:
an organized whole, kept up to a high pitch of internal efficiency by insuring that
its numbers are substantially recruited from the better stocks, and kept up to a high
pitch of external efficiency by contest, chiefly by way of war with inferior races, and
with equal races by the struggle for trade-routes and for the sources of raw material
and food supply.48
Similarly, English historian J. R. Green declared that while the state was artificial and temporal,
the nation was a natural entity that could neither be made nor destroyed by human hands.49
44
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 26, 36 and 54. See also Nicholson, Who Do We Think We Are? , 85 and Gossett,
Race, 183, 240, 262 and 280.
45
Lentin, Racism, 16.
46
For examples see the works of Jules Michelet and Joseph Ernest Renan of France, John Mitchell Kemble of
England and Berthold Georg Neibuhr of Prussia.
47
Ivan Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West (Washington, D. C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press,
1996), 275.
48
Quoted in MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 35.
49
Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West, 285.

142
 In addition to his theory of degeneration, Gobineau also described race and the nation as nat-
ural extensions of one another. He made the complex and paradoxical argument that although
mismanaged racial mixing would cause civilisation’s downfall, selective racial mixing was essen-
tial to the rise of civilisation. He hypothesised that the pure-blooded ancestors of the European
races had a high tolerance for racial interbreeding while darker races were naturally repulsed by
this practice. In an odd twist, he argued that this disparity in the ability to procreate across racial
lines explained why darker races were doomed to savagery while Europeans were destined to
build civilised societies. Gobineau believed that when a superior race conquered other lands and
people it also grew in strength and attracted other races to its society. Over time these interracial
interactions encouraged cross breeding among superior races, creating a nation of people who
were less powerful than and biologically distinct from their ancestors. Despite these deficiencies,
Gobineau believed this racial mixing was positive because these new nations also “developed
special qualities,” including more advanced social institutions and customs.50 As a result, he ar-
gued that the key to any nation’s growth and survival was establishing the necessary balance
between preserving significant amounts its original bloodline while intermingling with other
superior races. For when a race was “absolutely drained of its original blood, and the qualities
conferred by the blood, then the day of its defeat will be the day of its death.”51 Nothing else—
not a tyrannical government nor immorality nor “irreligion” nor military defeat—could bring the
nation to its knees like racial mixing with inferior types.52
In Race: The History of an Idea in the West, Ivan Hannaford observes how race dominated
political language and thought after Darwin’s theory of evolution. Indeed,
What burst upon the scene from 1842 and 1859 … was a movement that treated
political activity as subject to the same rules of evolution that applied to the natural
biological world.53
Seeing the nation as a natural phenomenon affected state policies and practices throughout
the West and its colonies. “Negative eugenicists”54 called on the state to stop interfering in the
evolutionary process and to allow inferior races to become extinct. They advocated extreme but
necessary measures like ending social services for the weak and curtailing their reproductive ca-
pacity through sterilisation and castration.55 Although many government officials privately and
publicly sympathised with this position, the movement did not affect state policies until after
1914. For example, Winston Churchill served as one of the Vice Presidents of the First Interna-
tional Eugenics Congress in 1912—an event that hosted delegates from France, Britain, Greece,
Spain and several other nations. As Home Secretary of England, he also submitted eugenics re-
ports to members of his cabinet. Even so, it was not until 1919 that a cluster of European nations
would begin passing premarital examination laws and sterilisation laws aimed at maintaining
racial purity.56
50
Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, 31.
51
Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, 35.
52
Gobineau, The Inequality of Human Races, 24. See also Lentin, Racism, 11.
53
Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West, 275.
54
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 42.
55
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 42. See also George Fredrickson, Racism: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2002), 86.
56
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 49, 51–52. Some of the nations that passed these kinds of laws in the early
twentieth century include Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden.

143
 Despite the ideological popularity of negative eugenics, governments favoured the “positive
eugenics”57 approach to racial degeneration. Positive eugenicists created social programs that en-
couraged “the birth of children to couples selected from the superior physical and racial stock”58
in an effort to prevent inferior types from becoming the majority.59 By the year 1880, various
eugenics campaigns and programs throughout Europe spread the message that women were re-
sponsible for birthing the next generation of racially superior soldiers, colonisers and leaders.
During this period,

the state assumed ever-increasing powers to intervene within the private sphere of
the family and to maximize reproductive powers through a range of interventions.60

Laws that regulated maternity leave and food hygiene, restricted child and female labour, and
instituted compulsory education and school nutrition programs all arose from this racist ideol-
ogy.61

Masking Economic Inequality

The modern period ushered in a new economic model marked by rapid urbanisation and in-
dustrialisation, advances in technology, the rise of global trade, and capitalist competition that
disrupted pre-modern communities and transformed Western ways of life. This shift also created
a drastic surge in poverty and crime, and increased the number of slums in major cities across Eu-
rope. Instead of blaming the economic system for this turn of events, various scholars explained
these changes in racial terms, associating problems like overcrowded cities, the spread of disease,
and a rise in alcoholism and other immoral behaviour with the supposed biologically inferiority
of the lower classes.62
Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso described criminals as a type of subhuman species with
particular physical features, innate moral deficiencies and an uncontrollable, natural desire to
harm others. In his opinion, people did not break laws as a result of their difficult social circum-
stances. Instead, these criminals were simply

atavistic reproductions of not only savage men but also the most ferocious carni-
vores and rodents… these beings are members of not our species, but the species of
bloodthirsty beasts.63

Similarly, the Parisian elite described the poor as primitive savages who were violent, sex-
ually promiscuous and morally corrupt. French scholar Georges Vacher de Lapouge was so
sure that the lower classes were biologically distinct from the upper class that he categorised

57
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 52.
58
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 49.
59
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 44.
60
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 46.
61
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 46.
62
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 35.
63
Lombroso thought that this fact of criminals being from a different race should “not make us more compas-
sionate toward born criminals, but rather should shield us from pity.” Cesare Lombroso, Criminal Man, trans. Mary
Gibson and Nicole Hahn Rafter (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 348.

144
them as Alpine man and Homo contractus, a relative of the Alpine.64 In his view, the “tall,
blond, dolichocephalic” Europeans that formed the higher classes were intelligent, profit- and
adventure-seeking heroes who were dedicated to the nation, while the “Mediterranean, small,
brachycephalic” Alpines were liars and cowards whose loyalties lay only with their immediate
kin.65 By Lapouge’s calculation, these racial types were only suitable as labour for the upper
class.66
By racialising economic inequality, the elite developed a pseudo-scientific explanation for their
class status. For if the criminal and the poor had been born into a social standing that they could
not escape, it followed that the elite had achieved their wealth and status by virtue of their su-
perior race and were not personally responsible for exploiting others.67 The first president of
Stanford University David Starr Jordan exemplified this reasoning when he insisted that, “It is
not the strength of the strong but the weakness of the weak” that resulted in the latter’s social
situation.68 Negative eugenicists, who strongly opposed all attempts to circumvent natural selec-
tion, advised against providing economic and social aid to inferior breeds that would eventually
die out.69 In that spirit, economist Alfred Marshall declared in 1885 that:

Charity and sanitary regulations are keeping alive, in our large towns, thousands of
such [feeble] persons, who would have died even fifty years ago… Public or private
charity may palliate their misery but the only remedy is to prevent such people from
coming into existence.70

Despite this disdain for the lower classes, nations grew more dependent on them to strengthen
their economic and military capabilities, and supply their industrial workforce. For example,
German biologist and eugenicist Alfred Ploetz suggested assigning physically weaker individuals
to the frontlines of battle in order to spare superior males for reproduction.
Influenced by eugenic arguments, governments across Europe began seeking more ways build
support, trust and loyalty among the lower classes. Providing them with much needed social
welfare was one way to accomplish this goal.71
The government’s response to the racialised lower classes was also shaped by “the crucial fact
that workers identified with each other across borders,” threatening “the idea of the unified race
nation.”72 As the working class and the poor grew restless about their place in society and began
adopting subversive political ideologies as a result, the elite also began viewing them as a political

64
Georges Vacher de Lapouge divided the entire world into about eleven different races: homo Europaeus, homo
spelaeus, homo meridionalis, homo contractus, pygmy races, homo hyperboreus, race of Borreby, race of Furfooz, homo
alpinus, acrogonus, and homo asiaticus. See Georges Vacher de Lapouge, “Dominant Race Among the Primitive Aryan
Peoples,” in Race, Racism, and Science, ed. John Jackson and Nadine Weidman (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004),
295–96.
65
Hannaford, Race, 292–93.
66
Hannaford, Race, 292. See also MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 44.
67
Nicholson, Who Do We Think We Are? , 72.
68
Quoted in Gossett, Race, 159.
69
Lentin. Racism, 14–15.
70
Quoted in MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 37.
71
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 41, 45. MacMaster observes that eugenicists did not envision a society that
was “devoid of workers and servants,” but rather they sought ways to exploit their labour in service of the emerging
industrial capitalist system (45). See also Lentin, Racism, 21.
72
Lentin, Racism, 19.

145
threat as well as being a biological hazard. Social welfare helped suppress resentment among
the lower classes, foster national ties, lessen international loyalties and stem the possibility of
political turmoil. Earlier arguments that “charity was wasted on the poor” were replaced by
programs geared toward

improving the nation’s efficiency … quelling revolutionary impulses among the dis-
enfranchised poor and working classes, and including them in the project of national
“greatness.”73

Medical and unemployment insurance, pensions and other government aid served this pur-
pose, hiding the growing class inequalities of the nation in plain sight.74

Determining Citizenship
As fear and panic over supposed signs of racial degeneration spread and international compe-
tition increased, emerging nations felt a greater need to preserve and enhance their strength.
One way to achieve this goal was to create legal and political barriers to limit the influence of
weaker races. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln publicly argued against allowing black races to be polit-
ical and social equals with whites. Specifically, he was not in favour of “making voters or jurors
of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.”75 In
spite of his hatred for slavery, Lincoln was so certain that darker races would remain inferior
and unequal to whites that he explored the possibility of colonising Negroes outside the United
States.76 Toward the end of the war, however, Lincoln softened his original position and encour-
aged Southern states to give Negroes the right to vote. Yet this shift did not mean he believed all
Negroes could be citizens. For example, in his 1864 correspondence to the governor of Louisiana,
he asked whether Negroes who were “very intelligent, especially those who have fought gallantly
in our ranks” could be allowed to vote—though he would not punish the state if they refused.77
After the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation, southern states continued disenfran-
chising the Negro race on the grounds that they had been “excluded, as a separate class, from
all civilized governments and the family of nations.”78 The governor of Mississippi Benjamin G.
Humphreys concurred, saying, “The Negro is free, whether we like it or not… To be free, however,
does not make him a citizen or entitle him to social or political equality with the white man.”79
Although Congress tried to enforce Negro citizenship with the Reconstruction Act of 1867, eco-
nomic turmoil in the South and racism in the North fostered mass Negro disenfranchisement
from the 1890s onward.

73
Lentin, Racism, 21.
74
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 45.
75
Abraham Lincoln, “Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Charleston, Illinois,” in Speeches and Writings, 1832–1858,
ed. Don Edward Fehrenbacher (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 1989), 636.
76
Gossett, Race, 255. Gossett describes how Lincoln seriously considered transporting negroes to the then Colom-
bian province of Panama after determining that Liberia would be an unsuitable destination due to the climate and the
financial cost of sending them there.
77
Abraham Lincoln, “Letter to Governor Hahn, March 13, 1864,” in Abraham Lincoln: Complete Works, ed. John
Nicolay and John Hay (New York: The Century Co., 1894), 496.
78
Gossett, Race, 256.
79
Gossett, Race, 256.

146
 Various states throughout the South developed methods for violating the rights of freed slaves
without displacing those poor whites that the elite viewed as strategic allies. These tactics in-
cluded poll taxes, literacy tests, property restrictions and a grandfather clause as a means to limit
Negro participation in the nation’s affairs.80 In Racism: A Short History, George M. Fredrickson
suggests that post-Darwinian racism thrived in America precisely because of its commitment to
equal rights for all citizens:
Egalitarian norms required special reasons for exclusion… The one exclusionary prin-
ciple that could be readily accepted by civic nationalists was biological unfitness for
full citizenship. The precedent of excluding women, children and the insane from
the electorate and denying them equality under the law could be applied to racial
groups deemed by science to be incompetent to exercise the rights and privileges of
democratic citizenship.81
For politician James Kimble Vardaman, every Negro was a “lazy, lying lustful animal which no
conceivable amount of training can transform into a tolerable citizen.”82
Like Negroes in America, the Jewish situation in Europe also demonstrates race’s centrality
to the idea and practice of citizenship and the nation. Before the modern period, anti-Jewish
persecution was rooted in bad theology as Christians attacked and discriminated against Jews
for crucifying and rejecting the Messiah.83 After race was invented, however, theorists described
Jews as a Semitic type that was biologically and physiologically distinct from and inferior to
European races. According to Knox, Jews were characterised by African-like features, including
a brow marked with furrows or prominent points of bone, or with both; high cheek
bones; a sloping and disproportionate chin; an elongated, projecting mouth … a large,
massive, club-shaped, hooked nose, three or four times larger than suits the face.84
The term “Jew” now referred to a fixed racial condition instead of defining a cultural or religious
way of life.
Without an easily recognisable trait like skin colour to make them distinct, nations across
Europe feared Jews as the “dangerous ‘race within’” that could spread diseases, pollute the blood
of superior races, gain political and economic control, and otherwise infiltrate and undermine
European societies.85 This fear was triggered in part by the belief that the nation could only be
comprised of individuals who shared the blood, race and natural identity of a common ancestor.
In this framework, Jews would never be fully accepted as citizens in their nations.
In addition, fear that Jews were a naturally
“nomadic race” that had no roots, no sense of belonging, and since they clung to
their own ancestral customs and religions, they constituted a “state within a state.”86
80
Gossett, Race, 265–66. The grandfather clause gave voting privileges to people who voted on January 1, 1867—
the year that freed slaves were denied voting rights—or were a descendant of someone who had voted. Therefore,
the law enabled whites who could not pay the poll tax or pass the literacy test, or did not own property to continue
voting (266).
81
Fredrickson, Racism, 68.
82
Quoted in Gossett, Race, 271.
83
Hannaford, Race, 59.
84
Knox, The Races of Men, 134.
85
Hannaford, Race: The History of an Idea in the West, 61, 68–69. See also MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 87.
86
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 93.

147
 In short, this community was perceived as a racial and political threat to the nation.
This belief opened the door to antisemitic violence, disenfranchisement and discrimination.
For example, privation, exclusion, pogroms and expulsion characterised the Jewish experience
under the Tsarist Russian government from 1850 to 1881.87 This and other forms of early mod-
ern antisemitism would shape the extreme anti-Jewish sentiments and practices that plagued
European nations during the Nazi era of 1914 to 1945.

Maintaining Borders
Just as race determined which residents could be citizens of the nation, race also decided which
foreigners could reside within the nation’s borders. In Racism: A Beginner’s Guide, Alana Lentin
recalls a time when people could move from one territory to another with relative freedom. Al-
though monarchies certainly restricted foreigners to some degree, “it was not before the full
consolidation of the nation-state that the right to enter and stay in a country became a legal
matter”88 —and I would add, a racial concern. Immigration law is a distinctly modern construc-
tion that came into being in the midst of late nineteenth century panic over racial degeneration,
the ascendance of Social Darwinism and eugenics, and international competition for economic,
geographic and racial power.
America developed its first immigration laws in response to the influx of Chinese labour that
flowed into California and other Western states in 1849. Bayard Taylor, an early opponent of
Chinese entry into the United States, denounced them as

morally, the most debased people on the face of the earth … Their touch is pollution,
and harsh as the opinion may seem, justice to our own race demands that they should
never settle on our soil.89

By the 1870s, resistance to Chinese immigration culminated in public protest and even several
lynchings. In 1882, the government responded by passing the Oriental Exclusion Act to Chinese
labourers entry into America Further legislation was passed in 1888 and 1889 that practically
denied all Chinese people from entering the nation.90 At the heart of most anti-immigration
sentiment against the Chinese were economic and class concerns. Employers used foreigners as
cheap labour, which undercut the wages of American workers. This practice heightened resent-
ment among American labourers who were frustrated by the way newcomers’ languages and
customs made it difficult to organise unions, improve working conditions and demand better
wages.
Although concerns about immigration were rooted in economic inequalities, it was panic over
racial and national decline that energised the public and generated support for exclusionary poli-
cies. As Italians, Jews, Greeks, Serbians and other undesirable Europeans began migrating to the
United States, clergyman Josiah Strong declared, “There is now being injected into the veins of
the nation a large amount of inferior blood every day of ever year.”91 Since foreign races were
87
Hannaford, Race, 318.
88
Lentin, Racism, 21.
89
Baynard Taylor, Visit to India, China, and Japan in the Year 1853 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1891), 354. See also
Gossett, Race, 290.
90
Gossett, Race, 290–91. See also Lentin, Racism, 22 and Nicholson, Who Do We Think We Are? , 121.
91
Quoted in Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America, 294.

148
biologically incapable of assimilating into the host nation and inferior races in particular could
orchestrate its downfall, it was imperative to exercise due diligence with outsiders:

nation-building involved new passport regimes, work quotas and other bureaucratic
mechanisms for the policing of territory and exclusion of aliens seen as racially in-
compatible.92

As a result, France initiated its own immigration laws in 1889 and Britain followed suit in 1905
with its Aliens Act.

Racism Revised
Although the economic pressures and social upheavals of the modern era were undoubtedly the
real impetus for nation-building, the above account demonstrates that it was the concept of race
that served as its primary ideological framework. Since race gave coherence to the nation-state
in its early stages, it is not surprising that the nation-state continues to be the “main political
vehicle for racism” in the present.93 Throughout Europe and the United States, racism continues
to rear its head around issues of immigration, albeit with new language. Today, race war is now
described as a conflict between superior and inferior cultures and each culture is said to have
traits that are as natural and permanent as the racial characteristics of old. In this new “socio-
biological” form of racism, foreigners—especially Africans, Middle Easterners and poor Eastern
Europeans in Europe, and Latin Americans, Central Americans, and Middle Easterners in the
United States:

can never assimilate into the host society … separated as they are by cultural or
“natural” boundaries as absolute as those of interwar scientific racism which argued
that the converted Jew always remained a Jew.94

Ironically, this new form of racism thrives in France despiteʊor perhaps because ofʊits long
history of immigration.95 According to the European Commission Against Racism and Intoler-
ance, France has been a site for “frequent and sporadic outbursts of racist activity”96 and ongoing
discrimination against immigrants in education, housing and employment.97 It is also the home
of the National Front, “one of the strongest and best-established extreme right-wing political par-
ties in Europe.”98 Yet France is only one example of the surge in the new sociobiological racism.
92
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 23.
93
Lentin, Racism, xiii.
94
MacMaster, Racism in Europe, 195.
95
I am referring back to Gossett’s point that racism toward the Negro in America might have been especially
pronounced precisely because of the nation’s commitment to equality and liberty, and suggesting that this idea may
also apply to the situation in France. Perhaps it is because France has had a long-standing openness to immigration
that racist ideologies are being used to exclude new immigrant groups.
96
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Report on France, June 15, 1998, Strasbourg: Council
of Europe, 1998, 3. hudoc.ecri.coe.int (accessed February 20, 2009).
97
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Second Report on France, Adopted on December 10,
1999, Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2000, 4. hudoc.ecri.coe.int (accessed February 20, 2009). See also European
Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Third report on France, Adopted on June 25, 2004, Strasbourg: Council
of Europe, 2005, 6. hudoc.ecri.coe.int (accessed February 20, 2009).
98
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance, Report on France, 3.

149
Immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, ethnic minorities and, in some instances, toward citizens
who are descended from immigrants still experience personal and systemic racism and xenopho-
bia in Denmark, Sweden, Albania, Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom and Spain to name a
few.99
Like immigration, the policies and practices of the nation-state still racialises the lower classes.
In the U. S. this occurs when police profile people of colour, particularly Black and Hispanic
males, in economically challenged neighbourhoods. It is also visible in the ways illegal activity
is documented and reported. By tracking criminals according to racial categories, the justice
system reinforces the sociobiological argument that certain races are prone to violence, theft and
other wrongdoing. Furthermore, this approach to crime also leads to increased state monitoring
and repression of people of colour, especially those who live in low-income neighbourhoods. In
each of these instances, race—not lack of access to equal education or employment opportunities,
or systemic racism itself—remains the privileged discourse for explaining class disparities and
masking the inherent inequalities of capitalism and the social injustices of the nation.
Another way of racialising the poor is in the area of social welfare. In 1995, the American
government drafted the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in
an effort to reform welfare. This new legislation contained “the absurd claim that the mere
presence of single black mothers in high concentrations within a neighborhood causes crime to
skyrocket.”100 In practice, this reform did not target government bureaucracy in order to make
government assistance more effective, efficient and responsive to people’s needs. Instead, it tar-
geted poor, women of colour, especially Black women. In most instances, women seeking basic
help for themselves and their families were required to attend parenting classes, get counselling
and, do other tasks aimed at changing their behaviour, as if poverty and immorality are linked.101
Black women in particular

could never be seen as innocent mothers struggling to care for their children, since
they are believed to be guilty of immorality the moment that they are born poor and
black.102

From the U. S. government’s response to poor people of colour in the aftermath of Hurricane
Katrina to the highly racialised “war on terror” to the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab rhetoric
throughout the West, recent history has repeatedly demonstrated the stranglehold racism con-
tinues to have on the policies and practices of the nation-state. As Richard Dyer observes, race
still determines how nations identify themselves and how they function, so that:

At what cost regions and countries export their goods, whose voices are listened
to at international gatherings, who bombs and who is bombed, who gets what jobs,
99
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance is an independent human rights monitoring body
that resists racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, antisemitism and other forms of racial and ethnic related in-
tolerance in the 46 member states of the Council of Europe. It monitors racism in each country and evaluates their
efforts to be anti-racist on a five-year cycle. Detailed reports on each country are available on the ECRI Web site at
www.coe.int.
100
Traci C. West, Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives Matter (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2006), 83.
101
West, Disruptive Christian Ethics, 103–106.
102
West, Disruptive Christian Ethics, 86–87.

150
 housing, access to health care and education, what cultural activities are subsidized
and sold, in what terms they are validated—these are all inextricable from racial im-
agery. The myriad minute decisions that constitute the practices of the world are at
every point, informed by judgments about people’s capacities and worth, judgments
based on what they look like, where they come from, how they speak, even what
they eat, that is, racial judgments.103

Nations, built as they are on the premise of a natural unity within and fear of inherently dis-
tinct pollutants from without, will invariably be governed by racism in some form. Furthermore,
insomuch as schools, laws, social welfare programs and other national institutions exist to make
people into good citizens and loyal patriots, they too will be saturated with racist ideologies and
racist practices. In light of this understanding of race and nation, I believe that people who are
working to dismantle racism must also find ways to resist the logic, mythology and politics of
the nation-state. Integral to this resistance are individuals and communities that derive their pri-
mary identity and purpose outside of the nation. As a follower of Jesus who is also anarchist, I
believe that the Church, when rightly ordered, can be a community that challenges the racism of
the nation-state. In making this assertion, I am not saying that other forms of anti-racist action
are not effective or important. Instead I only want to highlight the resources within the Christian
faith that can support this struggle.

Christian Resistance to Racism and the Nation-State

On the surface, my suggestion that the Church can be a community of resistance to racism and
the nation-state may seem far-fetched and ill-conceived. After all, the prevailing story of the
Church from the fourth century onward has been one of complicity with, not opposition to, state
power and abuse. By constantly aligning itself with empires and democracies, kings and tsars,
tyrants and presidents, Christians have willingly blessed, participated in and instigated genocide,
slavery, war, racism, economic exploitation and myriad other injustices. Aside from the Biblical
witness of Jesus’ followers, the overall example of the early Church before Christendom, and the
faithful minority voices and renewal movements of each age, the Church has often refused to
stand in solidarity with the exploited people that we are called to serve and to share the good
news with. Yet in spite of the “nearly complete, unabashed failure”104 of the Church, I believe
that Christ’s community can resist the nation-state and its racist foundation. To do this, we must
first reclaim our countercultural political identity, our radical call and our primary allegiance to
God.

The Call of the Church

In spite of the Church’s widespread unfaithfulness the relevance and transformative power of
our mission remains the same. Christians are still called to be living testimonies to the upside-
down kingdom of God in which our primary vocations are love of the triune God and love of
103
Richard Dyer, “The Matter of Whiteness,” in White Privilege: Essential Readings from the Other Side of Racism,
ed. Paula Rothenberg (New York: Worth Publishers, 2002), 9.
104
Michael Budde, “Pledging Allegiance: Reflections on Discipleship and the Church in Rwanda,” in The Church
as Counterculture, ed. Michael Budde and Robert Brimlow (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000), 214.

151
neighbour.105 We are still called to be a community that is reconciled to God and to one another,
and that proclaims God’s triumph over the oppressive powers of this world. We are still called to
be a community that includes strangers and enemies in the list of neighbours to whom we show
patient love and generous hospitality. We are still called to the work of Jesus who

was anointed to bring good news to the poor … release to the captives and recovery
of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free … to proclaim the year of the Lord’s
favor.106

Subsequently, our life as the Church and our interaction with the world must be governed by
forgiveness, grace, love and peace—not violence, domination, retribution and oppression. It must
be marked, not by power that lords over one another, but by mutual and voluntary service and
the last being first.107 It must value each of the Body’s members as indispensible for proclaiming
God’s liberating word and doing God’s liberating work.108 It must engage the world in ways that
are neither paternalistic nor power- and control-seeking nor beholden to money and possessions,
but instead seeks first God’s peaceable and just kingdom.
As a community whose relationships are not determined by the power imbalances of male/
female, master/slave, Jew/Greek,109 the Church is also called to the work of breaking-down so-
cially constructed barriers that separate us from others within and outside the Body of Christ.
Unlike nations, which can only tolerate and enforce conformity to a mythological and superficial
oneness, the Church is called to be a body that includes people from every tribe, every territory
and every language in authentic relationship with God and with one another.110 Christians must
remember that we are part of a diverse transnational body that serves God, one another and all
of creation.
Consequently, the Christian worldview world must extend far beyond the short-sighted vision
of the nation-state with its entrenched borders, fear of the Other and social structures that masks
injustices and perpetuates inequality. In our time, this necessarily involves resisting personal and
structural racism that subjugates some and privileges others. Our call to be a community that
is reconciled in Christ across social differences is a public witness to God’s transforming and
reconciling power. For this reason, it is a serious betrayal to abandon our transnational identity
and neglect our loyalty to God in exchange for national identities rooted in hierarchy, domination,
violence and racism.

The Church is Political

In “Practicing the Politics of Jesus,” Rodney Clapp reminds us that the Church is political. This
is evident in the language the early followers of Christ used to describe their community and
their mission. For example, “gospel,” “kingdom” and “exodus” are all political terms. The word
“liturgy,” which is commonly associated with worship, “comes from the Greek meaning ‘work of

105
Matthew 22:34–40. All Scripture citations in this chapter are from the New Revised Standard version.
106
Luke 4:18.
107
Luke 22:25–26. See also Matthew 20:25–27.
108
1 Corinthians 12.
109
Galatians 3:28.
110
Revelation 5:8–10.

152
the people’ or, as we might put it now, a ‘public work.’”111 Liturgy in the Greco-Roman empire
could refer to “military service at one’s own expense” and “liturgist” referred to a government
official.112 Even the Greek word for Church in the New Testament, ekklesia, is explicitly political.
Starting in the fifth century B. C. it referred to

the assembly of citizens called to decide matters affecting the common welfare …
Thus the “Ekklesia of God” means roughly the same thing as what New Englanders
might call the “town meeting of God.”113

In the early Christian context, being a part of the Roman cult involved worship of the emperor
and fidelity to his reign. Conversely to be part of God’s town meeting or God’s assembly of
citizens was to belong completely to God.
Before dismissing the political connotations of these “religious” words as purely coincidental,
it is important to remember that in the ancient world what was religious was also political, social
and public.114 If the early Christians wanted to be a private community focused on “otherworldly”
matters, they could have petitioned to become a cultus privatus (private cult). But “instead of
adopting the language of the privatized mystery religions the church confronted Caesar, not
exactly on his own terms, but with his own terms.”115
The political nature of the Church is also reflected in early Christian use of paroikoi, a “familiar
legal term” meaning “resident aliens,” to describe themselves and their relationship to society.116
As one early Christian apologist explained,

Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by country, language, or
custom. For nowhere do they live in cities of their own, nor do they speak some
unusual dialect, nor do they practice an eccentric lifestyle … But while they live
in both Greek and barbarian cities, as each one’s lot was cast, and follow the local
customs in dress and food and other aspects of life, at the same time they demonstrate
the remarkable and admittedly unusual character of their own citizenship. They live
in their own countries, but only as aliens; they participate in everything as citizens
and endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign country is their fatherland, and
every fatherland is foreign.117

When Christians understand the political identity of the Church as more than a spiritual
metaphor, we can also begin to see that the Church is defined by its allegiance to God, and
that its character and mission are not defined by the empire or, in our context, nation-states.
Furthermore, we see this thrust throughout the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.
111
Rodney Clapp, “Practicing the Politics of Jesus,” in The Church as Counterculture, ed. Michael Budde and Robert
Brimlow (New York: State University of New York Press, 2000), 21.
112
Clapp, “Practicing the Politics of Jesus,” 21
113
Clapp, “Practicing the Politics of Jesus,” 21–22.
114
Clapp, “Practicing the Politics of Jesus,” 19.
115
Clapp, “Practicing the Politics of Jesus,” 22.
116
Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International,
1999), 15.
117
“The Epistle to Diognetus,” 5.1 (emphasis mine). The edition used here is from “The Epistle to Diognetus,” in
The Apostolic Fathers: Greek Texts and English Translations, ed. Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999),
541.

153
The People of God in the Hebrew Bible
Although the Hebrew Bible is often associated with God-ordained dynasties, it also contains
a tradition that persistently critiques monarchies and empires for their violence and injustice,
and the ways in which they attempt to imitate and usurp God’s power. While there are myriad
examples of these challenges to the state in the Hebrew Bible, a few examples from Exodus,
Judges and 1 Samuel should illustrate this point.
The first chapter of Exodus exposes Egypt’s domestic policy as one motivated by the ruling
elite’s fear of the growing Israelite non-ruling population.118 Driven by this internal threat the
Egyptian government instituted a policy of killing the Israelites’ infants and forcing them to build
the empire’s infrastructure. After hearing the people’s cries, God liberates Israel not by revolt
or by military power, but by the hand of an insecure fugitive, named Moses and his brother
Aaron. God uses these deeply flawed leaders to demonstrate a power greater than any human
ruler or institution. God also challenges Pharaoh’s authority by hardening his heart, revealing
that God’s domain is broader than any territory under Egypt’s control. By the end of the contest
with Pharaoh, God establishes Godself as one who hears the weak, liberates the oppressed and
stands above all human empires.
Although it is easy to interpret the conflict between God and Egypt as God objecting to one
unjust government, other examples of God’s relationship to the state in the Hebrew Bible indicate
otherwise. It is interesting to note that God did not give the Israelites a state after they were
liberated but instead entered a covenant in which Israel became God’s people and God became
their God. In Anarchism and Christianity, Jacques Ellul notes that up until the time of the judges,
Israel did not have a king or state of any kind. Instead:

the people settled by clans and tribes. The twelve tribes all had their own heads,
but these had little concrete authority. When an important decision had to be made,
with ritual sacrifices and prayers for divine inspiration, a popular assembly was held
and this had the last word … There were no tribal princes. Families that one might
be regarded as aristocratic were either destroyed or vanquished. The God of Israel
declared that he and he alone would be Israel’s head.119

In this system, God related to the people directly and through judges who received limited,
temporary power during times of crises.120 Unfortunately, the Israelites’ tribal organisation did
not last.
The book of Judges tells the story of Abimalech, the son of a judge who convinced the leaders of
Schechem to let him rule over them. The leaders agree and give him money, which he uses to hire
“worthless and reckless fellows”121 to kill his sixty-nine brothers with whom he was supposed
to share leadership. After the massacre, a surviving brother tells the parable of the trees that
sought a ruler. In the tale, the productive and valuable trees decline the offer and a worthless
bramble takes the job.122 The story, which paints a low view of kingship, also prefigures what
happens to Abimalech. His term as ruler lasted for a grand total of three years, during which
118
Exodus 1:7–8.
119
Jacques Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 46.
120
Ellul, Anarchy and Christianity, 46–47.
121
Judges 9:4.
122
Judges 9:8–15.

154
time people repeatedly revolted against his reign. After spending his entire kingship fighting his
own people, a woman ends the madness by dropping a large stone on his head and the people
restore the earlier system of judges.
Although resistance to a king was strong under Abimalech, the Israelites were asking for a
king during Samuel’s tenure as judge. They had turned away from God, the Philistines were
routinely defeating them in battle and Samuel’s sons, who were also judges, were abusing their
power. In response, the people asked Samuel to crown a king so they could be like other states.123
God grants their request but only after issuing the following warning:

Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected
you, but they have rejected me from being king over them … you shall solemnly warn
them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them … He will
take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run
before his chariots; … He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive
orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of
your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers … He will take one-tenth
of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because
of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer
you in that day.124

This is a pivotal text for understanding how the people of God are called to view the state.
When God’s people demand someone to rule over them it is evil, wicked and a rejection of
God.125 Though God cooperates with the people’s wishes, God does not bless this state-making
enterprise.

Jesus and the State

Like the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament also characterises God’s assembly of citizens as a
political body that is distinct from the state. We see this most powerfully in the witness of Jesus,
whose life began as a threat to Herod’s rule and ended as a threat to the Roman Empire and the
established religious authorities. Immediately after Jesus is baptised, he is tested to use power
in ways that will expedite but ultimately compromise his ministry. Of each of the temptations,
it is the third that deals specifically with state power and control. According to the gospel of
Matthew,

the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of
the world and their splendor; and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you
will fall down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! For it is
written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’” Then the devil left him,
and suddenly angels came and waited on him.126

123
1 Samuel 8:5.
124
1 Samuel 8:7, 11, 14–15, 17–18 (emphasis mine).
125
1 Samuel 12:17.
126
Matthew 4:8–11. See also Luke 4:5–8.

155
 A typical way to approach this text is to focus on the sin of worshipping the devil and to
avoid what it says about the kingdoms of this world. But this lopsided reading makes little
sense especially in light of texts like 1 Samuel 8. For Ellul, the “extraordinary thing” about these
passages is that,

according to these texts all powers, all the power and glory of kingdoms, all that
has to do with politics and political authority belongs to the devil … Those who hold
political power receive it from and depend on him.127

He also notices that Jesus does not denounce the devil’s claim to have power over all the
earthly kingdoms.128 Instead, Jesus simply refuses the temptation to set his face against God and
to serve another.
Jesus’ fidelity to God and God’s call in the face of state power is also evident in the events
leading to his crucifixion. In his account of Jesus’ trial by the authorities, Luke clearly reveals
the subversive nature of Jesus’ ministry and the political nature of his death. In Luke 23, an as-
sembly brings Jesus before Pilate for several crimes, including “perverting our nation, forbidding
us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah,” and for stirring up the
people “by teaching throughout all Judea.”129 In keeping with the empire’s hierarchy and bureau-
cracy, Pilate sends Jesus to Herod to make sure he is tried in the right district despite his growing
belief in his innocence.130 While before Herod, Jesus neither defers to the governor’s authority
nor performs for him.131 In response, Herod commands his soldiers to abuse Jesus and sends
him back to Pilate in an elegant robe—an act that makes peace between the rival statesmen.132
Back in Pilate’s jurisdiction, the people vote on Jesus’ fate and decide that, even though he thinks
Jesus is innocent, he will carry out the crowd’s wishes. At the end of the trial, Barabbas a known
insurrectionist and murderer is freed because he is perceived to be less dangerous than Jesus.
Throughout the ordeal Jesus is either silent or elusive. At no time during his arrest, questioning
and crucifixion does he attempt to convert or reform the empire. Instead, Jesus exposes the state
as an institution that consistently acts out of fear and insecurity, and uses violence against any-
thing or anyone that subverts, challenges or refuses to conform to its will. Yet Jesus’ resurrection
demonstrates that such power is ultimately futile.

The Example of the Early Christian Fellowship

At the beginning of the book of Acts, we find a resurrected Jesus visiting with his disciples before
departing from the earth. In this account, Jesus assures his followers that they will be given the
power of the Holy Spirit so they can “be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”133 This promise comes to pass on the day of Pentecost when the
Spirit envelops the disciples, causing these ordinary Galileans to speak about God’s good work

127
Ellul, Anarchism and Christianity, 58.
128
Ellul, Anarchism and Christianity, 58. See also John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerd-
mans, 1978), 26.
129
Luke 23:1 and 5.
130
Luke 23:6.
131
Luke23:8.
132
Luke 23:12.
133
Acts 1:8.

156
in multiple languages. Hearing the commotion, a crowd quickly gathers around the group and
they begin hearing the word in their own languages. The text describes the diverse people who
participate in this miracle, saying:

Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Juedea and Cappadocia,

Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to
Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in
our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.134

While some people were amazed by what was happening, others attempted to dismiss it as
a drunken display. However, Peter responds by preaching from the prophetic texts, testifying
about Jesus, life, death and resurrection, exhorting the crowd to repent and calling all who wanted
to receive the Holy Spirit to be baptised into the body. The crowd is so compelled by Peter’s
message that three thousand people are immediately baptised135 and a radical new community
in which “all who believed were together and had all things in common” emerges.136
Although race and the nation-state as it has been articulated since the modern period did not
exist in the ancient world, this public demonstration of God’s reconciling power is nonetheless
helpful for understanding the Church’s call in the face of present-day racism and nationalism.
First, this event affirms that the Church is a political as well as spiritual body that stands in
contrast to that of the governing powers. Each of the groups present in the crowd was a part
of the Roman Empire, which was united by bureaucracy, taxation and when necessary, violence.
Unlike the Roman state, the Holy Spirit unites the crowd through language, testimony and sign,
and draws new followers without the earthly power and might of emperors. In so doing, the
disciples follow Jesus’ refusal to use the kingdoms of this world to carry out God’s reconciling
mission.
Second, the Pentecost miracle can be seen as an equalising event. Although the text is not
explicit, one can imagine that a crowd in which more than three thousand people were present
likely included men, women and children, upper and lower class, as well as people from across
the empire. Since “each one heard [the disciples] speaking in the native language of each”137 it
is very plausible that all the people were privileged to hear the word of God, regardless of their
gender, age or status in society.
Third, it is significant that the Holy Spirit did not cause the disciples and the crowd to speak,
hear and understand in one language. This is in stark contrast to the nation, which expects
conformity to a shared albeit superficial identity, masks inequalities with a tenuous unity and
only tolerates diversity that does not threaten its power or cohesion.
Finally, the miracle of speaking in tongues served the particular purpose of calling its hearers
into a new relationship with God and with one another in which economic sharing, prayer, eating
together, generosity and commitment to Jesus’ teachings and example characterised their life
together.
In short, Acts 2 reveals the character of the Body of Christ as a multi-lingual, multi-cultural,
global, reconciled body that lives out the way of Jesus, challenges the logic and practices of the rul-
134
Acts 2:9–11.
135
Acts 2:41.
136
Acts 2:44.
137
Acts 2:6.

157
ing powers and gives its ultimate loyalty to God. This understanding of the early Christian com-
munity exemplifies Paul’s words to the Philippians that our true citizenship or commonwealth
is not of this world but is in heaven.138 For this reason the Church must resist all temptations to
switch the two.

Concluding Thoughts
The witness of Acts 2, the Hebrew Bible, Jesus and the early Church clearly demonstrate that

Being a disciple of Jesus … was and is meant to be a primary, ultimate, pivotal voca-
tion. By its very nature it cannot share allegiances with lesser goods and commit-
ments.139

When the Church forgets that its loyalty lies in God and its liberating work extends to all
its neighbours—stranger, friend and enemy alike—it becomes “a quaint add-on compatible with
capitalism, militarism, and racism.”140 This is exemplified by the vast number of Christians who
wholeheartedly embraced racist ideologies and practices throughout the modern period without
hesitation. However, when Christians live faithfully as God’s assembly of citizens that breaks
down socially constructed barriers and declares our primary allegiance to an alternative kingdom,
we can be a community of a resistance. This is apparent when professor and “friend of the
eugenics movement” E. A. Ross laments that, “The Christian cult of charity as a means of grace
has formed a shelter under which idiots and cretins have crept and bred.”141
How the Church lives out its identity as a people whose citizenship supersedes national identi-
ties and social divisions and as a body that resists the racism of the nation-state will be contextual.
In the U. S., Christians can declare our allegiance to God and stand in solidarity with fellow be-
lievers and their neighbours by protesting against Christians killing on behalf of the nation. We
can remove the American flags from our spaces of worship and focus our prayers and concerns
on the kingdom of God rather than on the prosperity of the nation and the successful rule of the
government. We can abstain from voting and from otherwise participating in the nation-state’s
affairs as a protest against its oppression and violence against marginalised people within and
outside of its borders.
We can provide sanctuary for documented and undocumented economic refugees as a testa-
ment to the primacy of Christ’s justice and compassion over fictional borders and immigration
policies rooted in racism. We can confront racism in our local congregations through anti-racism
training, sharing power between marginalised and privileged people in our midst, and working
to reflect and remember the global Body of Christ in our local communities of faith. We can prac-
tice love, hospitality, grace and service to the nation’s social outcasts, and allow ourselves to be
transformed by their gifts in the process. In these and innumerable other ways, the Church can
publicly witness to a different way of beingʊone that does not involve lording power over one

138
Philippians 3:20. The word for citizenship can also mean commonwealth, another political term that even
more clearly communicates the vision of the Church as a distinct, sovereign body.
139
Budde, “Pledging Allegiance,” 214 (emphasis in the original).
140
Budde, “Pledging Allegiance,” 221.
141
Gossett, Race, 170.

158
another but instead breaks down socially-constructed divisions that impede God’s reconciling
work in the world.
The Church has the potential to be a body that confronts one of the major roots of racism—the
nation-state. Its very calling to be the body of Christ as outlined above demands that we must not
be complicit in this or any other form of oppression. We see in the witness of the Jews who were
racialised, persecuted and murdered en masse for being a separate people and in the example
of the lower classes whose international solidarity threatened the political structures, that being
a distinct people with an identity that transcends national lines and expectations is a powerful
social force. May the Church have the courage to live out a similar vision.

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PART III: BUDDHIST, DAOIST, AND
MUSLIM ANARCHISM
CHAPTER NINE. ANARCHISM OR
NIHILISM: THE BUDDHIST-INFLUENCED
THOUGHT OF WU NENGZI
JOHN A. RAPP
This essay examines the thought of Wu Nengzi, a Buddhist-influenced thinker of ninth century
China. Though Wu Nengzi begins, similar to earlier radical Daoists, by criticising Confucian and
Legalist justifications of rule and calling for a decentralised stateless society, his thought eventually
breaks down into a kind of passive acceptance of rule as long as one is not attached to it or deceived
about its ultimate utility. Comparing Wu Nengzi to post-modernist thinkers who find that a stance
of ironic detachment is all one can accomplish for fear of creating new “meta-narratives” that could
underlie new forms of oppression, this essay concludes that Wu Nengzi slips into passive nihilism
only by shifting emphasis from the dao , or the Way, to wu or nothingness. That is, only by shifting
Daoist thought from a stance of embracing the universe as an undifferentiated whole to a denial of
the reality of existence, did Wu Nengzi open up radical Daoist thought to nihilism and acquiescence
to authority. Following both the organic conservative critique of revolutionary thought, as well as
recent critics of postmodernism, this essay concludes that to stay true to the positive anarchist vision,
one must not deny the unity of existence, even if one can neither define that existence objectively nor
impose it on others.
I would like to thank Beloit College for a Sanger Sumer Scholars grant that allowed for the
translation of the Wunengzi by my student colleague, Catrina Siu, and my faculty colleague,
Daniel Youd of the Department of Modern Languages, a translation which Professor Youd and I
edited for use in this chapter.
The Buddhist-Influenced Thought of Wu Nengzi 203

Introduction: The Main Problems Raised by the Wunengzi

The ninth century C.E. Chinese text known by the name of its pseudonymous author, Wu Nengzi
(literally, “Master of No Abilities”), was the first piece of writing in five hundred years to revive
the anarchist side of philosophical Daoism. Though the text has been referred to by several stu-
dents of Chinese thought, including Germaine Hoston and Peter Zarrow,1 it has previously only
been partially translated into English by Hsiao Kung-chuan.2 There is also the partial German
translation by Alfred Forke and a full German translation in an unpublished Ph.D. dissertation

1
See Germaine Hoston, The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994), 158–159 and Peter Zarrow, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1990), 10–11.
2
Hsiao Kung-chuan, “Anarchism in Chinese Political Thought,” Tien Hsia Monthly 3 (October 1936): 251–263.

162
by Gert Naundorf.3 This relative neglect is unfortunate, since the text can teach us much about
both Daoist and Western anarchism.
The surviving text of the Wunengzi (hereafter the text will be referred to in this way, while
its author will be referred to as Wu Nengzi) contains three books with a total of twenty-three
chapters, with a preface by an unnamed friend, who reports that Wu Nengzi wrote the text during
the Huangchao rebellion (875–884 C.E.), when he fled his home and travelled about, having no
regular abode, finally living with a peasant family.4 The author of the preface claims to have
created the text from scattered scraps of paper that Wu Nengzi left in a bag. From chapters in the
text it would seem that Wu Nengzi had disciples and was consulted by many people for sagely
advice.
Though starting out in the same radical antistatist and utopian fashion of earlier Daoist anar-
chist texts of the third to fourth centuries C. E, in the end the author of the ninth century text
seems to acquiesce in the idea of rule, as we will see below. Thus, this text creates problems
for anyone who would seek to use the radical side of philosophical Daoism to build a modern
antistatist critique. The first problem, more narrowly linked to Daoist anarchism, is whether the
Wunengzi demonstrates more openly a flaw that may be present in all radical Daoist texts or
whether the author of this text makes a fundamental shift of his own based on influence from his
interpretation of Buddhist doctrines. The larger problem for all anarchists is whether or not the
Wunengzi demonstrates flaws present in post-modern and/or “lifestyle” anarchist thought. Can
an “ironic stance” towards political authority, combined with ways of living supposedly apart
from the state and claims to reject any overarching principle or “meta-narrative,” in the end too
easily lead to a cynical acceptance of the state and/or a refusal to oppose it directly? Even if
one rejects such an “ironic stance” alone as adequate and wants to go beyond it, are there any
grounds to do so from a perspective which denies humans’ ability to learn and know objectively
any absolute truths?
To answer these questions we need first to examine the nature of Daoist anarchism before Wu
Nengzi and then see how Wu Nengzi himself applies and possibly changes the lessons of Daoist
anarchism. After examining the main tenets of the Wunengzi, we can return to the questions
raised above.

I. Daoist Anarchism before Wu Nengzi

I have written elsewhere on the nature of Daoist anarchism and so will not attempt a complete
review here.5 Given space limitations, we can perhaps most profitably compare the thought in
the Wunengzi to that of earlier Daoist anarchists by examining the main tenets in the neo-Daoist

3
See Alfred Forke, Geschichte der Mittelalterlichen Mittelalterlichen Chinesichen Philosophie (Hamburg: Cram,
De Gruyter and Co., 1964), 330–332; and Gert Naundorf, Aspekte Des Anarchischen Gedankens in China: Darstellung der
Lehre und Ubersetzung des Texts Wu Neng Tzu (Inaugeral Dissertation, Julius-Maximilians-Universitat zu Wurzberg,
1972).
4
For a modern reprint of the classical text, see Wang Ming, compiler (hereafter comp.), Wunengzi jiao shu
(Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju: Xin hua shu dian Beijing fa xing suo fa xing, 1981).
5
See John A. Rapp, “Daoism and Anarchism Reconsidered,” Anarchist Studies 6, no. 2 (1998): 123–51; and John A.
Rapp, “Daoism as Utopian or Accommodationist: Radical Daoism Reexamined in Light of the Guodian Manuscripts,”
in Anarchism and Utopianism, eds. Laurence Davis and Ruth Kinna (Manchester: University of Manchester Press,
2009).

163
thinker Bao Jingyan (ca. 300 C.E.).6 Heavily influenced by the famous Daoist text, the Zhuang
Zi (ca. 300 B.C.E.),7 as were most of the thinkers in the revival of philosophical Daoism at the
end of the Later Han Dynasty (10–220 C.E.) and the Three Kingdoms era at the beginning of the
Period of Disunity (220–589 C.E.), Bao Jingyan completely rejects the Confucian idea of rule by
the morally virtuous based on any “Mandate of Heaven” from an impersonal deity.

The Confucian literati say: “Heaven gave birth to the people and then set rulers
over them.” But how can High Heaven have said this in so many words? Is it not
rather that interested parties made this their pretext? The fact is that the cunning
tricked the innocent and the innocent served them. It was because there was submis-
sion that the people, being powerless, could be kept under control. Thus servitude
and mastery result from the struggle between the cunning and innocent, and Blue
Heaven has nothing whatsoever to do with it.8

In place of this utopian view of benevolent rulership (based on the ideas of the Confucian
philosopher Mencius, ca. fourth century B.C.E.), Bao Jingyan posits the existence of an ideal
utopia of original undifferentiated simplicity where there were no rulers and everyone lived in
harmony.

In remote antiquity, princes and ministers did not exist… There were no roads and
paths in the mountains, nor were swamps crossed by bridges or boats. Because rivers
and valleys could not be crossed, wars of conquest between states did not occur…
Greed for power and profit had not yet budded in the hearts of men, and therefore
unhappiness and confusion did not arise… In mystical equality ( xuantong), the ten
thousand creatures forgot each other in the “Way,” epidemics and pestilence did not
spread, and the people became very old as a result. Pure and innocent as they were,
men had no cunning in their hearts. They felt at ease when they could simply eat
their fill, and walked about stroking their stomach. It would have been impossible
to multiply taxes to bleed the people, or to introduce strict punishments to [en]trap
[them].9

Rather than follow the Confucian advice to resign office in an immoral government, Bao argues
that it would be better if there were no offices in the first place. While there is no evidence that
Bao joined or fomented any political uprisings, it is clear that he saw all government as immoral,
unnecessary, and dangerous to human survival and there was thus no way that he could ever
accept the need for a state of any kind. Bao bases his political stance on the concept of ziran,
literally, “of itself so,” often translated as natural or spontaneous, a term which other scholars
argue is the closest term in classical Chinese thought to the concept of freedom.10
6
For translations of Bao’s tract, see Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy: Variations on a Theme, trans.
M. H. Wright, ed. Arthur F. Wright (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964), 243–246; and Wolfgang Bauer, China
and the Search for Happiness, trans. Michael Shaw (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 138–140.
7
For perhaps the greatest English translation, see Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, trans.
Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970).
8
Balazs, 243.
9
Bauer, 139.
10
See for example, Donald Holzman, Poetry and Politics: The Life and Times of Juan Chi (AD 210–263) (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976), 190.

164
 Likewise, Wu Nengzi starts with this concept in a similarly radical sounding fashion, before
coming to a very different conclusion.

II. The Political Thought of Wu Nengzi

In his first chapter, Wu Nengzi picks up the description of the Daoist utopia in terms very similar
to those of Bao Jingyan:

In the most ancient times, the naked creatures and the scaly, hairy/furry, feath-
ery, and shelled lived together indiscriminately, female and male, male and female.
They [lived] together naturally, with no distinction between men and women, hus-
band and wife [and no hierarchical order among] father and son, older brother and
younger brother. In the summer they created nests and in the winter they created
caves; there was no construction of palaces and mansions. They ate raw meat and
drank blood, without eating the food of the one hundred grains [i.e., food that did not
need to be processed with modern technology]. The living moved around, the dead
keeled over, [there was] no [desire for] stealing and murder, [and there were] no
funeral [rites]. They followed what was natural; there was no ruling or shepherding,
[and everything was] in its original simplicity; according to these principles they
could live long lives.11

Again, as with Bao Jingyan, those who would “help” others by instituting government entered
the picture and started to draw distinctions between humans and other animals, which intro-
duced hierarchy and started the process of ruination:

Not long after, among the naked creatures arose a bunch of “wise” and “intelligent”
animals who called themselves “people” who established rules under which they
could [dominate] the scaly, hairy/furry, feathery, and scaly creatures. Moreover,
they taught [each other] sowing and planting in order to eat the food of a hundred
grains, and thereafter [learned] to use the plow. They hewed wood and made mud
bricks to construct mansions and palaces, and thereupon started to use the blade
and the axe. They instituted marriages, which started the distinctions between men
and women, and thereafter began the distinction between husband and wife and
the hierarchical distinction among fathers and sons and older brothers and younger
brothers. They made coffins and shrouds to bury their dead, and thereupon there
[developed] funeral rites. They tied knots together to make nets in order to catch
the scaly, hairy/furry, feathery and shelled creatures; thereupon emerged the taste
for prepared food. Original simplicity was thereby broken up, thereby giving rise to
selfish passions and intentions. People were strong and weak by their natural abili-
ties; there was still no way to regulate this. Among the crowd that called themselves
the “wise” and “intelligent,” they chose one who would unite the rest of them; this
one was called the ruler, and the multitude were called his servants [officials]. The
11
Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Wunengzi in this chapter come from the previously unpub-
lished version by my student colleague, Catrina Siu, and my faculty colleague, Daniel Youd of the Department of
Modern Languages at Beloit College, a translation which I and Professor Youd edited for use in this chapter.

165
 one could control the multitude, but the multitude could not gain supremacy over
the one. From this came the distinction between the ruler and the ministers, and the
exalted and lowly. The honoured were set on high and the multitude were placed on
the same low level [beneath him].

Once introduced, the principle of hierarchical rule and economic inequality became more and
more developed, and human oppression increased as a result:

In later times hierarchy and emoluments were established among the “wise and in-
telligent.” Thereupon, material things distinguished the ranks between the wealthy
and the poor, and people satisfied their desires in accordance with their ranks and
emoluments. Then they called the wise and intelligent ones “sages.”
But soon the debased and disgraced started to become jealous of the honoured, the
poor became jealous of the wealthy, and from this was born the spirit of competi-
tion. Those who called themselves sages worried about this and together they said,
“in the time of original purity, who was it who called themselves people? We ar-
tificially imposed the name “people” and therefore people were separated from the
animals. At that time, there were no exalted and debased, [so] who was it who called
themselves rulers and ministers? But after we imposed the construction of hierar-
chy; there came about rulers and ministers. At that time, there was no grasping
and no desires, [so] what were ranks and emoluments to them? We imposed assess-
ments on people, so now they started to realise the distinction between honourable
and disgraced. Now, the pure and natural has been weakened, and passions and
predilections are embraced by vying hearts. If there is competition, there is stealing,
if there is stealing, there is chaos [luan], [so] what is to happen in the future?

Given the worry of the ruling class about ordinary people’s increasing restiveness, the “sages”
then developed the Confucian principle of benevolent rule to justify their authority:

From among the group of the “wise and intelligent,” one who was most “wise and
intelligent” spoke and said: “I have a scheme!”; from this he taught the principles of
benevolence, virtue, loyalty and trustworthiness and to regulate them by means of
ritual and music. When a ruler oppressed his subjects he was to be called cruel, and
the ministers would say that the government was illegitimate. When the ministers
usurped [the ruler’s authority], the ruler would call them rebels. A father who did
not love his son, would be called un-nurturing, and a son who did not obey his
father would be called unfilial. When older brother and younger brother were not
in accordance, they would be called disrespectful and unfraternal; when a husband
and wife were not united as one, they would be called unchaste and inharmonious.
People who acted in these ways were called the wrong and people who did not were
called the right. The right were honoured and the wrong were disgraced, thus was
cultivated the feeling of pleasure in being right and the shame of being in the wrong,
and feelings of competition were suppressed.

Thus, far from reflecting Heaven’s will and an unchanging human nature, Confucian ideas of
cultivation of “virtue” only served to legitimate and protect domination of some humans over

166
others. Based on chapters from the text known as the Daodejing (the Classic of the Way and Its
Power)12 and the Zhuang Zi, and following the tradition of the Wei-Jin Daoist anarchists like Bao
Jingyan, Wu Nengzi goes on to see the Chinese philosophy of Legalism as coming from a natural
degeneration of rule once Confucianism could no longer hold people’s desires in check:

As even more generations passed, predilections and desires became more inflamed;
thereupon [people] turned their backs on benevolence, virtue, loyalty and trustwor-
thiness, and they transgressed from ritual and music and [started to] compete [with
each other]. Those who called themselves sages regretted this. They had no other
option but to establish laws and punishments and organise armies to keep the peo-
ple under control. When there were small offences, [people] were punished. When
offences were big, an army was set onto them. Therefore punishments such as im-
prisonment, using the kang, and being whipped were spread out over the country.
Spears, pikes, bows and arrows were spread out over the world, families were de-
stroyed and kingdoms wiped out. There were too many to count. The common
people came to dire poverty and died; this spread without end.

In the end, similar to the arguments of Western anarchists like Michael Bakunin, Wu Nengzi
turns on its head the typical question about how anarchists will handle the problem of crime
and warfare without government. Instead, Wu Nengzi argues, it is the principle of rule and the
imposition of hierarchy which leads to chaos and the destruction of human life:

Alas! It was natural to treat [the people] as beasts; it was not natural to treat them as
humans. Imposing the establishment of palaces and mansions, [formal] meals and
[prepared] food stirred up desires; imposing distinctions between the exalted and
debased and the honourable and disgraced excited competition; imposing benevo-
lence, virtue, ritual and music perverted what was natural. Imposing punishments
and laws and [using] military [force] immiserated [people’s] lives, this caused people
to seek after the branches [the extraneous] and forget about the root [the essential];
this disturbed their passions and attacked their lives, and together in great numbers
they died. They could not revive the past. This was the fault of those who called
themselves sages.

Thus far, Wu Nengzi’s critique sounds as radical as that of his predecessors, including even Bao
Jingyan, based on Daoist principles of original simplicity ( si), primeval unity without hierarchy
( hundun), and especially ziran (the natural or spontaneous), which as we noted above could be a
metaphor for human freedom in nature. But in later chapters in Part One of his text, though still
based on the Daoist idea of nature as an undifferentiated whole, Wu Nengzi starts to introduce
themes concerning the identity of life and death, almost certainly influenced by the spread of
Buddhist ideas in China during the Tang dynasty. In chapter three, Wu Nengzi examines human
nature and how humans look at the human body.

12
For translations of the Daodejing used in this chapter, see Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power: A Study
of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought (New York: Grove Press, 1935); and Ursula Le Guin, with the
collaboration of J. P. Seaton, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way (Boston and
London: Shambala Publications, Inc., 1997).

167
 As for human nature, it is spirit; as for fate, it is ether ( qi). Human nature and fate—
these two must mutually come together in the vast void; they give birth to each
other in nature. They are similar to … the mutual harmonising of yin and yang. That
which we term the skeletal part is the body; it is the apparatus of human nature and
fate. Is it not that fire is on top of the firewood? If there is no firewood then the fire
does not burn, if there is no fire, the firewood does not glow (from heat). If there is
no skeletal structure and body, human nature and fate has no means of standing up.
If human nature and fate attach themselves to the body, then it causes them to be
lively; therefore human nature and fate bubbles from nature and is born; the natural
skeletal structure and the body comes to a congealed point and dies. That which is
born from Nature, although it exists separately and can be broken off, is eternally
alive. That which naturally dies, although it moves around, it will always die.

So, beginning with the Daoist principles that nothing exists separately and that the idea of life
and death is like yin and yang, or two sides of an undifferentiated whole, Wu Nengzi denigrates
those who would seek to the elixir of long life instead of worrying about the quality of their lives.

Nowadays, not a single person does not like life and despises death, they do not
understand the principle of the natural cycle of life and death, they look to the thing
that is not moving and is rigid and they worry about it. They cast aside that which
is naturally born, devoting themselves to preserving that which is naturally dead.
The more diligently they preserve it, the more distant is life. This is desire that sink
feathers and floats rocks, how idiotic!

Though based on Daoist principles, Wu Nengzi seems to be introducing a Buddhist-influenced

idea of the unreality of both life and death, as in chapter four of Book One:

As for people, they most despise death, which is to say that they despise the shape
and skeletal body being rigid and not moving. As for the shape and skeletal body,
blood, flesh, ear and eyes, we cannot live without them. They cannot be lacking and
still be vital, thus we know that they are not the implements of life. Therefore you
should not wait to call death the point at which there is no movement and stiffness;
rather, death is at its root already there when we hasten to move around! There-
fore that which hastens to move about, relies on nothing more than that which is
originally not dead. And, secondly, it is not that which is able to move and hasten
about by itself. The body and skeletal shape are originally dead, therefore it is not
dying today, therefore it is not dead today, and therefore it is not going to die! As
for death, it is the most despised by the people. But there is no death to be despised,
besides the shape and skeletal structure; is there anything really to disturb feelings
of utmost harmony and satisfaction?

Throughout the next chapter, Wu Nengzi continues to denigrate people’s fear of death and
their desire for material things and a fine reputation as ideas inculcated and fanned by the so-
called sages. While still serving the purpose of undermining Confucian and Legalist concepts
of rule, this Buddhist-influenced denial of material needs based on the denial of the distinction
between life and death will serve later to undermine his anarchism.

168
 Nevertheless, in the second part of this same chapter, Wu Nengzi continues his radical egali-
tarian vision. Far from naturally favouring our relatives and close friends, as Confucian thinkers
would have it, he argues that we should not differentiate among people but instead treat all
equally:
if you use the name that you use to name your relatives to name the people under
Heaven, then all people under Heaven will be your relatives! If you use the way you
familiarise yourself with relatives to familiarise yourself with people of the world,
then all the people under Heaven will all be your relatives! What need is there
to speak of an exclusive object of our affections? If there are none to be familial
to or paternally benevolent to, then we can be familial and paternally benevolent
to all under Heaven; but if there are those that we must be familial and paternally
benevolent to, then we will only be familial and paternally benevolent to the people
in one single household, and moreover, filial piety and paternal benevolence will
become a burden!; but if you get rid of them then there is insincerity, and if there is
insincerity, then fathers, sons, older brothers and younger brothers will have dislike
and resentment!
Thus again, it is Confucian ideas of benevolent hierarchy that lead to strife and contention.
It is in the second of his three books where Wu Nengzi’s political ideology starts to show
the effects of his Buddhist-influenced stance of detachment from material things. In retelling a
famous incident from the period of the end of the Shang or Yin dynasty and the beginning of the
Zhou (ca. eleventh century B.C.E.), Wu Nengzi takes up the eternal question for intellectuals first
raised by Zhuang Zi, whether or not to serve in government. At first Wu Nengzi’s sage seems
to follow the advice of Zhuang Zi to not get sullied by serving the state, though in terms which
seem to deny the reality of the people’s suffering:
only after Xi Bo [the eventual King Wen of the Zhou dynasty] repeatedly beseeched
him [for advice], [the retired official Lü] Wang sat down with his legs crossed like
a basket and laughed, saying “Why did you come here⁈” Xi Bo said, “the Shang
Dynastical government is in chaos! The people are in great pain! I, a foolish peon,
desire to save them, yet I think I should get a worthy gentleman to help me.” Wang
said, “the Shang Dynastical government became chaotic by itself, and the people are
in great pain out of their own doing. What is the connection to you? Why do you
want to sully me?” Xi Bo said, “Well, sages should not hide their usefulness or keep
their benevolence to themselves. They must exhaust their wisdom by universally
helping all things. Isn’t this so?” Lü Wang said, “Well now, Human beings are float-
ing between heaven and earth, together with the birds, beasts, and many insects, in
the middle of unitary ether [ qi], and nothing more. It’s exactly the same as castle
walls, houses, and cottages all pointing up into the air’s hollowness. If something
completely destroyed the castle walls, houses, and cottages, then the air would still
be the air. If something killed off all humans, birds, beasts, and insects, the ether
would still be the ether. How can we do anything about the Shang government’s
loutishness? How can we say anything of people’s hardship?”
Though sounding very indifferent to ordinary people’s suffering, this passage could be based
on chapter five of the Daodejing, which advises the sage to be ruthless and treat the people as

169
straw dogs, advice which Arthur Waley claims is a bait for the Legalists.13 That is, since “nature
is perpetually bounteous” and thus perhaps takes care of people naturally, there is no need for
rulers to paternalistically to “take care” of the people. Nevertheless, in a very important shift,
Wu Nengzi allows his reclusive official to serve the state after all in the end:

despite all of this, the castle walls, houses, and cottages are already built and so need
not be destroyed, just as the people are already formed and need not be killed, so I
will save them!, Then, [Lü Wang] [in the end] agreed with Xi Bo and rode back home
with him in the same carriage.

Xi Bo, in answering another of his officials as to why he decided to aid the suffering people of
the Shang dynasty despite his talk of the virtue of the Daoist principle of wuwei (inaction, or doing
nothing), replied with what one could argue is a very Buddhist take on wuwei, an interpretation
which Wu Nengzi has Lü Wang endorse:

Xi Bo said, “Heaven and Earth are inactive, yet the sun, moon, stars, and constella-
tions move in the day and the night. There are rain, dew, frost, and freezing rain
in the autumn and winter. The great rivers flow without pause, and the grass and
trees grow without stopping. Therefore, inaction can be flexible. If there is a fixed
point in action, then it cannot be inaction.” Lü Wang heard this and knew that Xi
Bo really did have compassion for the people and didn’t want any profit from the
Shang Dynasty’s world. Thereupon, Lü Wang and Xi Bo finally made the State of
Zhou prosperous and powerful.

This conclusion of the chapter goes to the heart of the difficulty of Wu Nengzi’s thought. If
life and death are the same and material suffering is just an illusion, then being attached to
opposing all government is also an illusion. In the end for Wu Nengzi, one can try to help
people by trying to govern them, but only as long as one has no desire to dominate them and no
illusions about the ultimate worth of government. One then could wonder whether Wu Nengzi’s
prior condemnation of all government and his ridicule of the idea of benevolent rule for the
benefit of people completely fall apart. If nothing matters, so too opposition to the state does not
matter. Perhaps we could use contemporary language to say that Wu Nengzi would not oppose
intellectuals taking part in government as long as they have a stance of ironic detachment while
they are governing.
In the rest of Part Two, Wu Nengzi turns the tables on both famous officials and famous recluses
in Chinese history, making both look ridiculous for seeking virtue and fame, either by holding
office and great wealth or by becoming hermits. Both are deluded, he seems to be saying, if
they think they have found the truth. It is being attached to any desires, whether the desire to
hold high office or the desire to hold a reputation as an honest recluse, that leads people astray.
Standing by itself, this message would not depart very much from the ideas of earlier Daoist
anarchists, especially those of the poet Ruan Ji (210–263 C.E.). In his great poem, “The Biography
of Master Great Man,” Ruan Ji’s hero answers the Confucian gentlemen who came to him to
criticise his “immoral” behaviour of not dressing properly or seeking high office by comparing
these men ambitious to serve nobly in high office to lice who inhabit a pair of trousers:
13
See Waley, 147.

170
 When [the louse] runs away into a deep seam or hides in some broken wadding, he
thinks he has found a “propitious residence.” In his movements he dares not leave
the seam’s edge nor part from the crotch of the drawers, and he thinks he is “toeing
the orthodox line” that way. But when [in the event of a great fire] there are hills
of flame and streams of fire, when towns are charred and cities destroyed, then the
lice, trapped where they are, die in their pair of drawers. What difference is there in
your gentleman’s living in his small area and a louse in a pair of drawers? How sad
it is that he thinks he can “keep catastrophes far away and good fortune near” and
“[his family and descendants] eternally secure.”

Ruan Ji then makes the argument followed by Bao Jingyan that it would be better if there were
no offices and honours to seek than to resign office from an immoral government. Wu Nengzi
likewise criticises the idea of serving in government for noble reasons, but more cynically than
Ruan Ji or Bao Jingyan goes on to argue that serving in office is nevertheless not to be condemned
if one has no illusions about the morality of serving. In chapter six of Part Two, he has two
officials discuss retiring from high office after achieving success for their king. The first official
cannot imagine retiring at the point of their highest achievement, while the other warns that the
king will now only be jealous of their success if they stick around:

Therefore [even when] we have gotten rid of harm and not met with disasters and
brought material things to a completion, we will have no good fortune. Recently,
because he hated the state of Wu, [the king] employed you and me in order to use
our schemes. You and I benefitted from the pay and therefore we schemed against
Wu [for the king], and we [can] take as a sign of our success, the destruction of the
people, and as payback, he gives us our emoluments. The duplicity of people is such
that they say that they are like Heaven and Earth’s births and killings [and] that they
are agents of Heaven and Earth—what sages call getting rid of harm and bringing
things to completion, isn’t this just a big scam?14

In other words, the idea of serving in office is not criticised, not even the destruction of a whole
people for the benefit of a king, only the idea that the rewards earned by serving the king will
last forever or that the government service has some higher purpose.
In chapter eight of Part Two, Wu Nengzi tells the story of four famous recluses whom a king
tried to entice to join his government, probably in order to demonstrate that the most virtuous
officials were willing to serve him. Though they agreed that the emperor was more kind and
virtuous then his rivals for power, the four recluses made a cynical conclusion to serve the evil
Queen Mother and her henchman, the Marquis of Liu, who were scheming to replace the emperor
with her son, the Crown Prince.

The four people, in the beginning, refused [the entreaties of the Marquis of Liu], but
they got together and discussed [the matter], saying: “Liu Ji was high and mighty;
moreover, he knows the means by which he is more exalted than us. He sought
after us but we will not go—he has embarrassed himself and nothing more! As for
Empress Lu, that woman’s nature is cruel and mean, [and] her son Ying is not yet
14
Translated in Holzman, 192–195.

171
 firmly established as the crown prince, so she has necessarily been pushed to a crisis.
In crisis, she has come seeking us; the peaceful resolution of the crisis depends on
us. If she seeks us but does not get us, she will necessarily bring disaster upon us,
therefore we must answer yes to her.”

Thus the four former recluses agreed to do the dirty work of the Empress and the Marquis, to
the point where her son ascended the throne and her enemies were eliminated. At that point the
four men refused further honours and returned to their reclusion.

Empress Lu treated them virtuously and wanted to honour and give them rank and
ennoblements. The four recluses discussed this and said: “The reason we came here
was to avoid disaster; it was not from the desire of our hearts. Yin is now secure
and Ru Yi has been undermined. The Empress Lu has now gotten her wish and Qi
Ji was killed. Now we are afraid of disaster, we have caused Yin to succeed and Ru
Yi to be undermined, we caused Empress Lu to be happy and Qi Ji to despair; this
is called destroying others to keep yourself whole, so this is probably not a case
of killing to achieve virtue. Moreover, are we going to deal with the humiliation
of being ennobled by a woman and by this means, get a position at court? What
difference is this from being a thief and going into a person’s home and taking their
gold and becoming a rich person?” So they left and again hid themselves in Mount
Shang, and Empress Lu was unable to keep them.

We should note again that this chapter does not criticise the idea of serving in government,
even serving obviously power-hungry nobles and officials at the expense of more high-minded
rulers. The only thing being criticised is the belief that either serving or not serving in office can
ever demonstrate moral virtue.
This cynical attitude is perhaps why Hsiao Kung-chuan claims that in the end Wu Nengzi’s
thought is nothing more than “a pure negation without any suggestion as to what is to be done
or what shall take the place of the state” and thus demonstrates that Chinese Daoist anarchism is
merely a “doctrine of despair” rather than one of hope as in Western anarchism.15 Peter Zarrow
thinks that Hsiao unfairly characterises all Daoist anarchists, some of whom did possess an “alter-
native social vision” if not a theory of revolution, but he accepts that Wu Nengzi is an exception to
other radical Daoists and is closer to a “total cynic than a constructive social thinker.”16 Similarly,
Germaine Hoston thinks his cynical attitude marks Wu Nengzi’s thought as nihilistic.17
In Part Three of the Wunengzi, the author speaks more in his own name and says things more
directly. The main point is still to argue that people should have no intentionality, and Wu Nengzi
continues to interpret the Daoist principle of wuwei as taking no intentional action out of a desire
for personal or social benefit, except perhaps for the benefit of continuing to live, which would
seem to be an obvious contradiction to having no desire. Nevertheless, in other chapters Wu
Nengzi disparages even the desire for health and long life. Perhaps he is arguing that having no
intention and having no desire is not always the same thing. In chapter two of the third book
Wu Nengzi tells about a friend named Hua Yangzi who came to him asking about whether to
accept another friend’s offer to serve in office:
15
Hsiao, 260.
16
Zarrow, 10, 262, note 23.
17
Hoston, 159.

172
 “I have been practicing to be without intention for a long time. If I go to become
an official, then I will be going against my desires, but if I don’t go to become and
official, then I will anger that friend. What should I do?”
Wu Nengzi said, “Having no intentionality [ wuxin] is not something that you can
learn. Having no intentionality has nothing to do with serving in office or not serv-
ing in office. If you are confused and your thinking is too deep, it’s like you have
seen a blind person on the verge of a pit and you instruct him to walk forward. As for
a person who takes no action [ wuwei] that means there’s no action that he cannot
take, and as for a person who takes action, there are certain actions that he can’t take.
Only those people who are closest to their original nature [ zhishi] will be able to un-
derstand this great principle. That which is closest to the highest public spiritedness
[ zhigong] is what we mean by no action and it takes its root in having no desires
and having no selfishness. So if you have desire then even if you’re a fisherman, a
woodcutter, a farmer, or a shepherd, you’ll have intentionality [ youxin]. But if you
have no desire, and you’re the emperor riding in his carriage or you’re a marquis
wearing his robes, then you’ll have no intentionality. Therefore, sages abide where
it is appropriate and take action [ xing] where it is appropriate. Principle is located
at the point where one cultivates the self. Xuyou and Shan Zhuan [hermits from
the time of Shun] were not embarrassed to be commoners, but when the situation is
favourable then it is permissible to provide aid to the world. Therefore the emperors
Yao and Shun didn’t decline the office of emperor. In both cases [the hermits and
the emperors] were united in having no intentionality. When Yao and Shun were on
the throne they had no concern for the nobility that the office of Son of Heaven gave
them. They merely let their robes hang down and the world was governed. So when
it was evident that Dan Zhu [the son of Yao] and Shang Zhun [who was the son of
Shun] were of small ability, then Yao passed the throne to Shun and Shun passed the
throne to Yu; therefore they cast aside their own sons as if they were scabs and they
set aside the world as if it were spittle. For this reason there were generations when
the world was at peace. In the time of the Duke of Zhou, King Wen’s son and King
Wu’s younger brother, [King Cheng] everyone knew that the Duke of Zhou was vir-
tuous but because King Cheng was alive it was not a favourable time for the Duke of
Zhou and therefore he didn’t become the Son of Heaven. Because King Cheng was
young it was correct for the Duke of Zhou to remain as regent and this [post] he
didn’t decline. He did all this in order to make sure that the House of Zhou would
last for generations and that the people of the state of Zhou would have good lives
and he was greatly successful and the fame of his deeds has never declined. This is
all because he had no desires himself and there was nothing that he would not do.
If you can understand this, although you might be cock fighting or racing dogs in
the butcher’s market or grasping an enemy’s battle flag on the battlefield, it doesn’t
matter, you can do both of them, so why are you worried about serving in office?”

Thus Wu Nengzi concludes this chapter on a very Confucian note, even to the point of ac-
cepting the official Confucian model heroes Yao and Shun and the Duke of Zhou. Taking away
all intentionality and all illusions about trying to rule for the benefit of the people, he seems to
be saying, might sometimes allow, not just for serving in government, but in the end even for

173
ruling in ways that would benefit oneself and others, but only if one does not have the desire or
intention to benefit people at the outset.
If this conclusion is valid, then one might obviously ask if anything at all is left of Wu Nengzi’s
anarchism. After all, at a minimum one would think any anarchist doctrine should view the
state as unnecessary, harmful, and dangerous. Though some Western anarchists, most famously
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, at some points accepted service in the state, perhaps for tactical or
limited reasons, as also for example, some of the anarchists who cooperated with the Republican
side in the Spanish civil war, most modern anarchists would point out the obvious contradictions
even for tactical or temporary compromises with the state, since the main anarchist principle is
that the state’s very nature as a monopolistic operation will eventually lead it to dominate other
interests, including those of class, interest group, gender, or ethnicity. If there is something in
even the radical side of philosophical Daoism that would excuse state service, then it would seem
the possibilities for Daoist anarchism are severely compromised, to say the least.

III. More Narrow Problem: Is All Daoism Nihilism?

At other times as well in ancient China, individuals justified or excused service in the state us-
ing Daoist principles. If we can find some common shift in language or rhetoric among those
who used Daoist terms to justify rule, perhaps we can determine whether those thinkers who
remained loyal to the anarchistic side of Daoist thought shared a common flaw or whether those
who accommodated themselves to rule introduced changes in Daoist thought not shared by rad-
ical Daoist thinkers, and perhaps not shared in the original Daoist texts such as the Daodejing
and the Zhuang Zi. The three most important timers earlier in Chinese history when thinkers
used Daoism to justify or acquiesce in rule included the early years of the former Han dynasty
(ca. 202 B.C.E.-9 C.E.), the first generation of the revival of philosophical Daoism at the end of
the later Han dynasty (25–220 C.E.) and the third generation of neo-Daoists at the beginning of
the Wei-Jin period (ca. 220–300’s CE)
In the early Han dynasty, intellectuals were casting around for a suitable legitimating ideol-
ogy of rule for the Han leaders, given that the previously prevailing ideology of Legalism had
been discredited by the harsh rule of the Qin dynasty (221–207 C.E.) that the Han had recently
overthrown. For a relatively short time, Daoism seemed to gain ascendancy at the Han court.
The basic argument of these court Daoists was that the Han regime ruled lightly, with less harsh
taxes and less need for military repression compared to the Qin and so could be said to be like
the ideal ruler in the Daodejing who is unseen and unfelt by the people.
This use of concepts in the Daodejing to justify rule perhaps came from what is known as the
“Huang-Lao” tradition, which combined the mythical Yellow emperor with a deified Lao Zi (the
legendary author of the Daodejing). Most famously, in one of the silk manuscripts unearthed
near the village of Mawangdui in Hunan province in 1973 from a tomb that had been sealed in
168 B.C.E.,18 the author argues that a ruler in touch with the dao, or the Way, should be able to
know what is needed and how to get others to accept his rule:

Therefore only Sages are able to discern [the dao] in the Formless,
18
For an account of the discovery of this manuscript, see Wm. Theodore deBary and Irene Bloom, trans. and
comp., Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 1 From Earliest Times: to 1600, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press,
1999), 241–242.

174
 And hear it in the Soundless.
And knowing the reality of its emptiness,
They can become totally empty,
And then be absorbed in the purses essence of Heaven-and-Earth.
Absorbed and merged without any gaps,
Pervasive and united without filling it up.
Fully to acquiesce to this Way:
This is called “being able to be purified.”
The lucid are inherently able to discern the ultimate.
They know what others are unable to know,
And acquiesce to what others are unable to attain.
This is called “discerning the normative and knowing the ultimate.”
If sage kings make use of this,
All-under-Heaven will acquiesce.
…
One who is truly able to be without desires
Can give commands to the people.
If the one above truly acts without striving
Then all living things will be completely at peace.19

The first change one can discern in early Han Daoism from ideas in the Daodejing and the
Zhuang Zi, seminal Daoist texts used by later Daoist anarchists to deny the need for all rule, is
the Han thinkers’ confidence that the dao can be known and interpreted by the sages or even
one sage-ruler and applied to others. The second, related shift concerns the blowing up of the
concepts of nothingness ( wu) and the emptiness or void at the heart of the universe.
The most famous version of this Daoist justification of rule in the early Han was the text known
as the Huainanzi, which was presented to the future Han emperor Wu (r.141–187) in 139 B.C.E.
as a preferred method of rule that would help justify his regime. The authors continue to use the
principle of non-action or doing nothing ( wuwei) found in the Daodejing but now interpret it, not
as calling for anarchy, but as favouring a ruler in touch with the dao who rules by emptying his
mind and limiting his and his subjects’ desires.20 Roger Ames argues, however, that in practice
the authors of this text were trying to subvert rule and get the king to rule in a less overbearing
manner and thus continued to be influenced by the anarchist side of Daoism.21 An anarchist-
influenced observer, of course, might ask whether these intellectuals’ attempt to soften Han rule
in practice was overwhelmed by their participation in aiding the state’s legitimation. In any case,
it is the shift toward the belief in one or a few sages knowing how to interpret the dao for others
based on a dao that is equated with nothingness that allows for the justification of rule.
In the end, of course, the state eventually abandoned most claims to follow Daoist principles
when the Han dynasty gradually had to rule more directly and forcefully as more officials and
19
Translated in deBary and Bloom, 254–255.
20
For partial translations of the Huainanzi, see de Bary and Bloom, 268–273, and Mark Csikszentmihalyi, ed.
and trans., Readings in Han Chinese Thought (Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 2006), 63–4, 72–75;
for a full translation see Roger Ames, The Art of Rulership: A Study in Ancient Chinese Political Thought (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1983).
21
Ames, 46, 148.

175
their families became tax exempt, public works needed to be repaired, and armies replenished
to fight nomadic invaders and internal rebels. As a result, the Han eventually turned to a new
synthesis of Confucian doctrines as its main legitimating ideology.
The second major period when philosophical Daoism was put in the service of rule was in the
early Wei-Jin period (ca. 220–62 C.E.). At this time, after the fall of the later Han dynasty and
the beginning of a long period of political disunity in imperial China, some of the intellectual
figures around the legendary general Cao Cao (155–220), who was seeking ways to legitimate his
rule as the leader of a would-be new imperial Wei dynasty, returned to the Daodejing find ways
to justify his rule. The Daoist-influenced intellectuals serving him also returned to the idea of
wu, or nothingness as the main principle of Daoism. According to this version, all things in the
universe come not from an underlying unity in the world but from nothing. All actions should
be carried out according to a principle of spontaneity ( ziran), but for these Daoist advisors there
was nothing wrong in principle with the idea of rule. Thus Cao Cao’s rise from a person of low
birth to that of possible emperor was the rise of a ruler coming “out of nowhere.” Cao Cao’s
apologists used this version of philosophical Daoism against the rival Sima clan, who came from
the higher class of land-owning gentry and whose preferred ideology of rule lay in the Confucian
doctrine of the time known as mingjiao, or “teaching of names.”22 As Richard Mather puts it:

In the [early Wei] era the debris of Confucian ritualism had to be cleared away and
room made for the new values of “Naturalness” [ ziran] and “Non-actuality” ( wu) to
buttress the new order of government… [Originally] the new men like Cao Cao had
risen to power by virtue of their ability alone, and the [Confucian] shibboleths of
the old aristocracy concerning “goodness and morality” [ ren-yi] “loyalty and filial
submission” [ zhong-xiao] were meaningless to them if a man could not conduct a
[military] campaign successfully or manage an administrative post efficiently… And
the men he gathered about him quickly furnished this pragmatic policy with an
ideological base.23

Daoism was only one of many philosophical strands picked up by Cao Cao’s coterie, who also
borrowed concepts from Legalism and even Confucianism to justify his rule. In this synthesis,
some intellectuals claimed that Confucius was a better sage than Lao Zi, as in the following
exchange from the biography of the noted Wei philosopher Wang Bi (226–249):

[As Pei Hui asked Wang] “Nothing ( wu) is, in truth what the myriad things depend
on for existence, yet the sage (Confucius) was unwilling to talk about it, while Master
Lao expounded upon it endlessly. Why is that?” Wang Bi replied, “the sage embodied
nothing ( wu), so he also knew that it could not be explained in words. Thus he did
not talk about it. Master Lao, by contrast, operated on a level of being ( you). That is
why he constantly discussed nothingness; he had to, for what he said about it always
fell short.”24

22
See Balazs, 234–235.
23
Mather, “The Controversy over Conformity and Naturalness during the Six Dynasties,” History of Religions 9,
no. 2–3 (Nov. 1969 and Feb. 1970): 161, 163.
24
In the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms, translated in de Bary and Bloom, 385.

176
 This elevation of Confucius above Lao Zi by the neo-Daoist intellectuals around Cao Cao mir-
rors their elevation of sages who rule over those who refuse to participate in rule, reversing the
praise of the latter type of sages found most famously in the Zhuang Zi that the full-fledged
Daoist anarchists Ruan Ji and Bao Jingyan had copied.
It was only after the Wei rulers were overthrown by the Sima clan, who founded the Jin dynasty,
that some of the descendants of the Wei intellectuals turned philosophical Daoism into a doctrine
opposing all rule, as reflected in the ideas of the poet Ruan Ji and the thinker Bao Jingyan. But as
the Jin dynasty itself broke down into infighting among royal princes and as northern nomadic
groups moved into northern China and the political situation became even more chaotic at the
end of the Wei-Jin era of the Six Dynasties period (220–589), Daoist-influenced intellectuals and
members of the upper classes turned neo-Daoism once again into a nihilistic doctrine. As Balazs
puts it:

What had been, with men [of the second generation of antistatist neo-Daoists] a high
state of tension that was part of a serious effort to transcend human limitations, re-
lapsed into mere abandonment of the ordinary decencies of life. The frenzied attempt
at emancipation had turned into wanton frivolity, the cry of cynical revolt to cynical
acceptance, liberty to libertinage.25

Men of this third generation of neo-Daoists began once again began to justify government
service as being in line with ziran or spontaneity, based again on the idea of wu or nothingness
as the basis of the dao.
What all three prior instances of Daoist anarchism turning into nihilism share then, is the
emphasis on the universe as based on nothing and the idea of the superior ability of properly
detached sages to realise this and to interpret principles for others without getting sullied or
corrupted by rule. Of course Wu Nengzi shares at least the former belief, and implicitly the
latter in his claim that the truly enlightened sage knows when serving in government is folly and
when it is permissible. The shift in emphasis in all these instances was literally from everything to
nothing, that is, from the belief in an overarching unity of the universe that cannot be objectively
known and applied by some to rule over others to the idea that everything that seemingly exists
comes from nothing and thus that there were no a priori principles that would make all rule
illegitimate. The shift in all instances was also from the idea of rejecting all participation in
government as inherently corrupting to the idea that the wisest people with the coolest attitude
of detachment could have the superior knowledge and ability to allow them to acquiesce in rule,
or even to rule over others themselves, without being corrupted.
The flaw then, is not in the Daoist principle of wuwei itself but in the denial of any pre-existing
overarching principle underlying the unity of existence and equality of all things. What is also
missing from those Daoists who justified rule and service in government is any true belief in
human equality and freedom for all, not just for superior sages, despite the talk of favouring all
equally in Wunengzi Book One, chapter five that we examined above.

25
Balazs, 247.

177
IV. Larger Problem: Is Post-Modern Anarchism Nihilism?
The larger problem presented by the breakdown of Daoist anarchism in the thought of Wu Nengzi
into passive nihilism is the lesson for post-modernist thought, especially those post-modernists
who call themselves anarchists.
Anarchists up to the post-modernist period would reject the classic conservative critique that
by denying the existence of pre-existing standards of morality, all anarchism is nihilism in the
end. This conservative stance is perhaps most cogently summarised by Fyodor Dostoevsky’s
claim that “once God is abolished, anything is possible” and in his denunciation of early Rus-
sian revolutionaries as immoral nihilists too easily duped by power hungry would-be supermen,
such as Sergei Nechaev, the associate of Michael Bakunin and the basis for the character of
Pyotr Verkhovesky in Dostoevsky’s novel, The Devils.26 Classic anarchists, most notably Peter
Kropotkin, are more easily able to reject this critique in their claim that there is a natural un-
derlying morality of humans based on human evolution that exists prior to the establishment of
organised religion and the state.27
Many post-modernist thinkers, on the other hand, would seem more open to the conservative
critique, to the extent that they accept the premise that all “meta-narratives” meant to explain
the world and give people a guide to action are inherently just constructions of new forms of
domination that stand in the way of liberatory goals. While they claim to deny any overarching
“meta-narrative” as valid for all other people, one must ask whether post-modernist anarchists
reserve for themselves the right to be critical of all other narratives while preserving their own
ideas as something other than a true narrative. Even if they claim their own approach is not a
meta-narrative but only a stance of “ironic detachment,” then one could argue that this stance
too easily smacks of intellectual superiority.
While they clearly remain within the tradition of classical anarchists who viewed all religious
and political doctrines as attempts to enslave people with metaphysical or real authority, one
must ask whether post-modernist anarchists go further to deny the existence of all truth, even
truth that cannot be known objectively or imposed on others. If so, as many critics have asked
about post-modernism, how is one to criticise any political doctrine or state as evil, even fascist
ones? This charge was most famously and perhaps for post-modernists most infuriatingly raised
by Richard Wolin, who tries to relate the collaborationist and even fascist background of some
of the seminal post-modernist thinkers in order to expose flaws in post-modernist thought as
a whole.28 While those who want to find a genuine liberatory critique in post-modernism may
decry his attack as relying almost completely on guilt by association, perhaps it is too easy for
post-modernist anarchists to make this charge and ignore the need for serious self-examination.
It seems obvious to me that the move among Daoist thinkers such as Wu Nengzi from pacifist

26
The title of this novel has also been translated as The Dispossessed and more recently, by Richard Pevear and
Larissa Volokhonsky as Demons (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), who note in their foreword, vii-viii, that Dosto-
evsky based the character of Verkhovensky on Sergei Nechaev and his actions in the actual murder of the fellow
revolutionary Sergei Ivanov.
27
Kropotkin expressed this idea of a naturally existing human morality most famously in his book Mutual Aid:
A Factor of Evolution (London: Heineman, 1902), and also in his unfinished but posthumously published work, Ethics:
Origin and Development (New York: Dial Press, 1925).
28
See Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietsche to Postmodernism
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

178
anarchism to passive nihilism was based on a similar shift in emphasis from the non-existence
of hierarchical distinctions to the non-existence of everything.
This charge of nihilism against post-modernist and/or “lifestyle” anarchists who think their
intellectual stance alone will serve to achieve anarchism may be the opposite side of the coin of
those who find Daoist anarchism a mystical doctrine that relies on a supernatural authority and is
thus inherently un-anarchist, a view of Daoism with which I obviously strongly disagree.29 Even
if Daoists believe in the existence of an overarching, undifferentiated whole, they would deny
that one can objectively reconstruct that whole for others. More dangerous, a Daoist anarchist
would argue, is any doctrine based on the idea that some may know objective truths better than
other people, and thus also when to apply those truths on behalf of others, which may too easily
lead to would-be anarchists acquiescing and even participating in establishing authority over
fellow humans. Only by embracing the whole, not denying its existence, a Daoist anarchist
would argue—that is, by accepting the underlying unity and thus equality of all things, even if
by its very nature that whole cannot be hierarchically organised—can one stay loyal to a fully
anarchist vision.

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De Bary, Wm. Theodore, and Irene Bloom, trans. and comp. Sources of Chinese Tradition. Vol. 1
From Earliest Times: to 1600. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Demons: A Novel in Three Parts. Translated and annotated by Richard Pevear
and Larissa Volokhonsky. New York: Vintage Books, 1994.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, ed. and trans. Readings in Han Chinese Thought.
Indianapolis, Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co. Inc., 2006.
Forke, Alfred. Geschichte der Mittelalterlichen Chinesichen Philosophie. Hamburg: Cram, De
Gruyter and Co., 1964.
Holzman, Donald. Poetry and Politics: The Life and Times of Juan Chi (AD 210–263). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Hoston, Germaine. The State, Identity, and the National Question in China and Japan. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1994.
Hsiao Kung-chuan. “Anarchism in Chinese Political Thought.” Tien Hsia Monthly 3 (October
1936): 249–263.

29
A charge made against Daoism by Janet Biehl, an associate of Murray Bookchin and the Social Ecology school,
in our exchanges on the Research on Anarchism (RA-L) listserv at listes.univ-montp3.fr. See Biehl, “Re: Comment on
Bookchin,” part two, Sep. 30, 1998; “Reply to Rapp,” parts 1 one and two, Oct. 22, 1998; my original post on Oct. 2
1998; and my rejoinder to her critique on Oct. 28, 1998. My own postings from this debate at least are also accessible
online at www.zpub.com.

179
—. Zhongguo chengzhi sixiang shi [History of Chinese Political Thought]. Taipei: Zhonghua wen-
hua chubanshe yewei yuanhui, 1954.
Kropotkin, Peter. Ethics: Origin and Development. New York: Dial Press, 1925.
—. Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. London: Heineman, 1902.
Le Guin, Ursula, with the collaboration of J. P. Seaton. Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching: A Book about the
Way and the Power of the Way. Boston and London: Shambala Publications, Inc., 1997.
Mather, Richard. “The Controversy over Conformity and Naturalness during the Six Dynasties.”
History of Religions 9, no. 2–3 (Nov. 1969 and Feb. 1970): 160–179.
Naundorf, Gert. Aspekte Des Anarchischen Gedankens in China: Darstellung der Lehre und Uber-
setzung des Texts Wu Neng Tzu. Inaugeral Dissertation, Julius-Maximilians-Universitat zu
Wurzberg, 1972.
Rapp, John A. “Daoism and Anarchism Reconsidered.” Anarchist Studies 6, no. 2 (1998): 123–51.
—. “Utopian, Anti-Utopian and Dystopian Ideas in Philosophical Daoism.” Journal of Compara-
tive Asian Development 2, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 211–31.
—. “Daoism as Utopian or Accommodationist: Radical Daoism Reexamined in Light of the Guo-
dian Manuscripts.” In Anarchism and Utopianism, edited by Laurence Davis and Ruth Kinna.
Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 2009.
Waley, Arthur. The Way and Its Power: A Study of the Tao Te Ching and Its Place in Chinese Thought.
New York: Grove Press, 1935.
Wang Ming (comp.). Wunengzi jiao shu. Beijing: Zhonghua shu ju: Xin hua shu dian Beijing fa
xing suo fa xing, 1981.
Watson, Burton, trans. The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970.
Wolin, Richard. The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietsche
to Postmodernism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004.
Zarrow, Peter. Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture. New York: Columbia University Press,
1990.

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CHAPTER TEN. KENNETH REXROTH’S
INTEGRATIVE VISION: ANARCHISM,
POETRY, AND THE RELIGIOUS
EXPERIENCE IN POST-WORLD WAR II SAN
FRANCISCO
MICHAEL T. VAN DYKE
San Francisco became the locus for the development of an anarchist and spiritually-tinged counter-
culture in the fifteen years following the Second World War because of several interrelated factors.
First, it was a culturally and religiously diverse city that had been a hotbed of labour radicalism
throughout the first half of the century. Second, due to the confinement of many of its Japanese-
American and pacifist citizens in internment camps during the war, it had felt the power of the
state in an especially acute way. Third, Kenneth Rexroth lived there. Rexroth, who had grown up
in Chicago during that city’s own cultural renaissance, drew upon an encyclopaedic knowledge of
cultural history and a wealth of personal experiences to create a unique communal consciousness
in the Bay area that eventually cohered into practices that offered a radically alternative model of
social reality. This consciousness directly countered certain prominent trends in American (literary)
culture at that time—namely a common “cultural religion,” the Zen-inspired “escape from reality”
of the Beats, and the traditionalist “return to religion” among East-coast literary intellectuals—and
it was deeply influenced by an interest in anarchist thought. Rexroth played a prominent role in
disseminating the writings of the foremost anarchist thinkers at his Friday evening “at homes,” and
he also theorised how the poetry reading could act as a force for social cohesion in the emerging
counter-culture. Fundamentally, he saw the poetry reading as a means for creating a religious sense
of reality that was neither confined to the isolated self, nor dependent upon the legitimising power
of the state.

The mercy of the West has been social revolution; the mercy of the East has been
individual insight into the basic self/void. We need both.1
—Gary Snyder, “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution”

Every day all states do things which, if they were the acts of individuals, would lead
to summary arrest and often execution.2
—Kenneth Rexroth
1
Gary Snyder, “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution,” in Earth House Hold: Technical Notes and Queries to
Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries (New York: New Directions, 1969), 92.
2
Kenneth Rexroth, “Introduction,” in Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is within You (Farra: Straus Giroux, 1961),
v.

181
 Before the Second World War, San Francisco was a fairly insignificant city on the world stage,
cut off from the centres of commerce, politics, and the arts in the United States by thousands
of miles of geography. It was also marked by cultural traditions that, like those of New Or-
leans, were relatively exotic to most Americans. For example, it was a religiously heterogeneous
city, more dramatically diverse than even New York City, with a lingering Catholic presence
(established by the numerous missions in the area) existing side by side with Asian meditative
traditions brought over by Chinese and Japanese immigrants. Protestantism was only a minor
contributor to the spiritual stew of the region.
San Francisco also had a strong heritage of radicalism, with the general strike of 1934 being
only one episode in a long history of labour revolt. In the early twentieth century San Francisco
was a centre of Wobbly (Industrial Workers of the World) activity, and in the North Beach section
of the city a large population of Italian immigrants carried on the legacy of Malatesta by holding
discussion groups and continually agitating for better working conditions on the docks. It was
not until after the Second World War, however, that these two traditions—heterogeneous spiritu-
ality and uncompromising radicalism—merged in a meaningful way. And it happened, strangely
enough, through the auspices of literary renaissance, for which much of the credit must be given
to Kenneth Rexroth, who was the leading poet and cultural instigator in the city by that time.
Rexroth came to San Francisco in 1927 from Chicago, where he had taken part in certain as-
pects of the burgeoning ferment of radicalism and the arts that would later be called the Chicago
Renaissance. An orphan from the age of thirteen, Rexroth had lived a somewhat wild life on
Chicago’s South Side; but he had also taken it upon himself to engage in a massive program of
self-education, turning himself into an artist and a competent intellectual by his late teens. He
never received a high school diploma, but he did learn quite a bit about radical social and politi-
cal philosophies from the soapbox speakers who hung around “Bughouse Square” (Washington
Square Park) on the North Side. Along the way he also had several intense mystical experiences,
recounted in his Autobiographical Novel, which led him to spend some time in a monastery in
New York. He chose the life of the poet over the life of the mystic at that time; later, though, he
would discount any sharp dichotomies between the two activities.
Rexroth ultimately decided to live in the Bay area because the mild climate mitigated his wife,
Andree’s, epileptic seizures. It was not long before he realised, however, that the city held many
possibilities for a young poet and radical. Throughout the 1930s Rexroth wrote for labour week-
lies, started a John Reed Club, helped to paint the interior of Coit Tower as part of a Works
Progress Administration project, and wrote most of the poems that would go into his ground-
breaking book In What Hour.3
He also struggled to reconcile his early Christian mysticism with his evolving radicalism.
Though he joined the Communist Party for a short time in the mid-1930s, his basic attitude
towards the institution of the Party remained sceptical, and he gradually became a consistent
critic of Stalinism from the Left. Anything that coerced and thus violated the integrity of the
individual conscience was anathema to him.
As he expressed to poet Louis Zukofsky in a series of letters4 in the early 1930s, for Rexroth
the poet was always the figure of ultimate disaffiliation whose role was to express a sensibility

3
Kenneth Rexroth, In What Hour (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1940).
4
Kenneth Rexroth to Louis Zukofsky, 16 January 1931 and 10 March 1931, Chicago Review 52, no. 2–4 (Autumn
2006): 17–40.

182
in which personal and social values cohered. The poet was the circulator of a vision of the
community of love, in which free individuals found transcendent meaning in their relationship
to each other. It was a vision that superseded all political programs and that merged literature
and social responsibility in a way that was inconceivable to the proletarian poets of the 1930s.
Nonetheless, Rexroth’s activities during that decade were hardly consistent in bringing about
coherence to his own life and career, much less that of his community in San Francisco. The 1930s,
while fertile in artistic and political experimentation, was largely a time of scattered energies.
The Second World War brought everything to a focus. Most of the writers in the Bay area
were forced to consider whether they would join in the war effort or stand against it, and many,
like Rexroth, decided to register as conscientious objectors. In Rexroth’s case, this gave him the
opportunity to clarify his relationship to the American state, and set him on a course towards
espousing a more definite anarchist stance. His move in this direction was further solidified when
President Roosevelt signed the Internment Act, sending many Japanese-Americans off to camps
that were harsher than those reserved for conscientious objectors. During this time Rexroth
participated in a type of “underground railroad” to hide citizens of Japanese descent from the
authorities. He also made contact with many of the literary and artistic conscientious objectors
in the Northwest who came to San Francisco when they were allowed to take weekend leaves
from the camps. A good number of these poets and artists later took up residence in the city and
were a part of the post-war renaissance, to which they brought not only their artistic abilities
but also the religious sentiments that caused most of them to be conscientious objectors in the
first place.
The final straw in the creation of an incipient anarchist consciousness on the West Coast was
the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. For many residents of the Bay area who were
accustomed to mingling with people of Japanese descent, this was a psychological blow that
even the more radical literati on the East coast could not fully understand. The various strands
of political dissent, religious sensibility, and artistic practice that had occasionally intertwined
in the past in the Bay area now came together to create something that American culture had
never seen before.
Since many books and articles have explored the literary scene in post-war San Francisco
from a literary perspective, in this chapter I want to focus more on the religious and anarchist
substrates that gave the literary culture of the Bay area its truly alternative nature. It must be
kept in mind, however, that Kenneth Rexroth’s views on the role of poetry in society have been
consistently misunderstood by critics because his views were pure reflections of these under-
acknowledged substrates that to date have been relatively ignored. Hence, Rexroth himself has
been largely underappreciated. I believe it is time, though, to reconsider what was going on in
San Francisco after the war, since it may have many implications for a realignment of religion
and anarchism today.

Religion in Post-War America

Post-Second World War America was not a culture marked by great religious depth. Writers
such as Peter Berger and Will Herberg, among others, have argued that the nation was domi-
nated throughout the period by a common cultural religion (usually cloaked in Protestant forms)
that by and large affirmed the values of technological “efficiencies,” and of unbounded economic

183
prosperity, over traditional spiritual values. It was a religious culture that valued “adjustment”
to a society which was believed to be “fundamentally good,” but that, according to Berger and
others, had also abdicated an independent prophetic function.5 It was a religious sensibility that
had also denied, in a psychological sense, the more grisly realities of American life. Herberg
explained that

the religion which actually prevails among Americans today has lost much of its
authentic Christian (or Jewish) content … American religion and American society
would seem to be so closely interrelated as to make it virtually impossible to under-
stand either without reference to the other.6

Thus, in the analysis of Herberg and Berger, American religion had become just one more prop
to a burgeoning sense of American exceptionalism. In regard to the effects on the individual
American, Berger asserted that this “cultural religion”

provides [him] with the means by which he can hide from himself the true nature
of his existence. Religion reassures and strengthens him in his social roles, however
“inauthentic” these may be. Religion thus tends to be an obstacle in the progress
towards “authenticity” as a person. In a word, religion prevents ecstacy.7

This last sentence was hardly indicative of the approach to spirituality in the post-war Bay
area, where religion never was a means of accommodation to the larger society. Instead, by fo-
cusing almost solely on the primary religious texts, and reading them in an historical way, San
Francisco writers saw the religious sensibilities reflected in those texts as providing the route to
deeper insights about humanity and more profound experiences than were allowed under the
dominant cultural mores. Indeed, for the poets of the Bay area, religion as expressed through
its primary texts was one of the primary vehicles of ecstatic experience, especially in the sense
of transcending the self in the Other through love. Unlike Berger, though, the Bay area writers
would not have articulated their critique in doctrinaire existential terms, since existentialism as a
formal philosophy was, in many cases, another impediment to the kind of experience they were
seeking to inhabit. For Rexroth, existentialism was a logical outgrowth of the dualistic Augus-
tinian and Descartian philosophies that had dominated Western thought for so many centuries.
It posited the Self within an ultimately impenetrable aloneness. Rexroth and Robert Duncan, a
major San Francisco poet and Theosophist, would have argued that existentialism was itself an
impediment to authenticity, if they had ever wanted to use such terms, since it created artificial
psychological barriers to intense interpersonal experience.8
Instead of adopting existentialist rationales for the relevance of religion, most of the San Fran-
cisco poets found religion qua religion to be valid on its own grounds. When used as a prop
to social, cultural, or philosophical identities, it was always perverted and made into less than
5
Peter Berger, The Noise of Solemn Assemblies: Christian Commitment and the Religious Establishment in America
(Garden City: Doubleday Books, 1961), 46.
6
Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City: Doubleday,
1960), 3.
7
Berger, 102.
8
After Rexroth, Duncan was probably the most respected intellectual of the Bay area literary scene. Yet Duncan
always gave Rexroth credit for his own political education.

184
it actually was. They saw religious modes of thought and action as providing the most signif-
icant ways of confronting and mitigating the accumulated ills of humanity. And, like Jesus or
Sakyamuni, they found that their reinterpretations of older traditions put them into a position
of advocating a non-violent anarchism towards temporal institutions, while stressing the virtues
of personal responsibility and counter-cultural wisdom. On this nakedly historical and simple
approach hinged much of the alternative status of the San Francisco literary community.
Indeed, San Francisco’s literary culture during the post-war period gradually posited, or be-
came self-conscious of, its own cultural meaning, especially in regard to its pivotal geographical
status between the dominant political structures of Western culture and the soon-to-be pervasive
religious modes of Southeast Asia. Thus, to a certain extent it became the testing ground for both
the continuing validity of these structures and modes within a new internationalist perspective,
and for the possibilities of legitimately blurring the boundaries between even such fundamental
cultural categories as religion and politics .
Kenneth Rexroth was possibly more conscious than anybody of this junction of cultural mean-
ings and opportunities that San Francisco represented following the war, and out of this under-
standing he developed his ideas about how a counter-culture based around poetry could negotiate
the interweaving of religious and political energies in the Bay area. For Rexroth, a cultural re-
naissance that gave poetry a public role had the potential to enliven and maintain the community
of freedom and love that mystics and anarchists have always talked about. Such a renaissance
was, potentially, both a mode of disaffiliation and a remedy to cultural nihilism.

Rexroth and the Anarchists

Though Kenneth Rexroth was certainly political active during the 1930s, he never embraced Marx-
ism or communism with the religious fervour of many of his contemporaries. It seems that he
did not need to fill the same sort of existential void the others seemed to feel. Moreover, he never
threw himself into the communist cause as if it were a divine prophetic truth to be accepted at face
value and blindly trusted because it was the only description of reality. Neither did he accept the
mythological underpinnings that were psychologically attractive to many who became militant
communists during the Thirties. Arthur Koestler describes the parallelism between communist
and religious militancies in this way:

From the psychologist’s point of view, there is little difference between a revolution-
ary and a traditionalist faith. All true faith is uncompromising, radical, purist; hence
the true traditionalist is always a revolutionary zealot in conflict with pharasaian [
sic] society, with the lukewarm corrupters of the creed. And vice-versa: the revolu-
tionary’s Utopia, which in appearance represents a complete break with the past, is
always modeled on some image of the lost Paradise, of a legendary Golden age. The
classless Communist society, according to Marx and Engels, was to be a revival, at
the end of the dialectical spiral, of the primitive Communist society which stood at
its beginning. Thus all true faith involves a revolt against the believer’s social envi-
ronment, and the projection into the future of an ideal derived from the remote past.

185
 All Utopias are fed from the sources of mythology; the social engineer’s blueprints
are merely revised editions of the ancient text.9

Rather than falling into this sort of bi-polar thinking, Rexroth’s loose allegiance to Marxism
was, seen retrospectively, merely a theoretical aid to comprehending the dynamics of social rela-
tions while also serving as an adjunct to his view of history. It was never, to him, “the god that
failed” (the title of Crossman’s book, which the above Koestler quote comes from). He accepted
communist activism during the Thirties as the most radical, yet practical, means for improving
the relations of production and consumption on a large scale. He saw communist social relations
as a much more humane way of organising society than was possible under industrial capitalism,
and he also saw communism as conforming to primitive religious virtues more than any other
system. However, when methods were dictated to him from the Party that he felt were coercive
or merely bureaucratic, he was not willing to sacrifice his identity as an independent artist or his
personal integrity as an intellectual to the Party.
By the mid-1930s, in fact, Rexroth had already become disillusioned by the Communist Party’s
willingness to subsume the full reality of persons to an abstract cause and to arbitrary decrees.
When the revelations about Stalin’s regime came out in the next few years, it was too late for him
to be surprised. By then, he was well on his way towards moving into a full-fledged anarchism,
a stance that complemented, with fewer contradictions, his basic identity as a poet and religious
mystic.
And if Rexroth can be credited with fanning the flames of anarchism in mid-century San Fran-
cisco, as I think he can be, it would be on account of his constant dissemination of the primary
international anarchist writers like Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Michael Bakunin, and
Peter Kropotkin in the various anarchist meetings he was involved with, and even through his K.
P. F. A. “Classics Revisited” broadcasts. In these writers he found an anarchism that was rooted
in human personality, a practical theory for direct action in the interests of an integrated society,
and somewhat surprisingly, a radical stance that did not disallow his mystical leanings. They
provided theoretical fundamentals for a modern anarchist movement, but not programs to be
systematically carried out.
The anarchists named above were motivated by a radical humanism. In their writings they
constantly extolled the inherent powers of human intellect and agency. They were not all
Rousseauean idealists, but they all felt that the whole question of human nature, as usually
posed by philosophers and theologians, was based on bogus a priori assumptions that admitted
very little connection between human nature and the social environment that affected it. As
Emma Goldman wrote,

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name? Every
fool, from king to policeman, from the flat-headed parson to the visionless dabbler
in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the men-
tal charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of
human nature. Yet, how can anyone speak of it today, with every soul in a prison,
with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed? John Burroughs has stated that ex-
perimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their
habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil
9
Arthur Koestler, quoted in Richard Crossman, ed., The God That Failed (New York: Harper & Row, 1949), 16.

186
 in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into
submission, how can we speak of its potentialities? Freedom, expansion, opportu-
nity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors
of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.10

By and large, the principal anarchist thinkers contradicted a simplistic reading of Darwin’s
notion of “survival of the fittest” and never really allowed for the possibility that in the last
analysis, after all the chains upon it had been loosed, that human nature would not turn out to be
basically benevolent. Instead, as Alexander Berkman writes, they had seen enough, had caught
sufficient glimpses, of the potentialities of the strictly human (within inhuman conditions) to
make grand generalisations about what an anarchist future would be like.

Life in freedom, in anarchy, will do more than liberate man merely from his present
political and economic bondage. That will be only the first step, the preliminary to
a truly human existence. Far greater and more significant will be the results of such
liberty, its effects upon man’s mind, upon his personality. The abolition of the coer-
cive external will, and with it the fear of authority, will loosen the bonds of moral
compulsion no less than of economic and political. Man’s spirit will breathe freely,
and that mental emancipation will be the birth of a new culture, of a new human-
ity…Instead of “thou shalt not,” the public conscience will say “thou mayest, taking
full responsibility.” … Life will mean the striving for finer cultural values, the pen-
etration of nature’s mysteries, the attainment of higher truth. Free to exercise the
limitless possibilities of his mind, to pursue his love of knowledge, to apply his in-
ventive genius, to create, and to soar on the wings of imagination, man will reach his
full stature and become man indeed… He will scorn uniformity, and human diversity
will give him increased interest in, and a more satisfying sense of, the richness of
being; … he will attain … freedom in joy.11

Prince Petr Kropotkin was a central figure for Rexroth because of how he extended a positive
view of human nature into the social realm. In Mutual Aid, Kropotkin explicated a theory of
human sociability that directly subverted most of the major political ideas of western culture
and that provided anarchists with a historical justification for their optimism about the possibil-
ities inherent within a society not dominated by institutions. Moreover, the implications of the
following passage for Rexroth’s hopes for fomenting an alternative communal consciousness in
San Francisco after the Second World War should be apparent. Kropotkin wrote:

Sociability and need of mutual aid and support are such inherent parts of human na-
ture that at no time of history can we discover men living in small isolated families,
fighting each other for the means of subsistence. On the contrary, modern research
… proves that since the very beginning of their prehistoric life men used to agglom-
erate into gentes, clans, or tribes, maintained by an idea of common descent and by
worship of common ancestors. For thousands and thousands of years this organiza-
tion has kept men together, even though there was no authority to impose it. It has
10
Emma Goldman, quoted in Henry J. Silverman, ed., American Radical Thought: The Libertarian Tradition (Lex-
ington, Massachusetts: D. C. Heath and Company, 1970), 173.
11
Alexander Berkman, quoted in Silverman, 194–195.

187
 deeply impressed all subsequent development of mankind; and when the bonds of
common descent had been loosened by migrations on a grand scale, while the devel-
opment of the separated family within the clan itself had destroyed the old unity of
the clan, a new form of union, territorial in its principle—the village community—
was called into existence by the social genius of man. This institution, again, kept
men together for a number of centuries, permitting them to further develop their so-
cial institutions and to pass through some of the darkest periods of history, without
being dissolved into loose aggregations of families and individuals, to make a further
step in their evolution, and to work out a number of secondary social institutions,
several of which have survived down to the present time. We have now to follow
the further developments of the same ever-living tendency for mutual aid.12

Anarchism, for these thinkers, was not a program that could be definitively and universally
stated in a manifesto, like the multiple pronouncements of the Italian Futurists. Where Marx
wanted to expose ideologies because they masked the true sources of economic oppression, the
anarchists went further in condemning every single restriction upon human freedom and the
human spirit, except in cases where communities created non-coercive conditions for mutual
reciprocity. On the issue of “anarchist method,” Emma Goldman writes:

Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through
divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating
new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad
program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the
economic needs of each place and clime, and of the individual and temperamental
requirements of the individual … Anarchism does not stand for military drill and
uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against
everything that hinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also
agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the
great social change.13

Just as was the case with religious anarchists, like Tolstoy, who historically preceded him,
Rexroth’s mystical religious leanings did not conflict with his endorsement of anarchist virtues,
since the anarchist rejection of the church as an institution was based on its historic role as an
exterior controlling force upon the lives of individuals. In this role it was rendered equivalent
to the state and the capitalist system. Anarchists believed that these institutions imposed order
through physical, economic, or psychological force and justified themselves by claiming to be
the necessary safeguards of freedom. The standard anarchist response has been that “liberty is
the mother (and not the daughter) of order.”14
To Rexroth, what amounted to a practical escape from institutional control was quite simple,
requiring, though, a measure of courage, integrity and self-reliance. In the tradition of Thoreau,
one could carry out the firm decision to step outside the system in a personal act of autonomy,

12
Petr Kropotkin, quoted in Emile Capouya and Kietna Tompkins, eds., The Essential Kropotkin (New York: Liv-
eright, 1975), 170.
13
Goldman, quoted in Silverman, 174.
14
Usually attributed to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the mid-nineteenth century French anarchist thinker.

188
or, in the language that many of the churches degraded, one can sanctify oneself. One could
do this in a religious sense by opting out of the hollow religious value systems of the dominant
cultural religion and returning to the simple doctrines and experiences of the primary texts and
communities. Such a return to the type of religion revealed in the primary texts, though, would
do much to undermine the bases upon which institutional churches have justified themselves.
As Rexroth writes,

The great churches have indisputably compromised the simple ethics of the Gospels,
and yet, Protestant and Catholic, they have always represented the Christian ethic
as extraordinarily difficult and even unpleasant. It is nothing of the sort.15

Rexroth claimed that the ethics of the Gospels are neither difficult nor unpleasant. They are
simply the ethics that arise out of a community attempting to live together in illuminated har-
mony, or even, more simply, those of a social group which values its own survival. In a review
of Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You, Rexroth brushes aside as ironic the criticisms
that have labelled Tolstoy a crank. He writes that the religion of Tolstoy

in the final analysis … is not cranky or odd at all. It is common. The significant thing
is that, by and large, give and take a few pathetic sins, men do not behave in their
daily relations with one another as states and churches and even abstractions like
classes behave on the stage of history. If they had, we wouldn’t be here.16

The Second World War did much to cement the fusion between Rexroth’s anarchism, his mys-
tical temperament, and his aesthetic vision. It first of all left no doubt as to the potential for evil
inherent in the modern state. It revealed to him that the primary function of the modern state
was to wage war, or, as Randolph Bourne’s old adage put it, “War is the health of the state.”17
Also, as a conscientious objector himself, and as someone who actively came to the aid of other
conscientious objectors, he greatly admired religious groups, primarily Quakers, who during the
war resisted the government with a sense of purpose that obviously emanated from a core of mys-
tical piety. Finally, Rexroth became linked up with artists and poets of a religious temperament,
many of whom, like William Everson, resided in conscientious objectors’ camps all over the Pa-
cific Northwest. Many of these sought him out when they were on weekend releases, and later
they took a large role in the broad cultural activities that made up the San Francisco renaissance.
All of these factors in combination led to a crystallisation and focusing of Rexroth’s activities
after the war. No longer would there be attempts to be a part of a larger (inter)national organ-
isation, or to compromise in a sort of “united front” mentality. In a 1969 interview, Rexroth
described how his newly-focused activity grew out of, but also constituted a break from, his
earlier activities.

All during those years [1930s] we always had poetry readings and discussions and
then during the war we set up a thing called the Randolph Bourne Council in which
15
Kenneth Rexroth, “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” in More Classics Revisited, ed. Bradford Morrow (New
York: New Directions, 1989), 128.
16
Rexroth, “The Kingdom,” 128.
17
Randolph Bourne, War and the Intellectuals: Collected Essays, 1915–1919 (Hackett Publishing Company, 1999),
71.

189
 we gathered up the radical intellectuals in town that were not Stalinist. We tried to
gather the Trotskyites, which was hopeless. Immediately after the war we simply or-
ganized an open and aboveboard Anarchist Circle. We used to have bigger meetings
than any other radical group.18

This “Anarchist Circle” gradually developed into regular Friday evening soirees at Rexroth’s
house where he exercised an intense cultural influence. At these meetings there was, in reaction
to the habits of orthodox Bolshevism, neither hierarchy nor agenda. Most of the time was spent
working out “new techniques of group relationships” which proved fundamental to anchoring a
pervasive anarchist sentiment within San Francisco culture by the time of the Six Gallery read-
ing.19 About this evolution in the cultural atmosphere, Rexroth observed,

Between 1950 and 1955, the necessity for organization began to die out because other
people could become activist. It was no longer necessary to educate somebody to
make an anarchist poet out of him. He had a milieu in which he could naturally
become such a thing. But for years, it was a slow process of breaking down rigid
ideologies and then creating a different thing.20

That “different thing” was a cultural atmosphere in which all ideological political and social
orderings which did not grow out of the organic experience of the local community were viewed
with suspicion. They were seen as imposing artificial values upon a community whose shared
daily life did not reinforce the legitimacy of those values. The end of such an imposition was an
atmosphere of social alienation and cultural fragmentation, if not actual death. The alternative
was to live as if the community existed in a state pre-existent to all ideological systems. Yet as
the quote above attests, this was no easy process.
Herbert Read, the English anarchist and art critic, has pointed out that anarchy means “without
ruler,” not “without order”.21 Though some San Francisco writers of the time may have subscribed
to the extremism of an “anarchical” disorder, most, including Rexroth, viewed anarchism as an
existential mode wherein the debris of “consumerised” political stances were gradually cleared
away so that social values and orderings could arise out of intense and deeply shared experiences,
and not just by reverting to “natural law.” And the poetry reading (sometimes to jazz) came to be
seen as an opportunity for the poet to enter into a type of communion with the audience based
upon how he or she valued and imaginatively ordered a realm of shared experiences.

Literary-Religious Styles of Anarchism

Rexroth’s emphasis on how the “religious experience” helped to maintain an organically healthy
community and culture serves to highlight his divergence from other literary sensibilities and
groupings that were at least tinged with an anarchist flavour in the post-war period.
Geoffrey Ostergaard, in a contemporary analysis of the beat movement, lumped beats, beat-
niks, and hipsters together as “latter-day anarchists.” He saw them as individuals who were
18
Rexroth, quoted in David Meltzer, Golden Gate: Interviews with Five San Francisco Poets (Berkeley: Wingbow
Press, 1976), 23.
19
Rexroth, quoted in Meltzer, 24.
20
Rexroth, quoted in Meltzer, 26.
21
Herbert Read, Anarchy and Order: Essays in Politics (London: Faber and Faber, 1954), 35.

190
concerned primarily with present and immediate personal relationships, and who were escha-
tological or apocalyptic, rather than utopian, in outlook. Primarily through the practice of Zen,
they also sought a type of existential salvation.
This salvation, though, could only be found deeply within the self and its individual resources,
with Ostergaard characterising Zen as

an intensely personal, subjective religion … and one which discounts logic, intellect,
memories of the past and present, and fear of the future, relying instead on flash-like
moments of intuition.22

It was a type of salvation that has become a cliché of both Hollywood and the self-help
industry—“look deep inside yourself to find the key to happiness and success.” Ostergaard’s
description of Zen as a religious mode of expression that was primarily irrational, uncommitted
and centred on the self explains why it was easily popularised within certain segments of Amer-
ican culture. On this basis its true alternativity, especially according to Rexroth’s ideas, must
be questioned. The possibility remains that it was merely the (Jungian) shadow of the dominant
culture expressing itself through a dramatisation of the self’s plight under institutional control.
According to Rexroth’s post-war vision, in order to be truly alternative the beats would have
had to disaffiliate not only from those dominant forms of religiosity in post-war America that
resisted creativity, individuality, and all that was potentially ecstatic about life, but also from
those lingering forms of romanticism that ultimately rejected all social values as illusory. In
their failure to disaffiliate in this regard, they fell short of being religious anarchists, and were
merely literary and cultural romantics who were caught within the vicissitudes of the alienated
self.
Lionel Trilling saw John Keats as helping to create this particular romantic archetype, and
strangely celebrated it in his essay “The Poet as Hero: Keats in His Letters.” Trilling claimed
that Keats found in Shakespeare’s dramas a suggestion of the only salvation possible, which
is a “tragic salvation, the soul accepting the fate that defines it.”23 This is essentially salvation
through withdrawal, a stoic casting of the creative Self ever deeper into the Self in order to escape
outside forces of disintegration. This withdrawal leaves open no avenue for entering into social
(or spiritual) unity with the Other, in whatever guise it may present itself.
The only meaningful reality then becomes a heroic elaboration of the Self within an ultimate
aloneness, since that is what is recognised as the defining fate. It is inevitable that such a tragic
romanticism would bring about a perverse conflation of art and religion, since a religion that
carried with it values of a more comprehensive order than solely aesthetic values would be im-
possible to conceive. Thus, religion as religion is lost, along with its potentially life-affirming
social values.
Ironically, Keats found descendents not only in the beat movement, but among the seemingly
anti-revolutionary inhabitants of the East Coast literary establishment. One of the most remark-
able developments to hit English Departments and literary quarterlies in mid-twentieth century
America was a massive so-called “return to religion.” In some ways this was related to the general
22
Geoffrey Ostergaard, Latter-Day Anarchism: The Politics of the American Beat Generation (n.p.: Harold Laski
Institute of Political Sciences, 1964), 17.
23
Lionel Trilling, “The Poet as Hero: Keats in His Letters,” in The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism (New
York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), 47.

191
swelling of the church rolls in the post-war period, but in other important ways it was similar to
the type of withdrawal from creative interaction with the Other that Keats exemplified. In this
case, though, it was not a falling back on the semi-divine Self that occurred; rather, it was the
investment of religion with a role as literature’s keeper, as literature had already been invested
with the role of maintaining a certain kind of civilised ideal.
Since most of English literature had been written within a Christian milieu, Christianity be-
came an essential link to a past, or tradition, which was now accorded semi-divine status in a
world of chaos. Partisan Review editor Philip Rahv was one of the most perceptive observers of
this subtle intermingling, or even equation, of the values of literature and religion. In a 1950 es-
say entitled, “Religion and the Intellectuals,” he explained that post-war writers and critics were
embracing traditionalism, not belief in God, and that

the center of gravity of traditionalism is seldom in religious experience. Its center,

clearly, is in the attachment to the social and cultural order of some past age in
which religion, in a highly developed and institutionalized form, played an integral
part.24

Thus, religion became one more means of social control and not a mode of existence in which
life became centred around the multi-faceted experience of transcendence. The core of such a
“bloodless religion”25 was inherently alienating, in that the Self continually attempted to re-enact
the past in the midst of present realities that called for creative attention. This was accomplished
by a type of measured withdrawal from experience in the name of authority.
Variations on this type of paranoid religious mode have occurred throughout the history of
American culture. It is a mode that prefers a codified order over a more spontaneous openness
to experience and new meanings; it finds its identity within long or successfully established
institutions; and it prefers to maintain a sort of aura around specialised social roles and activities
that have perhaps outlived their original meanings. Almost by definition, those who seek to exist
within alternative, and in some cases more primitive, religious modes are seen to be propagating
a dangerous anarchism.
It is also ironic that it was the academic keepers of literature in the post-war period who
looked to the artist to fulfil the autonomous and semi-divine role of saviour of society, whereas
the avant-garde writers of the San Francisco Bay area usually saw themselves operating within
a community of artists (in which the poetry reading functioned as a sort of metaphor). These
academics also saw the artist as much more of a contributing member within, instead of outside,
society, and they allowed art and religion to occupy their separate, yet complementary, spheres of
activity. By tapping into much more enduring traditions and conceptions of the artist in society,
the San Francisco poets were, in a sense, the true traditionalists. As Rexroth put it,

modern literary and artistic society tends to substitute art for religion. Much modern
criticism places a burden on the artist that he was never designed to bear. On the
other hand, modern social practice, rather than theory, has led to a radical divorce
between the professional practice of religion and the practice of the arts. This is just
part of the over-specialization of modern life. There is no reason why a saint or a
24
Philip Rahv, Literature and the Sixth Sense (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969), 170–171 (italics mine).
25
Rahv, 171.

192
 theologian should not be a very great poet… It would be very nice if this sort of thing
were to come back into fashion.26

The difference between this vision and Keats’ is subtle, and yet crucial. The anarchist view,
as opposed to the romantic view, allows individuals to explore all of their potentialities within
a fluid social order without forcing the artist to take up an existential position outside the free
social order. Rexroth himself was an example of this exemplification of different social roles
within one person. As a poet, journalist, painter, labour agitator, teacher, outdoorsman, and
community leader—to name only the most prominent—his personality was an integration of
many roles and perspectives. This openness to a fluidity, and yet subtle distinction, between
artistic and political roles can also be seen in the careers of Gary Snyder, William Everson, Allen
Ginsberg, and Michael McClure.

The Practice of Religious Anarchism

Kenneth Rexroth fundamentally agreed with Herbert Read, contra Marxist materialism and anar-
chists like Michael Bakunin and Emma Goldman, that a healthy society rested upon an irrational
religious or mystical base. In Anarchy and Order, Read wrote that “there has never been a civ-
ilization without its corresponding religion, and the appearance of rationalism and scepticism
is always a symptom of decadence.”27 “Communist” anarchism, such as that which was held
to by Bakunin and Goldman, was useful as a practical revolutionary method; yet, despite the
warm-blooded pragmatism it ideally exercised, Rexroth observed that it was also liable to fall
into ideological obfuscations, non-relevance, and organisational wrangling in its actual extenu-
ation. George Woodcock, an old anarchist friend of Rexroth’s, gave some reasons why Rexroth
could have been no longer be considered a “pure” communist-anarchist, part of an international
anarchist movement, by the turn of the half-century.

there was indeed a doctrinaire aridity about anarchism in the later 1940s that made
it almost qualify as one of George Orwell’s “smelly little orthodoxies.” The old move-
ment of Kropotkin and Malatesta was virtually moribund, and the new movement
of the late 1960s had not yet risen from the cooling ashes. The atmosphere of petty
intolerance drove me out of the movement, and I suspect this was what repelled
Rexroth—this and an absence of passion, which had breathed out of the British move-
ment when Marie Louise Bernieri died in 1949.28

Toynbee and Spengler had famously postulated that religion was a key factor in social upheaval
and reconstruction. It was the force that caused the downfall of a civilisation’s inert institutions.
Whereas anarchism was logically the end of the road in political disaffiliation, it also showed that
it was insufficient by itself to repel, or even practically resist, the subtle forces of disintegration
that had corrupted every ideological movement and party in the history of Western culture. It
26
Kenneth Rexroth, “Morals, Ethics, Religion, Ideology, The Poet, Poetry,” The Alternative Society: Essays from
the Other World (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), 19.
27
Read, 45.
28
George Woodcock, “Rage and Serenity: The Poetic Politics of Kenneth Rexroth,” Sagetrieb 2, no. 3 (Winter
1983), 75.

193
was a necessary stance in the economic, social and institutional realms of American life for the
San Francisco poets of the post-war era, but it had to be sustained by something much more
comprehensive, or direct, in its apprehension of reality.
For Rexroth, that reality had to be conceived of as encompassing both social vision and quo-
tidian detail. It had to be conceived of as pertaining to the same type of reality that religion had
always attempted to speak to in its ideality. Yet when religion failed to be relevant to both vision
and the physically real, when it failed to somehow equate them in a transcendence of the real
through the real, it was religion in stasis, a religion that had also, from one point of view, lost its
connection to poetry.
The Mexican modernist poet Octavio Paz observed that both the “poetic word” and the “reli-
gious word” reflect experiences we have of our constitutive “otherness,” our strangeness to what
is real, and our attempt to bridge the gap. According to Paz, religion is that which depends
on theological formulations for its identity, theology being fundamentally an interpretation of
our condition. Poetry, on the other hand, is a revelation of our condition, and serves to open
up possibilities of being.29 Both theology (as a type of criticism) and poetry are necessary to
our self-understanding and self-integration, yet poetry takes primacy, for without it theology
loses its conduit to revelation, whereas poetry without theology exists primarily as potential.
Accordingly, a theology that rejects the revelations of poetry is open to all sorts of artificialities
and, moreover, encourages a wariness of the Other, which is now seen as a threat rather than a
means to a more nuanced sense of both self and reality.
When Rexroth spoke of religion in the sense of providing the basis for the genuine anarchism
which ushers in the new organic society, he was referring to an experience of religion that, in
terms of theology, is not estranged from its sense in the poetic word. It is also a religion that
is highly applicable to normal, everyday life. When philosophers and theologians view reality,
or our condition in reality, as something abstracted from quotidian existence and the struggle
for physical survival and culture, they are guilty of over-spiritualisation, according to Rexroth.
Additionally, when physical reality is seen as possessing absolute contingency within an abstract
framework built around beliefs about some higher, trans-mundane reality, religion, poetry and
even vision, have parted ways. With echoes of William James in the air, Rexroth wrote, in an
article about Lafcadio Hearn’s experience of Buddhism in Japan, that

for Hearn, Buddhism is a way of life, and he is interested in the effects of its doctrine
upon the daily actions and common beliefs of ordinary people. Like the Japanese
themselves, he thinks of religion as something one does, not merely as something
one believes.30

And in the same article, he went on to observe that “nothing could be less like the life of Jesus
than that of the typical Christian, clerical or lay”—a statement which defines the basis of his view
that San Francisco could most fundamentally provide an alternative, living culture in its contrast
to the religious culture of the rest of America in the post-war period.

29
Octavio Paz, The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, the Poetic Revelation, Poetry, and History (Austin: The University
of Texas Press, 1973), 139.
30
Rexroth, “Lafcadio Hearn and Buddhism,” in World Outside the Window: The Selected Essays of Kenneth Rexroth
(New York: New Directions, 1987), 308.

194
 That religious culture, exemplified in the Protestant Church in America, had been a “general
failure,” according to Rexroth, in terms of halting the erosion of ultimate values in society.31 As
stated before, Peter Berger reported that the churches of the post-war period were more intent on
propping up the “American way of life” than on proclaiming spiritual values that opposed what
America was coming to stand for. According to Berger, this cultural religion never challenged
the individual’s ultimate relationship to the mystery of the Other, and thus never produced deep
experiences of the traditional religious type. Such a psychological, cultural religion was also
not likely to maintain even its function of providing a broad social cohesion through consensus,
since it denied the validity of transcendent experience as a social value. Thus, it was ultimately
self-defeating. In the Lafcadio Hearn article, Rexroth asserted that

philosophies and theologies come and go, but the group experience of transcendence
is embedded in human nature, and when it is abandoned, theology, philosophy, and
eventually culture, perish.32

The most popular alternative to cultural Protestantism, and an alternative which indeed sprang
up in the 1950s and 1960s among large numbers of young people, was Zen Buddhism. The em-
brace of Zen was fed from three sources: the returning G. I.’s who had experienced Asian culture
while serving in the Pacific theatre; the writings of such Zen populisers as Daisetz Suzuki and
Alan Watts; and the growing Asian-American population, especially on the West coast, that had
brought with them, or carried down, inherited religious sensibilities.
Yet Rexroth also rejected most manifestations of American Zen, because of his observation
that it was often used as an excuse for social irresponsibility, and promoted a spurious emphasis
on visions (to be distinguished from “vision,” which is always referred to in the singular). He
said of them that

They’re trips that don’t go anywhere. The measure of the defect of vision is visions.
And no Buddhist said that, St. John of the Cross said that. And the more trips we
have, the further away we’re getting.33

In other words, the primary contemplative traditions merge around the claim that the tran-
scendent vision is ultimately an alternative way of looking at reality, not a way of escaping it.
It is a realisation that existing conditions are subject to dissolution by being part of the organic
process of the universe. To hold on to a static and inevitably despairing view of reality reveals
one’s psychological dependency on it, and means one is held by illusion and suffering, the very
thing Buddhist practice was supposed to mitigate.
Therefore, as Zen in America many times reflected an existential despair in the face of social re-
alities, is was really only the mirror image of the dominant American religiosity, which blithely
accepted the present social reality as the summum bonum. The political stance that accompa-
nied Zen was often a type of anarchism that was based on a nihilism towards the value of all
institutions; yet it was also ultimately nihilistic toward all social relationships as well. So this is
again neither alternative, nor truly religious in any basic sense. Instead it is the mirror image of
31
Rexroth, “Cathedral Windows Address” (n.p., n.d.)
32
Rexroth, “Lafcadio Hearn,” 309.
33
Rexroth, quoted in Carole Tonkinson, ed., Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation (New York: River-
head Books, 1995), 341.

195
a conformity that also despairs of creative individual acts of love within a social environment,
seeking to avoid the contemplative vision that feeds such individuality along with its extreme
concomitant of social responsibility.
Contrary to both reactions towards an environment of despair was Rexroth’s belief, based on
longer-standing Buddhist traditions that reach back to the personality of Sakyamuni

that there is a community in the world, a community of love. It is a community of

contemplators. And the only reality is a perspective, but the perspectives are infinite
because the contemplators are infinite.34

The contemplators are not infinite in number, but in the scope of their vision. Vision operates
autonomously from all external authority, yet is the highest form of authority in and of itself. It
goes beyond anarchism in its political implications, since it offers freedom within a heightened
sense of social responsibility. And in the end, Rexroth believed, it offered the only hope for
the continuance of human culture apart from its destructive elements, which are still probably
ineradicable on any large scale.

So the idea that a community of illumination and insight, can change the world is
an illusion. But it can probably save it. Because when the contemplative life dies
out the civilization dies with great rapidity… When the flame goes out, then there’s
nothing but darkness. But I don’t think that this can reform the world.35

So in contradistinction to both the dominant cultural religion in America, and its supposed
antidote in Zen, Rexroth pointed the San Francisco literary community towards deeper historical
realities that could be found within widely diverse cultures. And the deepest thing that cultures
have in common, according to Rexroth’s view, is that their health is directly related to the vitality
of the group experience of transcendence within the culture, not just on an occasional basis, but
as the store from which the culture draws its perspectives on the reality it has to live within on
a daily basis. Contrarily, according to Rexroth, the state in its modern form was the force that
drained this contemplative life out of the society.
Thus an anarchism based on a type of religious contemplation was the only real alternative
to cultural religion and Zen nihilism. They were both wrapped around and dependent on what
Rexroth called “the social lie,” the consciousness of contingency when there was no contingency,
the feeling of powerlessness when there was really no relevant power under which you were
held in bondage.

A person who lives the Buddha life to the best of his ability does not need the State
and does not need law. That’s a different thing from being a political anarchist…
Buddhism really isn’t even passive resistance; it’s ignoring the state, in all of its
ways. It’s ignoring the social lie.36

In the post-war period, Rexroth believed that the poetry reading—communicating a poetry of
sacramental vision and reinforcing individual values within a communal setting—was the most
34
Rexroth, quoted in Tonkinson, 342.
35
Rexroth, quoted in Tonkinson, 345 (Rexroth’s italics).
36
Rexroth, quoted in Tonkinson, 345.

196
powerful force in creating the cohesive relationships that could allow an alternative culture to
thrive, utterly detached from the destructive dynamics of the social lie.
And that is why the San Francisco poetry renaissance, so often treated as a mere literary event,
needs to be explored anew as a powerful and illuminative chapter in the long history of religious
anarchism.

Bibliography

Berger, Peter. The Noise of Solemn Assemblies: Christian Commitment and the Religious Establish-
ment in America. Garden City: Doubleday Books, 1961.
Capouya, Emile, and Kietna Tompkins, eds. The Essential Kropotkin. New York: Liveright, 1975.
Crossman, Richard, ed. The God That Failed. New York: Harper & Row, 1949.
Herberg, Will. Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religous Sociology. Garden City:
Doubleday Books, 1960.
Meltzer, David. Golden Gate: Interviews with Five San Francisco Poets. Berkeley: Wingbow Press,
1976.
Ostergaard, Geoffrey. Latter-Day Anarchism: The Politics of the American Beat Generation. N.p.:
Harold Laski Institute of Political Science, 1964.
Paz, Octavio. The Bow and the Lyre: The Poem, the Poetic Revelation, Poetry, and History. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1973.
Rahv, Philip. Literature and the Sixth Sense. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969.
Read, Herbert. Anarchy and Order: Essays in Politics. London: Faber and Faber, 1954.
Rexroth, Kenneth. “Cathedral Windows Address.” UCLA Special Collections. N.p., n.d.
—. “Lafcadio Hearn and Buddhism.” In World Outside the Window: The Selected Essays of Kenneth
Rexroth, 303–319. New York: New Directions, 1987.
—. More Classics Revisited. New York: New Directions, 1989.
—. The Alternative Society: Essays From the Other World. New York: Herder and Herder, 1970.
Silverman, Henry J., ed. American Radical Thought: The Libertarian Tradition. Lexington, Mas-
sachusetts: D.C. Heath and Company, 1970.
Snyder, Gary. “Buddhism and the Coming Revolution.” In Earth House Hold: Technical Notes and
Queries to Fellow Dharma Revolutionaries, 90–94. New York: New Directions, 1969.
Tonkinson, Carole, ed. Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation. New York: Riverhead
Books, 1995.
Trilling, Lionel. The Opposing Self: Nine Essays in Criticism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jo-
vanovich, 1978.
Woodcock, George. “Rage and Serenity: The Poetic Politics of Kenneth Rexroth.” Sagetrieb 2, no.
3 (Winter 1983): 73–83.

197
CHAPTER ELEVEN. TO BE CONDEMNED
TO A CLINIC: THE BIRTH OF THE
ANARCA-ISLAMIC CLINIC
MOHAMED JEAN VENEUSE
In this chapter, I discuss the theologically Islamic and anarchistic conceptual and pragmatic reso-
nances I contend are necessary in the creation and development of an Islamic interpretation of anar-
chism and an anarchic interpretation of Islam, which I seek. There are two nodes discussed, for now,
of intersection—anarchistic tendencies in Islam(s) and Islamic tendencies in anarchism(s)—between
Islam(s) and anarchism(s): anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian. The two nodes signify reasoning(s)
leading me—an anarca-Muslim subject—to becoming anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian, yearning
for an “us,” a Nous—a Nous premised upon lines of alliance, collaborations, and indeed new ways of
living, for the dual disparate communities to come together to (re) create and bear witness to the (re)
created coming community.

Introduction
“Anarchism” and “Islam.” “Islam” and “Anarchism.” “Their similarities bear no resemblance?” How
dare “thee” ask as if they, this brochette of two, could keep their parenting of me apart, distant
as divorcees, one from the other, the other from the other? “Is there a relation, but then what
is the relation?” “In which direction does it move?” Already a “traitor,” I am guilty of betraying
neither side but both sides of these two, my paternal figures. Already, it is too late for me, a child,
a patient, a son, a daughter and “heir” to arrive, without an attorney present, to unite, to (re)
oedipalise them, me, in “my” Clinic— Anarca Islam.1 Everything starts off blank then come the
one, two, three, a thousand murders, via remote control levers, in black till the black stays black
with the white destined for the present to stay white.
In this chapter I set out to identify Anarchistic tendencies, Anti-Capitalist and Anti-
Authoritarian currents and commitments, in “Islam” and Islamic tendencies in “Anarchism,”
all which amounts to the same, “in a parody of the very self-defeating symptoms,” Capitalist
and Authoritarian practices, that sent me, a patient, seeking help from both parents, “Islam,”
“Anarchism,” in a Clinic— Anarca-Islam.2 At heart, in overturning, in taking a position and
through a questioning of syntax and semantics to revising themes in the field of Muslim
and Islamic politics, I will justify my existence, a “Muslim Anarchist subject,” theologically,
epistemologically, having already proven my presence empirically, so that I no longer become
1
Catherine Malabou, “Polymorphism Never Will Pervert Childhood,” in Derrida, Deleuze, Pscyhoanalysis, ed.
Gabriele Schwab, trans. Robert Rose (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 62.
2
Dina Al-Kassim, “Resistance, Terminable and Interminable,” in Derrida, Deleuze, Pscyhoanalysis, ed. Gabriele
Schwab (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 115.

198
an illusory image gripped by repression, “autistic” and turned inward on myself as I could have
myself believe.3 My primary method will be a critical exegesis of the Koran as well as theoretical
and philosophical, Islamic and Anarchistic texts. This is my pathway to radically contest the
validity of that which is assumed as “is,” politically, ethically, Islamically, Anarachistically,
therefore no longer neutralising or accepting by virtue of naturalising that which is given of
“Islam” and that which is given of “Anarchism” but rather opening up a new Anarchistic and
Islamic horizon beyond in place of both.
First though, in a narcissistic act, “me”…

The Patient Comes to Their Own Aid

I am not an assassinating imposter transformed “into [an] incendiary projectile;” I am not a “neo-
pilot,” an arrow, shot against an enemy target; I am not a Terrorist 4 albeit I always wanted to be
one.5 But that day, too bad about that day, the day Babel’s twin towers fell, another gang of
Muslim and non-Muslim fascists camouflaging their fascisms with retaliatory acts of vengeful
violence. That day something so secret, unquenchable, even heated, besides and other than me,
arrested me giving life to me having already realised itself in me, forever changing me. Above
all, before that day, I thought I knew who I was, who was allied with who, adamant, determined
to closing off all borders “non-Muslim.”6 Then from the tightest mesh of that rubble’s flesh, it
crossed my path, till this secret, “Anarchism,” now reigns without rooftop hanging over me hav-
ing given itself to me. And so over my past determination I cry, and in the depths of my present
“unhappiness I tremble with joy.”7
The unhappiness I feel is the thought of an Anarchist’s eyes, innocent and disarming, yet never
having “been so obedient to their self as at the moment when” I see them in a delirious wishful
wish, wish that they could take themselves and “Anarchism” back from me, maintaining their
autonomy, excluding me on account of my spirituality.8 You ask of my unhappiness. It is an
Anarchist dogmatic in sight. One who intrinsically shoulders bad faith towards me never having
even met me and yet settles for a whole theatre of hysteria and debility when it comes to me; one
who wishes that perhaps someone else could take my place or that I could “occupy several others
at once” without their presence side by side with me.9 But my will has not ceased and now, at
some moments, stuttering it becomes all the more sweeter: I am a Muslim and an Anarchist, in
the same heartbeat and the same breathe. As for believing in God: It is not an aesthetic thing

3
Pierre Félix Guattari, Chaospohy, ed. Sylvere Lotringer (New York: Semiotext[e], 1995), 82.
4
Yesterday the word terror was associated with abuses in relation to “the exercise of State power[s] .” But today
it has come to “designate … from the position of the dominant, [the State,] all those who engage in a combat [, militant
or any other,] using whatever means at hand, against a given order which is judged to be unacceptable.” Disclosed
in this sense I confess; I am a terrorist as: the “Anti-Nazi resistors for Pétain and his militia;” “Algerian patriots of
the N. L. F. for every French government without exception between 1954 and 1962;” “Chechens for Putin and his
clique.” See Alain Badiou, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, ed. and trans. Oliver Feltham and
Justin Clemens (London: Continuum, 2003), 144–145.
5
Badiou, 141.
6
Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From Socrates Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1987), 186.
7
Derrida, “The Post Card,” 186.
8
Derrida, “The Post Card,” 186.
9
Derrida, “The Post Card,” 186.

199
or a ritual I do, but the strength from which I derive reason to drive myself to stand and share
the same ethical and political commitments with those same “eyes I fear and dread.” And already
now I have started spending the rest of whatever days I have left trying to understand how I have
spent them when I admit that my greatest crime will have been naming, “tattooing,” writing and
even saying it: “Muslim Anarchist,” “Anarchist Muslim,” one always before and one always after
the other, with the initiative of them always together— with each other; but already there are too
many gashes; already I am guilty, a traitor, of violating such a promise, except when keeping it
for myself in silence.
As for “Islam” and Muslims, whoever and whatever you are: I can feel you as well. You are in
flames. You too are burning. The most evident thing with you though is that I can see your eyes
and feel your ailments without even closing mine. And my interest here rests on not bending
“myself to your determination” by domesticating, naturalising and neutralising or believing in
automatic barriers when discussing anything with Anarchists.10 No, it is stifling your “Islam”
and mine. Already, by right, your “Islam” and mine have given me their arms. Come closer to
my lips, you will hear better: Know that this interpretation, this “contract,” Anarca-Islam, what
already arrived and what I hope will live never belonged to me, only my “way of sight,” my line
of flight, for the rest of my days left; for at the end I am nothing more, nothing less, than “out of
dust then out of sperm then out of a leech-like clot then out a morsel of flesh partly formed and
partly unformed” on exodus, to return, scattered again as dust.11 And so I am neither a messiah
nor a prophet, just deafened by the subtraction of dialogue in what I see as decimated elements
missing from our everyday equations: our ambivalence and complacency towards patriarchy,
trans-queer-phobia, racism, ageism, capitalism and authority, all that can serve as appetisers for
starters, unwarranted and existing in our communities; all the fetishicised and fabricated talk,
the whole “Good” Muslim, “Bad” Muslim debates, the pointing of fingers we do all day. It is time
we understand the world we live in today and put an end to false provocations to the absurd. So
after reading, come up with your own interpretations and I welcome all criticisms, after study,
as long as they are done respectfully.
“Finally,” what is left, what I expect from all Muslims and Anarchists, essentialist and dogmatic
included, for who am I to dare exclude you, is: nothing but absolution, to slowly and not turbu-
lently burn for a qualm before I have even begun to lift off and take flight. Fascism is everywhere
these days; it has already won.12 It is crystallised at the centre of everybody’s heart. And remem-
ber, like a dear friend once taught me in say: all this and what’s yet to come is not a plea for your
attention but a cautionary tale of your irrelevance. Still I hope you listen.

The Birth of the Clinic

By what right and how dare “we” be tempted to fight to transform, to indeed pronounce the
aggregate Islams as “Islam,” into Islamism, with the wishful twisted thinking that it be forgotten
that the latter operates in the name of the former. How dare “we” forget that there is no singular
monolith and never more “Islam;” “Islam” is dead. How dare “we” forget that there are a plural-
istic series of traditions, perspectives and cultural discourses radiating from Islams—they, Islams,

10
Derrida, “The Post Card,” 186.
11
The Holy Koran, Chapter 22, Chapter of “The Pilgrimage:” Verses 5–7.
12
Guattari, 244–245.

200
are not all One or monolithic in their essentialist conception of subjectivities and identities, not
to mention their laws. How can “we” paint, talk

religion, talk Islam? Of religion, of Islams? The Singularity of religion, the singular-
ity of Islams today? How dare … [we] speak of [them] in the singular without fear
and trembling, this very day? And so briefly and so quickly?13

For is it not always that the aggregate Islams, the names of Islams, by “nature” creative, disavow,
negate and destroy the knot of obligation to “Islam” incestuously? How dare “we” when they
arrive out of recognising that

the “hyper-orthodox” and the ulemocracy can’t … reduce [“Islam”] to a hegemonis-

tic/universalistic ideology … to rule out divergent forms of “sacred politics” informed
by Sufism [like the Naqshabandis], “radical” Shia-ism [as Ali Shariati’s], Ismaelism,
Islamic Humanism and Sunni-ism, the “Green Path” of Col. Qaddafi (part neo-Sufism,
part anarcho-syndicalism) … not to mention the “cosmopolitan Islam of Bosnia”
[etc].14

And this enigmatic inscription of resistance inscribed within “Islam” itself is precisely one of
the grave dangers when writing or pronouncing anything about “Islam” or as and example, its
branch Shi’ism—which is also not singular—without recognising the field of possibilities that
were, that indeed are open in the politicisation of a particular interpretation of Shi’ism, and ever
more so “Islam,” in say Iran in ‘79. One could almost talk endlessly about the “Islamic-Leftist
Mujahedeen al’Khalq,” “the Marxist-Leninist Fedayeen i-Khalq” and “Ali Shariati’s synthesis of
Marxism, existentialism, Heideggerianism [with] … a militant form of ‘traditional’ Shi’ism”—as
just three preliminary examples, interpretations and hybrids of political Shi’ism that were being
practiced in Iran in ‘79.15
It is essential not to let things fizzle out, since from the start anyone can object to a cohabitation
of “Islam” and “Anarchism,” that it is “impossible” and contradictory; after all, “Islam” means
submission. So to establish things as fast and as effectively as possible, now, but ever more so
thoroughly soon and throughout, I will start by explaining and justifying Anarca-Islam as an
interpretation of the entropies “Islam” and Anarchism.” A resistance: to the “Euro and logo
centricity” of the “West,” and neo-conformity in general. That it lends itself on the promise of
Islam(s) and Anarchism(s) going together by folding upon or against itself in always questioning
and rebelling against and for itself, politically, ethically; (re) creating itself by challenging its
commitments anew towards both “Islam” and “Anarchism.” Anarca-Islam’s most basic, preserved,
and least restless “foundation” is “governed” by and founded upon its Anti-Authoritarian and
Anti-Capitalist Anarchistic currents that are identified using a specific tool, Anarchic-Ijtihad,16
which was given to me by right to write on what I call Anarca-Islam.
13
Jacques Derrida, Religion, ed. Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press.1998), 1.
14
Hakim Bey, Millennium (1996), www.hermetic.com (accessed February 20, 2007).
15
Janet Afray and Kevin B. Anderson, Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and Seductions of Islamism
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), 38–40.
16
In the context used, Anarchic-Ijtihad: (A) Is out to contaminate or poison, any discourse, subjects “touched,”
be it theoretically or practically, with priority to the grass-roots of what Day calls Newest Social Movements (2005) of
today; in an anti-authoritarian stance it is out to challenge the position of anti-religious actors and/or actresses in

201
 And this right, whose classical form is Ijtihad, is an Islamic right and duty to track, identify,
intercept, pick up, translate, decipher, interpret, and re-interpret Islamic principles and values to
meet the social conditions of the present, all while appreciating and wandering in the vertigo of
“Islam’s” past and future; henceforth permitting and giving birth to the names of Islams.17 Names
that emerge for Muslims to witness, to remember, to preserve and to forget home, “Islam,” using
their Holy text, the Koran; for this is the wager, either God got arrogant with God’s word:

Will they not ponder on the Koran? If it had not come from God [ adaptable for all
time], they could surely find in it many contradictions… [For] If all humankind and
the other intelligent life were to band together to produce the likes of this Koran,
they could not produce the like thereof… Bring then a single surah [verse] like unto
it, and call upon whomsoever you can if you are truthful.18

Or that in truth God fulfils God’s word and promise; that this text is confident, adaptable, in
its program, capable of situating strategically, tactically, exoterically, esoterically any analytic
activity grappling with truth, where truth plays a piece limited by a more powerful functioning
of the text itself, translating hence the docile “names of Islam” into “names” that turn as foliage,
made anew, upon contact with the substrate—the Koran, as primary text. “Ayn,” an Arabic word,
alone, in the Koran, could turn from meaning “an organ of sight” to “running water,” from “pure
gold” to a “spy.”19 The Holy Koran

reveals human language crushed by the power of the divine word; God’s word un-
makes all human meanings, all the proud constructions of civilisation, of high cul-
ture, and then returns all the luxuriant cosmic, imagery back to the lowly and the
oppressed, so that in their imaginations it can be made anew (emphasis in original).20

And this is how through Ijtihad that always already Islams, and no longer Islam, re-find them-
selves in what was originally found—“Islam.” God gifts Muslims Ijtihad as a detouring, a rigorous

these NSMs who are sceptical, intentionally or not, towards Islams and religion in general. It is daring these actors
and actresses to create and open up further room for dialogue between Muslim Anarchists or Anarchist Muslims
active in these NSMs and themselves. (B) It is also a re-appropriation of its own self as a “term/word/concept” in what
is already a state of mass produced texts, and thus the stereotype of its original usage i.e. Ijtihad—jihad. That way,
Anarchic-Ijtihad is not interested in regurgitating already pre-existing stereotypes of it; it is not out to be an origin of
“already said(s).” It is not out to become a simulacric event, but to offer a different pathway for the usage of it as a term
itself, adaptable to different contexts and conditions provided particular ethical-political stances as positions and that
ought to come and arrive with it; ethical-political commitments that it ought be indefinitely committed to. In this
sense it is anti-capitalist, or has “that” as its other, second Anarchist tendency. As for NSMs: Day wrote an entire book
on this concept, the Newest Social Movements. I use, summarise, contextually, the term to imply social movements that
in his words are “non-universalising, non-hierarchical, non-coercive relationships based on mutual aid, and shared
ethical commitments.” See Richard Day, Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements (Toronto:
Between the Lines Press, 2005), 9.
17
John L. Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 159.
18
The Holy Koran, Chapter 4, Chapter of “The Women:” Verse 82; Chapter 17: Chapter of “Children of Israel:”
Verse 8; and Chapter 10: Chapter of “Jonah:” Verse 37.
19
Taha Jabir Al’Awani, The Ethics of Disagreements in Islam (Herndon, Virginia: The International Institute of
Islamic Thought, 1993), 82.
20
Tom Cheetham, Green Man, Earth Angel: The Prophetic Tradition and the Battle for the Soul of the World (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2005), 122 (emphasis in original).

202
and violent theoretical and practical inscription, an Islamic deconstructive type of force, in a tes-
timony, divinely decreed, and that testifies to differance in the Derridean sense.21 God bears
witness and promised so in the Holy Koran:
“Not all of them [beings ought be or] are alike” and so

unto every one of you We [God] have appointed a different law and way of life and
if God had pleased, God would have made you a single Ummah [community], but
that God might try You in what God gave you. So vie with one another in virtuous
deeds. To God you will all return, so that God will inform you of that wherein you
differed.22

All of which then makes what I called Anarchic- Ijtihad, “naturally,” an Anarchic militant
“style” of Ijtihad, one guided and committed to particular political, ethical, Anti-Capitalist, Anti-
Authoritarian commitments that will soon been proven to be in hand.
In this order of things then hence begins the binding of Anarca-Islam to its two preliminary
Anarchistic quarters of resistance in the three residues or sedimenting sections left as remnants
or remaining parts of this chapter precisely: First, a resistance to Daddy, authoritarian practices
in the section to follow, Castrating Daddy, through a “new” set of Islamic concepts and practices:
Shura, Ijma, Maslaha, devoted to repeating the obstructing, limiting, refusing and rebelling off of
inescapable authoritarian power relations, dynamics and differentials; micro-fascisms that play
out on a daily basis in everyday sets of social relations and equations vis-à-vis our egos; our little
internalised Mussolinis encased in the space between a ribcage and two breasts. In doing so and
to follow Shura, Ijma, Maslaha in turn, with the company of Anarchic-Ijtihad, I will supply a
healthier track in giving a clean-cut Anti-Statist Anarchistic reading of “Islam.” Only then will
I end by wresting the “authority” of the two left: the Prophet Muhammad and God. These (re)
readings, this reshuffling(s), awaken, give birth, and raise from the grave “Islam,” a resurrected
Anarchic Anti-Authoritarian “Islam.”
The second quarter of resistance is in A Disinterested Love in Mommy. At stake a war waged on
Mommy, Capitalism, through an army of “new” Islamic concepts and practices irritated with An-
archic-Ijtihad from the once upon a time singular “Islam.” Irrupting, falling and apprehended are
alternate anti-capitalist readings, obstacles, limits, refusals, rebellions, repeated: Public Property,
Caretaker, Mudarabah/Musharakah, Zakat, It’am, Sawm, Infaq of Sadaqah, Ramadan and Islamic
banking that anarchically characterise or give anarchic character to the interpretive tradition I
seek; an Anarchic Anti-Capitalist interpretation of “Islam.”
Lastly in the last residue, section and territory To (Re) do away with the Clinic, Anarca-Islam
will stand for now on solid ground or sovereign position with these two resistive currents as my
and its two feet.

21
Not a “word” or a “concept,” but that which resists order, repetition, the familiar in speech or what is indeed
written, both as living acts, testifying or bearing testimony to the existence of the singular, the unique as differance.
See Jacques Derrida, “Excerpt from Difference,” in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982), 3–27, www.hydra.umn.edu (accessed November 11, 2008).
22
The Holy Koran, Chapter 4, Chapter of “The Women:” Verse 113; and Chapter 5, Chapter of “The Dinner Table:”
Verse 48.

203
Castrating Daddy
First and in a militant stance on the whole business of authority, to put it bluntly, my apologies
but “sorry,” in no way do any Koranic verses prescribe, legitimise or give it a stamp of authenticity.
The truth is completely different and to the contrary: any “hierarchal, dictatorial system has been
condemned as non-Islamic.”23 Access only to general principles is given Koranically in the field of
politics, with particulars left for Muslims to formulate, soak and drown themselves in according
to whatever present space and time they live in; it could then be Anarchy.24 In this sense as far
as “Islam’s” fine text, the Holy Koran is concerned, as a general principle:

For those who take as Awliyâ’ [guardians, supporters, helpers, protectors, etc.] oth-
ers besides Him [i.e. whom take other deities, other than Allâh as protectors, and
worship them, even then] Allâh is Hafîz [Protector] over them [i.e. takes care of
their deeds and will recompense them], and you [O Muhammad] are not a Wakîl
[guardian or a disposer of their affairs or have say] over them.25

But and with that said, the “lack of guidance” in term of generalities, “Islam” took it upon
itself to invest in certain specificities instead. To dictate less and catalyse more, “Islam” created
pragmatic references, counter-measures, and practices like Shura26 (mutual consultation), Ijma
(community consensus) and Maslaha27 (public interest) to minimise anyone and communities
from derision rather than limit itself to observations, empty rhetoric, on the excessive price, in
blood, of authoritarian practices and politics.28
But nowadays, despite and against this truthful mirror, we no less see a Monarchy of Meccan
Kingdoms, Sultans29 and Sheikhs, decadent dictators and corrupt foot soldiers; self-proclaimed
bearers of God’s trust, “armed to the teeth,” with stamped decrees purchased cheap from Muftis.30
Muftis who legitimate, supposedly “Islamically,” the formers’ authority as a necessary right; for
them as heirs to the manna of black gold, under the disguised pretext of the Khalifah.31 Yet this
move on their part, adhering to the classical lexicon and meaning of the word respectively, all too
23
John L. Esposito, Islam and Democracy: Religion, Identity, and Conflict Resolution in the Muslim World (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 25.
24
Tariq Ramadan, Islam, The West and the Challenges of Modernity (Leicester: Islamic Foundation, 2001), 148.
25
The Holy Koran, Chapter 42, Chapter of “The Council:” Verse 6.
26
Shura is not merely a practice but exists emphasised in its allocation as a Chapter, 42, in the Holy Koran, Surat
Ash- Shura, named after it.
27
The Koran favours and “envisages the … Ummah as a perfectly egalitarian, open society based on good will
and cooperation” through Maslaha. And it is because of Maslaha that the Koran “laid down the principle of Shura [as
well] to guide the community’s decision-making process.” What Anarca-Islam calls for wherever it is blacked out, is
not the “classical doctrine of Shura, as it developed, [and] was in error … [where] it viewed consultation as the process
of one person, the Khalifah, asking other people for advice.” No, quite the opposite: “the Koranic understanding of
Shura does not mean that one person ask others advice, but rather mutual advice through mutual consultation.” See
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 28.
28
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 28.
29
As for labels like “sultan/king” ( Malik), there are no absolute grounds in the Koran for what really is just
arbitrary personal dictatorship and domination. See Esposito, Islam and democracy, 25.
30
Derrida, “The Post Card,” 186.
31
Khalifah “according to the Arabic lexicon, means ‘representation.’… In addition to the connotations of ‘succes-
sor’ that the Arabic term Khalifah involves there is also a sense in which a Khalifah is a deputy [or] representative.”
See Esposito, Islam and democracy, 26. The Khalifah is not a Malik, a king, or ruler but someone whom is chosen by
the community as a temporary representative. “Classically,” the “choosiness” may take place “by means of elections,

204
obviously but necessary, undermines and clashes head on with the anti-authoritarian specificities
of Ijma, Maslaha and Shura. No less I have no doubt, and regardless of any prodigious revolts,
that given the lack of conditions necessary for a Khalifah as well as the non-binding nature of
the idea itself that a more “radical” interpretation can be posited and ought exist instead of the
attention that its classical form has received so far into the twentieth-first century.32 Anarca-
Islam arrives then by marking, ceasing, a different political territory of reference, one bound with
an Anarchistic alternative and the never ending aspiration of an anti-authoritarian commitment
during social relations at all times and all levels; all Muslims are bearers of God’s trust. Muslims
are collective caretakers of each other, their affairs, as they are all God’s vicegerents on this earth.
They collectively are bearers of “the trust” with collective responsibility each towards the other
since it is assuredly

possible to interpret … sections of the Koran as identifying human beings in general

as God’s vicegerents [ Khalifahs, multiple, as opposed to the singular, Khalifah,] on
earth and human stewardship over God’s creations.33

The Anarchic dosage injected then is that

after subscribing to the principles of Tawheed, to believing in God as Absolute Au-

thority [, the sole instance in which a Muslim under “Islam” is to be understood as
in “submission,”] Muslims are then collectively and as a group ready to fulfil their
responsibilities of representation towards one another.34

Each

carries the responsibility of the Khilafah … [and] each one shares the divine Khilafah
… [where] every person in an Ummah enjoys the rights and powers of the Khilafah
and in that respect all individuals are equal.35

a representative system or any other original ideas … [provided that] all the conditions that allow one the opportunity
to choose with full knowledge of the facts” are present. The other “Classical” criteria for such “choosiness” is that
“any pressure or attempt at coercion, to influence public opinion” is unacceptable. These two criteria then assume that
people within a given Muslim community are capable of participating in the decision making process of choosing
itself, are not coerced and have knowledge of all the “facts” regarding whatever candidates are to be “chosen” from
in the first place. However with ignorance, illiteracy, corruption and misery, social phenomena very much predom-
inant in Muslim societies, these criteria cannot be fulfilled Islamically therefore obstructing the real participation of
the grassroots in the decision making process of choosing someone to lead. See Ramadan, Islam, the West and the
Challenges of Modernity, 148 (emphasis in the original).
32
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 26.
33
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 26.
34
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 26.
35
The identification of Khilafah with humanity as a whole, rather than with a single Khalifah or political insti-
tution, is affirmed further in the Islamic Universal Declaration of Human Rights; “a document [, that emphasises that
the objective of the Ummah] … is to reach the level of self-governance.” Thus “this perception of ‘Khilafahs’ becomes
a foundation for concepts of human responsibility and of opposition to systems of domination … [providing along
the way] also a basis for distinguishing between democracy” in “Western” traditions and “Islam.” This vision, of bear-
ing the communal right to self-govern, therefore “do[es] not fit into the limits of Eurocentric based definition[s] …
[because of its anchorage in] … consultation ( Shurah), consensus ( Ijma) and independent interpretative judgments (
ijtihad).” See Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 26.

205
 This opens in

a step … the transfer of power of ijtihad from individual representatives of schools [of
thought] to Muslim legislative assemblies which in view of the growth of “opposing”
sects is the only form of Ijma

now possible.36 A kind of Ijma that secures “contributions to … [and] discussion[s] from” lay
individuals who desire, have a right and are keen in participating in political decisions making
processes, and that is how therein rises from the ashes an Anti-Statist and an anti-authoritarian
Anarchic “Islam.”37 The only two things left then, with respect to authority, since the conditions
of choosing the classical singular (as opposed to the multiple, plural) Khilafah fail as they do,
and due to the fact that the fields of the political “lack in any further generalities or specificities,”
opening wide thus anti-authoritarian possibilities as an Anarchic way of organising outside what
is presently a post-colonial Islamically inherited Eurocentric State, are: the Prophet Muhammed
and God.38
In so far as the former, I appreciate everything that my Prophet Mohammad taught me, but,
well, a prophet signifies prophecy and nothing more. He is not a Malik (King), Sheikh or God
and his function is nothing but a Rasul, a messenger, for a religious call, purely for the sake of
religion, unblemished by any necessary tendency to rule or call for the formation of a nation or
state. The two Koranic verses to prove this are: “Say (O Muhammad) that I am a man like you;
[and] I am nothing but a man and a messenger.”39
As for the latter, God, first, it is important to realise clearly as the Koran says: la ikrah Fi’d-
din; “there is no compulsion in religion.”40 More so and secondly, “God has not been completely
usurped … as has always been claimed [in Anarchistic discourses] … only reinvented in the form
of essence.”41 Respectively and respectfully, one must admit that just because some proclaim
and chant God dead while others argue for the possibility or usefulness of divine presence in
their lives instead, both are still on the same boat, neither here nor there, a problem of gad-
gets, no proof of life or death. All that could result then from focusing strictly and arguing
cruelly over this “moot” point is a massive loathsome increase in flattened-out conceptions of
the world—conceptions which are internalised, consciously and unconsciously, between both
parties, Religious and Non-Religious Anarchists after the same Anarchic sensibilities, and who

36
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 27.
37
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 27.
38
There exist a number of “significant problems with Eurocentric-style democracy … as every Muslim [is required,
each according to their abilities,] … to give a sound opinion on matters … entitled to interpret the law of God.” The
“theory that the influential persons could represent the general public was [and still is] operative in [‘Islam’] … but in
view of changed circumstances and in consideration of the principles of consultation … it is essential that this theory
should give place to the formation of an assembly … [a] real [representation] of the people.” See Esposito, Islam and
Democracy, 25.
39
See reference to Ali Abdel Razeq (1925), “Al-Islam wa Ushul al-Hukm — Islam and the Principles of Gover-
nance,” in Ulil Abshar-Abdalla, Muhammad: Prophet and Politician (May 9, 2004), 74.125.95.132 (accessed December
8th , 2008.); The Holy Koran, Chapter 18, Chapter of “The Cave:” Verse 110; Chapter 41, Chapter of “Explained in
Detail:” Verse 6; and Yunan Labib Rizk, “Cabinet Toppled by a Book,” Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 522 (February 22–28,
2001), weekly.ahram.org.eg (accessed January 2, 2009) (emphasis added).
40
The Holy Koran, Chapter 2, Chapter of “The Cow:” Verse 26.
41
Saul Newman, From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power (Lanham MD: Lex-
ington Books, 2001), 6.

206
are now caught in an endless palpitating ambiance that spreads over just about everything. That
said,

as long as [Anarchisms and Anarchists] continue to believe absolutely in grammar,

in essence, in the metaphysical presuppositions of language … they will continue to
believe in God.42
“Anarchism” has
not ousted God … [because] the place of authority of the category of the di-
vine remains intact, only re-inscribed in the demand for presence… Athe-
ism changes nothing in this fundamental structure.43
Yet, if still, for some, slaughtering God a thousand times, in as many stabs, jabs,
blunders as they like, is their attempt at a “solution,” in an extraordinary dance of
jubilant liberation, from there, there comes an expense in one and the same equation.
With God dead at the push of a button, there arrive a thousand idiots with grins,
infinite demagogues, mini-gods each upping the anti, one on the other, squabbling
over a displaced God’s space and power; a place that is now open to the highest
bidder. But I was under the impression Anarchists were trying to stop the unleashing
of an Apocalypse, where no body laughs, in a collective commitment at becoming
anti-authoritarian. In this manner, as far as Anarca-Islam sees it and is committed,
people are the rightful bearers of “the trust,” whether that trust comes from atheists
or from others believing that God is welcome over and over again. Either way at
least within this framework and interplay, the absolute sovereignty of God makes
any human hierarchy in theory impossible, since before God all humans become
equal.44
To continue then, because up until now this discussion has only taken up anti-
authoritarian commitments, is to return to the level of great conceptual and prac-
tical inscriptions of the dead “Islam” where one finds an ensemble of fundamentally
anti-capitalist currents, and upon which Anarca-Islam is founded, that exist as well.

A Disinterested Love in Mommy

No longer seeing, no longer looking, my vision impaired save for a light gaze curled, directed, turned
and inverted inwards towards the Koran to a point one can never see after or insist on enough: a
verse that firmly stands, that attests, indeed that commands that property drags,45 is always given
back and belongs in God’s hands. Decreed “we” are collectively not glorious capitalist thieves
but honoured, guests, Caretakers of God’s property:
42
Newman, 6.
43
Newman, 6.
44
Esposito, Islam and Democracy, 25; Newman, 6.
45
It is reported in the prophetic oral tradition, the Sunnah: through “Abu Huraryrah that the Prophet said: ‘The
poor will enter paradise five hundred years ahead of the rich’” as the latter accounts for their accrued and hoarded
wealth, how they got it, how they spent it, whereas the former will not be answerable for any such thing; in that sense
property drags. See Safdar Hasan Siddiqi and Muhammad ibn Abd AllƗh, Muhammad (Peace be Upon Him) Messenger
of Allah, on Social Behaviour (Lahore: Ferozsons, 1984), 91.

207
 O believers, expend of the good things you have earned, and of what We have pro-
duced for you from the earth; and intend not the corruption of it for your expending,
for you would never take it yourselves… Those who expend … night and day, secretly
and in public, their wage awaits them with their Lord, and no fear shall be on them;
neither shall they sorrow.46

Limping, feeble and finite, limited to simply raising our hands to show we are alive, “every-
thing [subjects and objects] ultimately belong to God … Human beings are simply Caretakers, or
Vicegerents, for God’s property” on Earth.47 The You, the I, combined, intertwined as grape vines,
are Caretakers of “ourselves;” the You, the I, together are Caretakers of one another, equal; col-
lectively we are but Caretakers, legatees, of God’s objects, strictly and solely. God creates God’s
property, the object, with all objects of this world readily flourishing in abundance giving way
to God’s intent and maxim that this property become shared and distributed in equity, naturally
and fervently hopefully “without corruption” or “mantles of fraud.”48
To the clear sighted, property, then, Anarca-Islamically already at the end appears via bonds,
void of a centre, and its trajectory acts towards that which is communal, public, rather than the
personal, the private. That individuals are let, retained and willed, in a right ordained by God, to
have claim to at least that which suffices to have a decent “quality of life” rather than shamefully,
merely, a shanty “standard of living;” and this right no one ought be able to take away even if
by force by virtue of Al-Dururiyat Al-Khamas.49 Sung like this, it is thus with property, Anarca-
Islamically, absolutely owned by God, that there appears a newly wedded welcome, a “contract,”
a “license,” a new economic relationship: God-Caretaker. A Caretaker as a temporary “benefi-
ciary,” a Caretaker as a “trustee” or “borrower” of God’s Property, never to be confused with the
ego of that an absolute owner.50 And a Caretaker has available two types of economic relation-
46
The Holy Koran: Chapter 2, Chapter of “The Cow:” Verse 269.
47
Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, 165.
48
John Thomas Cummings, Hossein Askari and Ahmad Mustafa, “Islam and Modern Economic Change,” in Islam
and Development: Religion and Sociopolitical Change, ed. John L. Esposito (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1980),
37.
49
The fundamental qualities of life, also termed, Maqasid of Al-Shariah, objectives of Shariah or Al-Dururiyat
Al-Khamas are five of which two responsibilities and protected rights are life and property; the former not merely con-
stricted to human or animal existence but the maintenance of health, education, a peaceful and reasonably pollutant-
free environment; “And the earth We have spread out (like a carpet); set thereon mountains firm and immovable; and
produced therein all things in due balance. And We have provided therein means as subsistence, for you and for those
whose subsistence ye are not responsible. And there is not a thing but its (sources and) treasures (inexhaustible) are
with Us; but We only send down thereof in due and ascertainable measures. And We send the fecundating winds,
then cause the rain to descend from the sky, therewith providing you with water (in abundance), through ye are not
the guardian of its stores, so intend not corruption of the earth” and “Do not kill a soul which Allah has made sacred.”
See The Holy Koran, Chapter 15, Chapter of “The Rock:” Verses 19–22; and Chapter 6, Chapter of “The Cattle:” Verse
151. The emphasis here is on “We,” God, as the giver of rights of which no Authority, “no leader, no government, no
assembly can restrict, abrogate or violate in any way [these] rights” to existence, life, or property, they are Gods,’ not
covered with shit, pissed on by demagogues. See Mohammed Arkoun, Rethinking Islam: Common Questions, Uncom-
mon Answers, ed. and trans. Robert D. Lee (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 106. Al-Haqq, an Arabic word meaning
“The Just,” is God, the transcendent of all beings to whom anyone has not only a privilege of access to but also rather
the inherent right to access. Al-Haqq radiates from the singular, the transcendental, to a plural multiplicitous Huquq,
rights here on this Earth, so who but God gifts all beings Huquq? See Farid Esack, Quran, Liberation & Pluralism:
An Islamic Perspective of Inter-religious Solidarity Against Oppression (Oxford: Oneworld, 1997), 158. See Cummings;
Askari; Mustafa, 37.
50
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 36.

208
ships: Individual and/or Communal, the difference of which we will pay homage to shortly. But
step by step and not a step fleeing beyond oneself yet, regardless of Individual and/or Commu-
nal: Caretakers, Anarca-Islamically, are to “conduct their affairs by mutual consultation” if they
want or are to fulfil the criteria of the inescapable Shura, where these “new associations,” this
“new economy,” then are “automatically” replaced and comprised of Caretakers united, dealing
in “business” matters, as “a large number of small firms” through borrowed property from God.51
“Small borrowed firms” decentralised, without a C. E. O. conductor-leader, intermingling, loosely
textured, characterised instead with continual, temporal and perpetual “states” of abduction and
transformation of property as they, Individual and/or Communal Caretakers, now revolve around
and round, in control, out of control, as if in a butoh-like dance,52 in temporary states of borrow-
ship of God’s property. Caretakers in Shirakah, partnered “nuptials,” mixing with each other in
partnership in everything economic, and who

decide freely [ Ikhtiy’ar] … [to participate or not] without outside influence …

[in whatever small business unlike those haughty, beastly, economic relations
un-consented to through influential visitations by] capitalist suppliers, planning
authorities.53

These participations, associations, bonds in these “small borrowed firms” then are founded,
grounded, characterised, contorted, given character, by a paradoxical, squeaky, stance of “un-
conditional” hospitality, openness to “everyone,” interlocked conditionally with a conditional ad-
herence to certain principles; anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist Anarchic commitments, sensi-
bilities, as an ultimate responsibility back towards the community.54 That way, participations, as-
sociations, bonds are opposed to involuntary relations, in favour and born out of Ikhtiy’ar, choice,
where Caretakers become free creatures and rebels in voluntary relations and associations.55
These participations and associations are a Fardh, a religious duty unto and for these Caretakers
themselves, tantamount to affording them dignity to decide for themselves, un-deprived hence
of keeping their word or voices—free to make choices with none permitted to taking hold a po-
sition of enjoying any innate, benign, useless, moral superiority over the other.56 In this vein,
Communal Caretakers are

51
Akhtar A. Awan, Equality, Efficiency, and Property Ownership in the Islamic Economic System (Lanham, MD:
University Press of America, 1983), 30; and The Holy Koran, Chapter 42: Chapter of “The Council:” Verse 38.
52
Said to have “originated in post-world war II Japan … first performed in 1959,” Butoh is a traditionally per-
formed dance by “farmers celebrating harvest,” marking the cycles of life, birth and death, and is with as “many styles
as there are dancers,” conventionally, in white body makeup. The “most unconventional aspect of Butoh is its move-
ment” deriving “its power from what the individual who dances it brings to it in a very mental as well as physical
sense … a directing of energy to the audience from the surroundings, the environment and the audience themselves
as much as from the mind;” hence, a similar analogy in terms of the fluidity between the singular Caretaker and all
that surrounds the singular, the least of which is the communal, especially in terms of the recognition of Caretaker
relationships to “small borrowed firms” as being cyclical, as life is to birth and death—a Butoh like dance. See Dan Her-
mon, “What is Butoh” (March 10th , 2003), www.butoh.net (accessed December 31, 2008); and Alexandra Paszkowska,
“What does Butoh Mean?” www.paszkowska.de (accessed December 31, 2008) (emphasis added).
53
Awan, 32.
54
Awan, 31.
55
Rodney Wilson, Economics, Ethics, and Religion: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Economic Thought (New York:
New York University Press. 1997), 134.
56
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 44.

209
 accorded a dignity in keeping with … [their] status as … vicegerent[s] of God on
earth … [whose] return[s] can take the form of … a share in the useful profit of
enterprise.57

Upside down, inside out, these are the sort of clawed thoughts that Anarca-Islam tears away
at and marks territorially (externally, “small borrowed firms,” internally, voluntarily) as its anar-
chic territory of reference—a territory carved vis-à-vis the condemnation of the “exploitation of
[Caretakers by one another and] seeking to promote the greatest amity between” Caretakers.58
Caretakers as myopic multitudes of a community commanded to “withhold not things justly due
to others,” due to each other, to act as a community.59
Not undoing but redoing what was absorbed and read instead: since “every entity is multiple
and at the same time linked with other” multiples, it is only right as well to take delight that
though, in the last analysis, Communal Caretakers are preferred, enthusiasm, security, apprecia-
tion and room ought be made for the arrival, the survival, of the unique, the singular, the stem
of every root, the individual.60 Or must the singular always be compelled to living in servitude,
forgotten, reduced to a state of sludge and regarded as shamefully inferior in an act of forceful
enslavement of our subjectivity on account of the whim of a collectivity? Why harden, forgo,
forsake the singular, individual, when it is absolutely not necessary to repress neither desire as
a sacrifice; a despotic communal plural over the singular individual, a selfish singular individ-
ual over the plural communal, one on the part of the other? Why, when one gives life to the
other and where each of their rights can be negotiated with one another? After all, without con-
vulsions, there are always jolts, untainted by infamous desires for greed, that move and turn a
subject, an individual, into someone with an attraction, who imaginatively “creates,” with a wish
to “innovate” or introduce a “new” desire into their corresponding field that is a community. A
community not necessarily inclined towards or interested in exploring that same zone of desire,
and a subject not carried away by the lullaby of their ego but after opening up new territories of
reference, prisons or fields of possibilities. A subject who ought instead bear admiration, perhaps
wholeheartedly encouraged, given further courage, by the community, not mixed up, trampled
upon or aggravated, made to quiver or tremble, on account of the pursuit of a dream even if it is
nothing more than just an “empty” acquired phantasm. Therein thus rises, not cowardly hides
in a cave, the possibility for the existence of an Individualised Caretaker, a “small borrowed firm,”
yet one who residually remains subject, “nailed,” to a specific template, comprised of at least three
impediments, that they are not to exceed. Why? Because as a key idealism has no place here.
For, already without a template present a milieu of differences in Mal, money, a consequence
of productivity, work ethics and the negotiation and building of an equilibrium, a compromise,
between the ways, the desires and rights of an individual and those of a communal will always
be present, audible, no matter what; one Caretaker likes to dash, work, boom, while the other
prefers to be lazy, coast, crash.

57
Ziauddin Ahmad, Islam, Poverty and Income Distribution: A Discussion of the Distinctive Islamic Approach to
Eradication of Poverty and Achievement of an Equitable distribution of Income and Wealth (Leicester: Islamic Foundation,
1991), 37.
58
Ahmad, 41.
59
Gilles Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1997), 120; The Holy Koran: Chapter 29: Chapter of “The Spider:” Verse 183.
60
Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical, 120; Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 42.

210
 The first “impediment” then, is that any attempt on the part of the Individual Caretaker to
claim, to proclaim, what are regarded as base, natural, resources for their selves is constrained
by the demand of a return to the principle of Tawheed; absolute ownership is that of God’s.61
Natural

resources [objects] in the universe, such as land, capital, general circumstances such
as shortages for reasons of war or disasters as well as laws of nature, all these belong
to the whole of society, and all its members have equal shares and rights of access to
them.62

The Individual Caretaker is not only leashed by Tawheed but also bound, fixated, as well by an
enforced communal will, permitted only the borrowing of specific types of property. The second
impediment is that if the use of property is in an ignoble, indignant, “manner which damages …
others” then the community is to arbitrate, break its silence or prop itself up from whatever slum-
ber, to intervene, to halt this solitary individual from inflicting any further harm or damage.63
Ultimately and always in the end, as a third impediment, if

a segment of society is without [a quality of life that includes, though not limited
to] shelter, clothing, food, and adequate economic opportunity, then societal needs
… take priority over

this myopic Individual.64

In an echo of the first anti-capitalist current, arrives the second: Mudarabah/Musharakah, is an
anti-monopolistic vestige and external financial subtending body, “structure,” established com-
munally, minimising tirelessly by investing rhythm, keeping mobile, radically open or fluid any
attempt by the same Caretakers, to establish the concentration or concretisation of borrowed
firms in their hands. It obstructs the possibility of monopolies or oligopolies by extending exist-
ing Caretakers relationships thus creating new Caretakers, new organs, as revitalised independent
nourishing offshoots of already existing Caretakers and the “original body”—the small borrowed
firm.65 There are three beneficiary effects of Mudarabah/Musharakah. The first is the creation
by way of division of present small-borrowed firms into a greater number of other diversified
autonomous “small borrowed firms” for these new Caretakers; a pathway to less animosity due to
jealousy, above all and rather Ehsan, kindness or generosity, effective complementary cohesive
inter-linkage and adequate resource allocation between Caretakers of the same body, commu-
nity.66 The second effect is a minimisation of stockpiling or in Islam what is called Israf.67 Mu-
darabah/Musharakah’s trajectory is more adequate resource allocation, investments, through the
61
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 41. Also see Abdul-Hamid Ahmad Abu-Sulayman, “The Theory of Economics of
Islam,” in Contemporary Aspects of Economic Thinking in Islam, proceedings of the Third East Coast regional Conference
of the Muslims Students Association of the U. S. A. and Canada, American Trust Publications (April 1968); and Ahmad,
33 (emphasis added).
62
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 31.
63
Ahmad, 34.
64
Ahmad, 33.
65
Masudul Alam Choudhury, Money in Islam: A Study in Islamic Political Economy (New York: Routledge, 1997),
110.
66
Choudhury, 110.
67
Choudhury, 110.

211
minimisation of waste in production, consumption and commodity exchange values, all due to
Israf ; a desire to minimise the gap of stockpiling, the surplus of objects and subjects, to prevent
unnecessary depletion or destruction once a threshold, the threshold in which excess stock begins
to pile, is reached.68 Mudarabah/Musharakah seeks to minimi s e then the production of shit we do
not need and that You and I will never consume by transforming the threshold of production or
consumption into the exchange limit, in which exchange is of interest to both parties: consumer
and producer. It, the exchange limit, is
one of temporal succession[s] because … [it] preserves itself [from Israf ] … by
switching territories [of what is produced and what is consumed by way of a joint
consensual collaborative operation between both parties] at the conclusion of each
period ( itinerancy, itineration) … [and it is] this iteration [that] will govern the
apparent exchange.69
Capitalism, on the other hand or the other way around, thrives on stockpiling, as its law and
concern is that of
the simultaneous exploitation of different territories; or, when the exploitation is
successive, the succession of operation periods bares [exploitation] on one and the
same territory
till “the force of serial iteration is superseded by … global comparison;” over-producing, under-
producing, intentionally, serially, locally and globally; exploitative assemblages, markets, in the
absence of consensual collaborations.70 The “concluding,” final, affect is that Huquq al-Ibadah,
dutiful responsibility to new Caretakers, and Huquq al-Allah, duties to God, as consequence of
Mudarabah/Musharakah expressly become (re) affirmed through a fulfilment of God’s intent for
the preservation of Huquq al-Ibadah.
To pass from the second to the third anti-capitalist current: Anarca-Islam brings down the iron
curtain on Interest or in “Islam,” Riba. It, Riba, is forbidden, at least, thrice, throughout the Koran,
but here are just two verses:
Those who benefit from interest shall be raised like those who have been driven to
madness by the touch of the Devil; this is because they say: “Trade is like interest”
while God has permitted trade and forbidden interest… If the debtor is in difficulty,
let him [and her] respite until it is easier, but if you forego out of charity, it is better
for you if you realise.71
Riba, and its “collection … was and is forbidden [in ‘Islam’] because it served [and serves] as
a means of exploiting” all who undergo dire and bare poverty.72 Riba sickly props up one hege-
monic life while exhausting, taking harshly the life of another on account of their weak economic
position or strata; Riba is repugnant of the spirit of Anarca-Islam whose underlying philosophies
are al-‘adl wa’l-ihasan, justice and benevolence.73 Riba advances the exploitation of those al-
68
Gilles Deleuze, Gilles and Pierre Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans.
Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), 440.
69
Deleuze and Guattari, 440.
70
Deleuze and Guattari, 440.
71
The Holy Koran, Chapter 2, Chapter of “The Cow:” Verses 275, 281.
72
Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, 163.
73
Ahmad, 36.

212
ready exploited, as “nobles” take and determine its rate, multiplying their class privilege, then
correspond, justifying, to “slaves” under the guise of derogatory undignified edicts its “fairness”
or that “this is just simply the way things are … it is just the state of economic normalcy,” these
highs and booms, then these lows, recessions and depressions burning hence the foundational
spirit upon which all concerned parties in a community ought live together; already, I swear,
I can hear the defiant ghost of Nietzsche screaming over my shoulder: “May men higher than
you stride over you” oh “noble men” of the lowest degree, for at the end you all merely “signify
steps.”74
Carrying us forth is the fourth anti-capitalist move by Anarca-Islam to minimise the concretis-
ing of inheritance, and to maximise the mobility of comfort and “success” with wealth accrued
through it, a capitalist mechanism directed at folding back wealth on itself. Islamic inheritance
laws are cold and deep seeded as an anti-capitalist,

aimed at achieving a wide distribution of wealth amongst the close relatives of the
deceased; at the same time the laws are geared to avoid hoarding and individualistic
discrimination and squabbling within the family unit.75

Looking at them, Islamic Inheritance laws are after the reshuffling, the emission and de-
centring of the “pettiness” of the deceased individual’s pleasures and glory, displacing them, as
the fabric of a community is placed “ahead [of and above] the emotional whims of the deceased
… a dispersal of wealth from the one to the many, instead of channeling wealth from the many
to the one.”76 As the Koran says, for

never let those who hoard the wealth which God has bestowed on them out of His
bounty think it good for them: indeed it is an evil thing for them. The riches they
have hoarded shall become their fetters on the Day of Resurrection. It is God who
will inherit the heavens and the earth. God is cognizant of all your actions. God has
heard the words of those who said: “God is poor, but we are rich.” Their words We
will record, and their slaying of the prophets unjustly. We shall say: “Taste now the
torment of the Conflagration. Here is the reward of your misdeeds. God is not unjust
to His servants … [and] the multiplication (of possessions and its boasting) occupied
you (from worshipping and obeying) until you visit the graves. But no, indeed, you
shall soon know.”77

To toil around, one is always destined to come back round, rotate and arrive at the fifth anti-
capitalist current Zakat, progressive alms tax. Zakat oriented the way it is weighs heavily in
minimising the forgotten shameful horror of worshiping Mal as Samiri “who took the [golden]
calf (for worship).”78 Zakat is a Haqq, a right for those who do not have over and above those
who do, keeping social equity integrated into the wider social field, in an effort at desegregating,
74
Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York:
Viking, 1954), 395.
75
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 35.
76
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 35.
77
The Holy Koran, Chapter 3: Chapter of “The Family of Imran:” Verse 180; and Chapter 102; Chapter of “Rivalry
in Worldly Affairs—Competition:” Verses 1–3.
78
The Holy Koran, Chapter 7, Chapter of “The Elevated Places”: Verse 152.

213
seeking and establishing balance. Zakat as the third pillar in Islam(s), and there are five, is vitally
and creatively a divinely sanctioned obligatory necessity for those who Islamically believe in
eternal salvation.79 Zakat is an expiation for past sins, a lust for having created a tomorrow
filled with the pleasure of one having temporarily overcome one’s fascist self. “Overcoming”
without constituting a self-righteous ego about Zakat as an act and that would cancel the act out,
until the next time it is paid over and over again; a perpetual “disassociation of oneself from one’s
accrued wealth.”80 Zakat as a power concentrated for those handicapped financially ought to be
repeated indefinitely till the sufficient qualities of life are fulfilled and met. And since Zakat as an
endogenous money multiplier precludes “the annual payment of alms in income and savings, in
trade commodities, in crops, and in certain other properties” it acts as an anti-thesis to Taxation.81
For

taxation … creates money … and it corresponds with services and goods in the cur-
rent of that [ economic] circulation… [In it] the state finds the means for foreign trade,
insofar as it appropriates that trade … and which makes Monopolistic appropriation
of outside exchange possible.82

But Zakat is not this abject voyeurism, this conventional source of “nourishment supposedly
for the poor,” like some government revenue distributed via taxation or used for the appropriation
of an outside exchange as a means for foreign trade.83 Erected quite the opposite, Zakat is to be
paid specifically, directly, by hand and face to face, never impersonalised by way of government
or a revenue-collecting agency.84 It is not to be distorted as some sort of free generosity of
some towards others in the hope that the wealth of the rich and the destitution of the poor may
somehow miraculously find a point of balance.85 Zakat is the right of the poor over the rich
and not a privilege honourably bestowed in an honorarium to “those in whose wealth is a right
known for the beggar and the outcast.”86 Moreover, Zakat’s charm is that it ought be given
willingly “not to be paid begrudgingly, if the divine law [associated with it] is to be fulfilled.”87
The Koran shines as moonlight:

The free will offerings are for the poor and needy, those who work to collect them,
those whose hearts are brought together the ransoming of slaves, debtors, in God’s
way, and the traveler; so God ordains.88

Zakat is therefore not

just a widow’s mite to be paid out of [spite or] duty and distributed as charity …
anything but that … woven into the very fabric of society … [it] aims at freeing the
poor from their dependence so that eventually they themselves will pay Zakat
79
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 26–27.
80
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 27–28.
81
Tariq Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 193.
82
Deleuze and Guattari, 443.
83
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 27.
84
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 27.
85
Ramadan, Western Muslims and The Future of Islam, 178.
86
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 27.
87
Cummings; Askari; Mustafa, 27.
88
The Holy Koran, Chapter 9, Chapter of “Repentance and Dispensation:” Verse 60.

214
 to help less fortunate others.89 Zakat that way “demands … [a kind of cohesive bondage and]
knowledge of the environment, the community, and the social and economic situation” and hence
arrives through a sense of communal responsibility continuously reborn.90
But then Zakat populates, pregnant, and gives birth to our sixth and seventh anti-capitalist
daughters Infaq and It’am. Infaq of Sadaqah, denotes the act of the voluntary spending of charity
and though unlike Zakat in that it is un-obligated to impregnate itself, it is still always like
it in that it is directed to the welfare of those in more need, is always insolent and cheerfully
encouraged. Of course there is It’am. It’am is the act of leaping beyond worldly glory, to hosting
and being able to do so without cost, calculation or rationalisation, thus co-existing with “the
other” by voluntarily feeding guests, foreigners, brothers and sisters in need of sustenance; un-
obligated, it stills brings strange freedom into one’s world by basking in the company of those
poorer on a dinner table.91 The Koran, as only the Koran can, affirms:

As for all who lay up treasures of gold and silver and do not spend them for the sake
of God give them the tiding of grievous suffering [in the life to come]: on the Day
when that [hoarded wealth] shall be heated in the fire of hell and their foreheads and
their sides and their backs branded therewith, [those sinners shall be told] “these are
the treasures which you have laird up for yourselves! Taste, then, [the evil of] your
hoarded treasures!”92

And yet another Verse:

as does he [and/or she] who spends his [and/or her] wealth only to be seen and praised
by others … for his [and/or her] parable is that of a smooth rock with [a little] earth
upon it-and then a rainstorm smites it and leaves it hard and bare.93

These are the verses, and this last verse as a point is an impassioned witness for the attitude,
this duty to give, its discretion bearing

the mark of respect for an individual’s dignity in all circumstances, even the most
intimate … to give before the poor who need to beg … to avoid being seen by anyone
so that no one has to be embarrassed … [to give members of a community what they]
are entitled to have;

for one is to experience, to feel the “shame” the other feels, and the affect of the effects that
hover over the other’s body when it is judged in what really is a rightful act of giving what
is already due.94 Innumerable is the character of one who has chosen “to bare faith … to bear
responsibility for social commitment at every moment … to possess is [tantamount] to have the
duty [and obligation] to share.”95
89
Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, 189.
90
Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, 193.
91
Ahmad, 42.
92
The Holy Koran, Chapter 9, The Chapter of “Repentance and Dispensation:” Verses 34–35.
93
The Holy Koran, Chapter 2: The Chapter of “The Cow:” Verse 264.
94
Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, 181.
95
Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, 182.

215
 As if by order of my list, from one to the next, Ramadan, an entire anti-capitalist apparition all
by itself, a fasting, a Sawm, from dusk till dawn, for a lunar month every year. Ramadan is not
a ritual lonely, alone, by itself, though it is a “costly” and taxing one that hollows out the mind,
the body, and that “humiliates” and magnifies them both at the same time. Officially it is an

act of worship … [to] lead Muslims to perceive, to feel inwardly, the need to eat and
drink and by extension to ensure that every human being has the means to subsist.96

Ramadan’s end commences with Sadaqat Al-Fitr, “another [obligatory] charity [added to all
the rest, that never rest] … imposed on every Muslim who has the means for themselves and their
dependents.”97 Sadaqat Al-Fitr is launched in connection and

related to property and is obligatory on every Muslim that possesses more than the
prescribed amount of provisions after giving the charity … [and is] to be given in
person into the hands of those who are eligible to receive … [not] the wealthy.98

And it is through this profound Ramadan that the purification, the glorious act of expiation,
plays out in a voluntary washing out of oneself internally and externally; a reducing of surplus,
the idea of excessively consuming and producing, discouraging and disengaging oneself from the
madness of the incessant engagement in extravagant spending and the wasteful use of resources
placed in one’s trust; a “sanitising” of one’s body even if it is just temporary and just for a month.
As a finale, Islamic banking is a concrete contestatory act of resistance to Capitalism that gives
way to a new form of unrestricted access to financial resources in banking systems without
reference to the criteria of “creditworthiness.”99 It appeared in

the mid-nineteenth century … [and consists in] funding trading activities … [open-
ing] saving accounts with no interest … [and] whose patrons participate in invest-
ments and either earn a share of the profit on the return or suffer a portion of the
losses sustained by the bank.100

For their part, transactions involve risk, “the use of equity sharing rather than debt financ-
ing.”101 And though dare I say it is a “cost in so far as risk,” it is a way out and a beginning
that seethes at heart in its arming willing resistors, any impoverished communities, with a pre-
liminary necessary set of arms that can be used to ward off current hegemonic capitalist orders.
Islamic banks are a move that put their fingers on the pulse, the essential problem, sensitising
and mobilising the entire social context, perhaps having foretold the 2008 global financial melt-
down, by creating conditions favourable to real transformation. It empowers “grassroot levels
by extending their social funds towards developing a diversity” of “small firms” in generating an

96
Ramadan, Western Muslims and the Future of Islam, 89.
97
Ali Budak, Fasting in Islam and the Month of Ramadan: A Comprehensive Guide, trans. Suleyman Basaran
(Somerset, NJ: The Light, 2005), 93–96.
98
Budak, 93–96.
99
Ahmad, 46.
100
Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, 167–168.
101
Esposito, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam, 168.

216
alternative resistive rhizome modified in a more humane way towards organising differently, au-
tonomously, grassroots workplaces.102 Islamic Banks are a way of demanding the reopening up
of what are cordoned credit-worthy asylums by setting up real alternatives and encouraging an
engagement in inter-communal economic cooperation and participation, restoring agency back
to those whose agency it belongs to in the first place; everyone in the community.103
It seems to me, with what was mentioned and what are an unmentioned ample more, that
certain anti-capitalist currents, commitments and conditions rise as evidence in offering alter-
natives to a god whose inflations and deflations militate against and give support to my and
Anarca-Islam’s existence and stance of giving fair measure of value in all transactions; in my and
Anarca-Islam becoming anti-capitalist.

To (Re) Do Away with the Clinic

As such, this is how the taste of a sour lemon and its words coursed through my veins. As such I
ate the lemon and spat out the words as seeds. For when yesterday I supposedly woke up I found
myself in this Clinic sucking what you might call a “lemon,” now a dried “lemon” whose seeds are
like these words I just spat. Perhaps now they, the seeds and their company of words will sprout
into inverted trees of half red, Anarchist, half green, Islamic, and partially rotted black apples in-
stead. As such my duty for now, but for now, becomes fulfilled. As such my infringement upon
good tastes and manners comes to a temporal beginning of something new. This was the vision
I had sometime in the afternoon and you could call it poetic terrorism if you like. All I propose
to know is that it was but a combat-like portrait of two dreams, redeeming one another, never
complete and hence always partially rotted by an ongoing tragic symphony of misconceptions
still to be resurrected and unearthed. As such, in this certain sense but not only in the strict
sense of which I spoke of, “I” stand in reality with a theological and epistemological certitude in
hand, becoming anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian, saturating, by the very politicisation of my
subjectivity, breaking through, disturbing and melting two archaic walls, “Islam” and “Anarchy.”
But breaking through walls is not void of difficulties, and if it is done too brutally there is the
possibility of headaches, crumbling, collapsing, a great fall, due to pre-existing misconceptions
that are always already threatening the coexistence of these two identities and communities.104
For I myself have taken part in these troubles because of my silence. And so to the formidable
difficulties to come, in an effort at breaching another wall, and to further minimise such misun-
derstandings soon I will clear, clarify and work to add, in a breath of fresh air, to Anarca-Islam’s
Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Authoritarian commitments so far, an Anti-Trans-phobic one. Yet for
now, I am content with Deleuze’s final words on the back cover of Dessert Islands (2003): “if you
don’t admire something, if you don’t love it, you have no reason to write a word about it,” but there
are No castles on the Rhine to be enshrined here. Read this once, tempt Nous, cry Brûle then burn
it. For now, this patient has “done” away, fleeing like Genet their playpen and Clinic, running
whilst looking for a weapon. Feel free to call the cops.
Salam et Salut. More appropriately, Adieu.

102
Choudhury, 178.
103
Choudhury, 178.
104
Guattari, 89.

217
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219
CHAPTER TWELVE. IMAGINING AN
ISLAMIC ANARCHISM: A NEW FIELD OF
STUDY IS PLOUGHED
ANTHONY T. FISCELLA
What research has been accomplished hitherto on the subject of anarchism within Islam? How
has Islamic anarchism been approached and conceived by researchers and advocates? How might
this field be approached? What are some of the challenges inherent in the study of anarchism in
Islam? This chapter attempts to answer these questions while raising new ones. Work by Ahmet
Karamustafa, Patricia Crone, Harold Barclay, Peter Lamborn Wilson, Michael Muhammad Knight,
‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney, Heba Raouf Ezzat, Michael “Salim” McCarron and Sharif Gemie is dis-
cussed and analysed in light of the goals and reference points of the authors. Material from the
Najdiyya Kharijites and Mu‘tazilites of the ninth century to the contemporary Taqwacore scene is
addressed in an attempt to chart the realm of what might be considered to be variations of an Islamic
anarchism. Concluding with a tentative model for the study of this new field, the chapter ends by
raising questions about the efficacy of current taxonomies and terminologies.

There are as many Islams as there are situations that sustain it.1
—Aziz al-Azmeh

[A]narchists from all kinds of backgrounds with all kinds of ideas have sought to
make contemporary anarchisms relevant to them in their own unique situations.2
—Jason Adams

Introduction
Time and again scholars inform us that Islam is neither homogenous nor monolithic. The same
could be said of anarchism. Both are highly diverse movements with a wide range of internal
clashes, debates and questions about identity and boundaries. Can one then look at such diversity
and speak of Islam or anarchism in the singular sense without committing an injustice to one’s
intended meaning? The two epigraphs above would imply that the task is tricky at best.3 Yet
1
Aziz Al-Azmeh, Islam and Modernities (London: Verso, 1993), 1.
2
Jason Adams, “Nonwestern Anarchisms: Rethinking the Global Context,” Infoshop Library (2003),
www.infoshop.org (accessed January 25, 2008).
3
The singular sense shall be the standard in regard to this study because it is both the more popular usage as
well as the less clumsy. The advantage of the plural usage is that it is more technically correct but the nuance of multi-
plicity that it alludes to is already made abundantly clear by the material here and need not be emphasised. In line with
Gemie’s own critique of the plural usage, the singular also has the advantage of emphasising inherent commonality

220
as broad and diverse as these two spheres are, they do speak of distinct ideological, social, and
physical territories. One does not enter an anarchist Infoshop in Europe in order to join fellow
Muslims in prayer. Nor does one enter a mosque in Indonesia in order to find a book by Bakunin.
Traditionally those territories have been viewed as so distinct that they have been regarded by
scholars on both sides as not sharing any common ground whatsoever. Nowadays, despite the
recognition of internal diversity within both of these global movements, the tendency remains
to regard them as entirely separate phenomena. If you look through the Oxford History of Islam
you will not find a single mention of anarchism.4 Robert Graham’s Anarchism: A Documentary
History of Libertarian Ideas from 300 B. C. to 1939 similarly makes no mention of Islam.5 Both
of these cases are examples of the traditional understanding that anarchism and Islam are two
completely separate social, political, and historical phenomena.6
That understanding has finally begun to be questioned. On the side of Islamic studies, the
French scholar Charles Pellat used the term “anarchists” nearly fifty years ago in order to de-
scribe certain unnamed Mu‘tazilites.7 On the side of anarchist studies, Peter Marshall included
Islam in his 1992 work Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism.8 Although it amounted
to less than a paragraph of comments, his mention of Ismailis, Sufis and the Qarâmita (the latter
on grounds of communism) reflected a willingness to reconsider the traditional understanding
that anarchism and Islam are completely separate entities with no significant points of conver-
gence. Only within the last twenty years or so has a connection between anarchism and Islam
been seriously examined and this has been mostly thanks to the work of Peter Lamborn Wilson,
Ahmet Karamustafa, and Patricia Crone. Harold Barclay, the anarchist anthropologist and au-
thor of People Without Government, made his own contribution to the study of anarchism and
Islam with his article “Islam, Muslim Societies, and Anarchy” published in Anarchist Studies in
2002.9 Since then, there has been an increase of the number of articles, essays, and manifestos on
the Internet that relate anarchism and Islam, often authored by individuals who self-identify as
Muslim and anarchist. These range from the short and succinct “Muslim Anarchist Charter” by
Yakoub Islam to the lengthy poststructuralist-inspired “Paths to Becoming a Muslim Anarchist”
by Mohamed Jean Veneuse, from the Jordanian anarchist group who states that “after reading a
book called Sufi Tropics written by an Iraqi writer (Hadi al Alawi), we found that Sufism is ALL
ABOUT anarchism” to the “786. Anarcho-Islamic Philosophy” by an Australian who declares
that “Anarchism as an Islamic philosophy offers the only natural way to bridge the gap between

which in this context seems more relevant. Sharif Gemie, “Beyond the Borders: The Question of Third World An-
archism,” Siyahi Interlocal: Journal of Postanarchist Theory Culture and Politics (April 12, 2005) www.livejournal.com
(accessed January 25, 2008). Originally published in Turkish: “Üçüncü Dünya Anarúizmi Sorunu,” Siyahi 1, no. 1
(2004): 76–81.
4
John L. Esposito, ed., The Oxford History of Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
5
Graham, Robert, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas (Montreal: Black Rose, 2005).
6
This tendency is so deep-rooted, in fact, that even when one is looking for evidence to the contrary it can
be difficult to find. Anarchist researcher Bas Moreel tried to find evidence of a connection between Islam and anar-
chism for his Religious Anarchism bulletin but located no more than the solitary example of one anti-authoritarian
individual, Gustave-Henri Jossot (1866–1951), who converted to Islam but did not self-identify as anarchist. See Bas
Moreel, “Islamic Anarchism: Gustave-Henri Jossot’s Religious Conversion,” Religious Anarchism no. 4 (May 2003)
www.raforum.info (accessed January 5, 2008).
7
Charles Pellat “L’Imamat dans la Doctrine de Gâhiz,” Studia Islamica, no. 15 (1961): 38.
8
Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, 2nd ed. (London: Fontana Press, 1993).
9
Harold Barclay, People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism (London: Kahn & Averill and
Cienfuegos Press, 1982).

221
the world we wish to live in and the world we currently live in.”10 Ilham Makdisi, currently a pro-
fessor at Northeastern University, has written a doctoral dissertation which contains a section
that deals with the spread of anarchist and socialist ideas and praxis in Egypt and the Ottoman
Empire by migrant European radicals more than a century ago.11 A Persian man in Sweden by
the name of Mohammad Mehdi Sefidgar has written an entire book devoted to the idea of an
Islamic society going even beyond the laudable ideals of “anarchist direct democracy.”12 There is
indeed a wealth of potentially relevant material—so much so that while the aim of this chapter
is to plough this new field of study, the following limits have had to be applied.
First of all, there is a tendency to describe Islam and especially the shahada, the first pillar of
Islam and the Muslim declaration of faith, in terms that sound very close to anarchist ideals. For
example, Syed Abdul Latif writes in “Islam and Social Change”:

Man … should neither be lord over another man, nor a slave to him. [Muhammad]
raised the slogan, la-ilaha-illallah (there is none worthy of worship except God), to
inspire the rise of a new order of life for man… It was the slogan of the freedom
of man, of his emancipation from every form of bondage under which his thought
and life had quailed in the past… [I]t placed man next to God, brushing aside all the
scribes, intercessors and priests and … swept away all distinctions of race and colour
and every hierarchical concept of life, making righteous conduct, Amal-i-Sâleh, the
sole criterion of one man’s superiority over another.13

Likewise, Asghar Ali Engineer in Islam and Liberation Theology quotes the Egyptian scholar
Ahmad Amin as drawing similar conclusions:

the ruler who wants to humble us wants to be a god; but “There is no god but
God.” We accept from any man whatever or from any nation whatever only that
they should be a brother or brothers… Democracy, socialism, and social justice in
their true meanings will survive and advance because these call for human brother-
hood, and this is one of the consequences of “No god but God.”14

10
See Yakoub Islam, “Muslim Anarchist Charter (amended 19/02/09),” Tasneem Project, www.bayyinat.org.uk
(accessed February 26, 2009); Mohamed Jean Veneuse, “Paths to Becoming a Muslim Anarchist,” Indymedia (February
3, 2007), indymedia.us (accessed February 26, 2009); H [pseudonym], “An Overview of Anarchism in Jordan Today:
Theory and Activities,” A-Infos News Service (March 27, 2008), www.ainfos.ca (accessed February 12, 2009); NuKungFu,
“786. Anarcho-Islamic Philosophy,” Tribe (June 29, 2007), anarchism.tribe.net (accessed February 26, 2009). It may also
be noted that none of this online material has been discussed by any of the researchers covered here.
11
She does not however document any developed synthesis between Islam and anarchism and therefore no “Is-
lamic anarchism” appears in her study; Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Levantine Trajectories: The Formulation and Dissemina-
tion of Radical Ideas in and between Beirut, Cairo and Alexandria 1860–1914, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation (Harvard
University, 2004).
12
Mohammad Mehdi Sefidgar, Islam Beyond: Western Representative Democracy, Marxist Democratic Centralism
and Anarchist Direct Democracy (Göteborg: Chandel Förlag, 1998).
13
Syed Abdul Latif, “Islam and Social Change,” International Social Science Bulletin 5, no. 4 (1953): 691–692;
Another example is Sharif Gemie’s (2006) brief but intriguing comparison between the structures of debates within
the French Fédération Anarchiste and within Islamic culture in general. See Sharif Gemie, “The Trial of Fatima:
Anarchists, Muslims and the Monde Libertaire, 2003–05,” Anarchist Studies 14, no. 1 (2006): 9–19.
14
Asghar Ali Engineer, Islam and Liberation Theology: Essays on Liberative Elements in Islam (New Delhi: Sterling
Publishers, 1990), 8.

222
 These descriptions of Islam and the shahada may share some common ground with anarchist
thought or could easily lend themselves to such an interpretation but, for the limited purposes of
this study, the vast terrain that such an examination could entail will not be traversed here. The
same holds true for the lack of a priesthood or clerical hierarchy, particularly within Sunni Islam,
which, in combination with Islam’s egalitarian character, almost implies an anarchic structure in
itself.15 This lack of central order has been amplified by the fall of the caliphate in 1924 and the
rise of globalisation. Mandaville speaks of this development of increasingly pluralistic authority
as an “intensification of a tendency towards decentralized authority that has always been present
in Islam.”16
Volpi and Turner go so far as to refer to it as “a functional type of anarchism.”17 This brings
to mind the sort of “anarchical society” that Hedley Bull spoke of when analysing international
relations betweens states in a global arena.18 To discuss or even review research about the anar-
chic or egalitarian nature of Islam as such is beyond the scope of this study but it can be helpful
to bear in mind that this type of structural analysis of Islam as anarchic is qualitatively distinct
from the conception of an Islamic anarchism even if the former may be conducive to the latter.
Secondly, this chapter only addresses English language research. If there is any significant
amount of research on anarchism in Islam in other languages, I am unaware of it. There is,
however, some relevant literature by individuals who had close relations with both Muslim and
anarchist circles such as those works by or about Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904), Ivan Aguéli
(1869–1917) or Leda Rafanelli (1880–1971) in French, Swedish and Italian respectively (although
Eberhardt has been translated into English).19 As none of them have researched Islamic anar-
chism nor have any of them become a focal point for contemporary Islamic anarchist research
(even if Eberhardt has been mentioned by Wilson), it could be argued that their treatment is
better served elsewhere.20 Thinkers in other languages—particularly Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish,
undoubtedly exist but have been beyond my reach.21

15
See for example Louise Marlow, Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997) or M. Zuhdi Jasser who cites Islam’s lack of institutional hierarchy as a key link between a
politically libertarian perspective and the Islamic faith, in “The Synergy of Libertarianism and Islam,” Vital Speeches
of the Day 72, no. 14–15 (2006): 456. Also relevant is Charles Lindholm, “Quandaries of Command in Egalitarian So-
cieties: Examples from Swat and Morocco,” in Comparing Muslim Societies, ed. Juan R. I. Cole (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 1992), 63–94.
16
Peter Mandaville, “Globalization and the Politics of Religious Knowledge: Pluralizing Authority in the Muslim
World,” Theory, Culture, and Society 24, no. 2 (2007): 102.
17
Frédéric Volpi and Bryan S. Turner, “Introduction: Making Islamic Authority Matter,” Theory, Culture and
Society 24, no. 2 (2007): 13.
18
See Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd ed. (London and Basingstoke:
MacMillan Press, 1995).
19
See for example Isabelle Eberhardt, The Oblivion Seekers, trans. Paul Bowles (San Francisco: City Lights, 1982)
or Isabelle Eberhardt, The Passionate Nomad: The Diary of Isabelle Eberhardt, trans. Nina de Voogd (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1988). While she did not present an explicit theory of Islamic anarchism as such, one could argue that her
devout but libertine lifestyle implied it.
20
Peter Lamborn Wilson, Pirate Utopias: Moorish Corsairs and European Renegadoes, 2nd revised ed. (New York:
Autonomedia, 2003), 11.
21
One example that I am aware of is Hadi Al-Alawi’s piece (translated into Swedish) on anti-authoritarian ele-
ments within the history of Islam (even if he does not use the term “anarchist” ). See Hadi Al-Alawi, “Oberoendets
linjer i den islamiska bildningstraditionen,” trans. Abdul Hussein Sadayo and Philip Halldén, Tidskrift för Mellanöstern-
studier, no. 2 (1997): 31–47.

223
 Thirdly, this study shall not address economic stances—whether it be capitalism or socialism.
Although there are groups or individuals (such as the Minaret of Freedom Institute) who could
qualify as anarcho-capitalist as well as any number of Islamic socialist strains of thought and
tradition, I have not found any research on the former and the latter, though well-researched,
does not fall under the working definition of anarchism, and is therefore beyond the scope of
this study.22
Fourthly, it happens that certain Islamists such as Sayyid Qutb are sometimes described as
“anarchist.”23 The description is understandable. In his book Milestones, first published in 1964,
Qutb wrote:

Islam is a declaration of the freedom of man from servitude to other men. Thus
it strives from the beginning to abolish all those systems and governments which
are based on the rule of man over men and the servitude of one human being to
another.24

While Qutb’s stance may sound anarchistic, it is not unambiguous and I have not discovered
any research that has analysed his political viewpoints as anarchist.25 This study will not under-
take such a task and since Qutb did not himself state that he was anarchist, his ideas will have to
remain unexamined here. Ironically, Qaddafi’s ideas are more developed in an anarchistic sense
but he is rarely, if ever, called an anarchist, and despite a number of books having been written
about him and his theory, I do not know of any that consider him or his theory to be anarchist.26
Also, mostly due to space limitations, those groups or individuals that do not consider them-
selves to be Muslim (such as the Five Percenters or any number of anarchist Alawis) shall also
remain outside the realm of this examination even if their anarchistic aspects may be of relevance.
Nonetheless, it may be relevant to mention that one could draw a major distinction between or-
thodox Sunni Islam and heterodox sects within Islam. Khuri, for example, suggests that Sunni
dominance of the city and state predisposed them to develop a political philosophy that favoured

22
For examples of socialist thought within Islam see John J. Donohue and John L. Esposito, eds., Islam in Tran-
sition: Muslim Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), the writings of Ali Shariati, Gamal Abdel Nasser,
Benazir Bhutto, Mustafa Siba’i, or start with Wikipedia’s page on “Islamic socialism.” For examples of advocates of
anarcho-capitalism within Islam see Tim Cavanaugh, “Revealed Libertarianism: Minaret of Freedom Tries to Square
the Quran with the Free Market,” Reason Magazine (July 28, 2003), www.reason.com (accessed January 2, 2009) or
Jasser, “The Synergy of Libertarianism and Islam.”
23
Robert Irwin, “Is this the Man who Inspired Bin Laden?: On Sayyid Qutb, the Father of Modern Islamist
Fundamentalism,” The Guardian (November 1, 2001) www.guardian.co.uk (accessed May 17, 2006).
24
Sayyid Qutb quoted in Albert J. Bergesen, The Sayyid Qutb Reader (New York: Routledge, 2008), 37.
25
Esposito does, on the other hand, posit the revolutionary Qutb as more top-down in his approach than the
grassroots-oriented philosophies of his predecessors, Al-Banna and Mawdudi. Suffice to say that the characterisation
of Qutb’s political views as “anarchist” is contested. See John Esposito with Natana J. De Long-Bas, “Modern Islam,”
in God’s Rule, ed. Jacob Neusner (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 171–172.
26
See for example John Davis, Libyan Politics: Tribe and Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1987); Mohamed A. El-Khawas, Qaddafi: His Ideology in Theory and Practice (Brattleboro: Amana
Books, 1986); Mansour O. El-Kikhia, Libya’s Qaddafi: The Politics of Contradiction (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 1997). Two possible exceptions might be Mattias Gardell’s assertion in a Swedish article that Qaddafi’s theory
and his attempt to implement it in Libya is relevant to anarcho-syndicalists in “Muhammar Al-Khadaffi och den
Libyska Revolutionen,” Anarkistisk Tidskrift, no. 6–7 (1992): 11–34 as well as Said Gafourov’s online essay “Social
Philosophy of Russian Anarchism (Kropotkin) and of Muammar Al Qadhafi: An Essay in Comparison,” A-Infos News
Service (May 8, 2003), www.ainfos.ca (accessed January 6, 2008).

224
a central government based on coercion and force. The sects, being more rural-based and not
having the same degree of access to force, resorted to moral measures and social bonds as a means
of regulating social order and adopted “rebellious ideologies rejecting the state.”27 In line with
fourteenth century sociologist Ibn Khaldun’s urban-rural dichotomy, Khuri discerns between
the coercive government of the Sunnis and the asabiya (bonds of solidarity) of the sects, placing
an urban state-friendly religiosity on one side and a tribal state-antagonistic religiosity on the
other. While interesting, the exploration of Khuri’s (or even Khaldun’s) stance and the position
of heterodox groups in Islam (unless explicitly studied as anarchist) is beyond the scope of this
study.
Finally, there have been occasional comparisons drawn between Islamic and anarchist terror-
ism.28 As these parallels are drawn primarily on the basis of strategical similarities, and not the
concept of anarchism or the opposition to the state as such, they too shall be ignored here.
For theoretical guidance, this chapter shall draw on a piece, by anarchist scholar Sharif Gemie,
written in response to an article by Jason Adams wherein he discusses the way we look at “Third
World anarchism.”29 By outlining a framework for approaching anarchist thought and practice
in the “Third World,” Gemie simultaneously provides a potentially useful model for analysing
anarchism within Islam. The four alternative categories he presents are: 1) Imitations of Euro-
American anarchism (which he compares to the export of fashion and/or cultural manifestations
that have little root in their surroundings); 2) Anthropological anarchisms (which refers predomi-
nantly to the lifestyle and practice of tribal societies that lack strong state structures); 3) Openness
to other concepts of anarchism (in which Gemie raises the question of how well we are equipped
to see alternative conceptions of anarchism—such as Taoism—in light of the fact that our access
is often limited when it comes to foreign cultures and our social references tend to constrain
what we recognise as “anarchist”); and 4) Anarchist practice (wherein he cites examples such
as the Palestinian Intifada as a social phenomena that bore fundamental similarities to anarchist
self-management and direct action).30 While the first category may be immediately recognised as
irrelevant to this study (insofar as it is irreligious), the following three can be tentatively applied
as a means to sort through the existing material.
This chapter is as much a study in the study of the juncture between Islam and anarchism as it
is an overview of various ways in which to examine the intersection between the two phenomena.

27
Fuad I. Khuri, Imams and Emirs: State, Religion and Sects in Islam (London: Saqi Books, 1990), 35. The sects
that Khuri covers here are Alawis, Yezidis, Druze, Ibadis, Zaydis and Shi‘ite Twelvers.
28
See for example Audrey Kurth Cronin, “How al-Qaida Ends: The Decline and Demise of Terrorist Groups,” In-
ternational Security 31, no. 1 (2006): 7–48; “For Jihadist, Read Anarchist” The Economist, August 18, 2005, 17–20; Tariq
Ali, “Why They Happened: The London Bombings,” Counterpunch (July 8, 2005), www.counterpunch.org (accessed
January 1, 2009). One of the most recent examples of this tendency is James Gelvin, “Al-Qaeda and Anarchism: A His-
torian’s Reply to Terrorology,” Terrorism and Political Violence 20, no. 4 (2008): 563–581. Gelvin is a scholar of Islamic
politics and has previously written about “Islamic nationalism” which he contrasts with the “Islamic anarchism” of
Al-Qaeda whose supposed goal is to overthrow all nation-states. He even goes so far as to include Al-Qaeda under
the umbrella of the current anarchist movement. Ultimately, this comparison is about as reasonable and effective as
it would be for a scholar of anarchism to single out a loosely organised anarchist group (such as the Black Bloc) and
then compare them to Islam as a whole—perhaps even calling them Muslims—because they happen to bear certain
strategic similarities with the Palestinian Intifada.
29
Gemie himself questions the use of the term “Third World” but I’ll bypass that discussion here. While I agree
with Gemie that it is better than Adams’ term (“Nonwestern”) and recognise that the term is faulty, I fail to see a fully
satisfactory replacement.
30
Gemie, “Beyond the Borders.”

225
Rather than attach a rigorous definition to either term, they shall be regarded here more as sign-
posts that imply general areas that are not clearly cordoned off. Islam is here regarded to include
the various traditions that revolve around the legacy of Muhammad and the god of the Koran.
Without getting into the theological discussion as to who is a heretic and who is a Muslim, that
definition is broad without being all-embracing. Likewise, anarchism is here regarded primarily
as the opposition to (or disregard for) political authority and sometimes, in addition to that, reli-
gious authority as well. As we shall see, the definitions of Islam and anarchism vary according
to the perspective of the researcher.31 Naturally, as there is wide disagreement amongst both
anarchists and Muslims as to what is or is not “anarchist” or “Islamic,” the same holds true for
the conception of “Islamic anarchism” (or “Muslim anarchy”) which can range from the commu-
nistic (Marshall) to the individualistic (Karamustafa, Wilson), from something potentially rooted
in segmentary lineage systems (Barclay) to the mere refutation of the idea that the imamate is
obligatory (Crone).
Beginning with a brief summarisation of some of the main works within this area of research
(Karamustafa, Crone, Wilson, and Barclay), and including a short presentation of a few recent
advocates for Islamic anarchism (Knight, Carney, McCarron, and Ezzat), this chapter will follow
up with a comparative analysis of the various visions of Islamic anarchism that are articulated
by researchers and/or advocates and finally this chapter will conclude with an alternative to
Gemie’s model as well as comments regarding the implications of the analysis and the challenges
presented to researchers in this area of study.

The Study of Islamic Anarchism to Date

Ahmet T. Karamustafa is currently Professor of History and Religious Studies at Washington Uni-
versity in St. Louis, Missouri. A Muslim himself since birth, he authored God’s Unruly Friends,
a book which charts antinomian dervish groups between the years 1200 and 1550.32 The spe-
cific groups that he mentions are Qalandars, Haydarîs, Abdâls of Rûm, Jâmîs, Bektâsîs, Shams-i
Tabrîzîs in Asia Minor, and Madârîs and Jalâlîs in India, with particular emphasis on the first
three of these groups.
Though these dervishes often varied in their characteristics—ranging from ascetic hermits to
hedonistic groups—they were united in their repudiation of social and religious norms. While the
Qalandars are described as dervishes who were “celibates” that engaged in non-productive forms
of sexual activity (including the company of boys), the Haydarîs, on the other hand, wore large
metal rings on their genitals in order to prevent themselves from engaging in sexual intercourse.
The Madârîs are described as “mendicants who refused all clothing and rubbed their naked bodies
with ashes.”33 In addition to wearing iron chains around their necks and heads, the Madârîs wore

31
Crone, for example, maintains a narrow definition of anarchism and an orthodox definition of Islam, while
Wilson’s is broad on both counts and even goes so far as include the Moorish Orthodox Church (an heretical offshoot
of an heretical offshoot—which would place them about as close to Islam as the Baha’i Faith). See Peter Lamborn
Wilson, Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (San Francisco: City Lights, 1993): 15–50. Also see George
Crowder’s attempt to outline common threads in early anarchist thinkers in Classical Anarchism: The Political Thought
of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).
32
Ahmet T. Karamustafa, God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Middle Period 1200–1550 (Oxford:
Oneworld, 2006).
33
Karamustafa, 61

226
black turbans, carried black banners, rejected religious observances, and smoked large amounts
of cannabis. Indeed, voluntary poverty, unemployment, nomadism and/or group living, nudity
and/or uniform dress codes, rejection of orthodox Muslim practice, celibacy, sexual deviance,
consumption of intoxicants or hallucinogens, the wearing of bracelets, the carrying of certain
paraphernalia (such as begging bowls and clubs), body modification (including tattoos, piercing,
self-laceration, and shaving), silence, fasting, sleep deprivation, dancing, singing, and drumming
all featured as characteristics which the various groups selectively employed to varying degrees.
Karamustafa’s qualification of these groups as anarchist is based on his definition of anar-
chism as a practice of “active nihilism targeted directly at human society.”34 Twice he notes that
one dervish, Otman Baba, consistently compared property—money in particular—to faeces. Yet
the major focus of dervish ire, according to Karamustafa, was not society in general, but rather
institutional Sufism.35
Karamustafa’s main goal here is not to argue that these groups are anarchist but rather to
argue that they are Muslim. He begins by observing that these groups have traditionally been
discarded as remnants of pre-Islamic traditions, “folk religion” or otherwise un-Islamic. In con-
trast, he asserts that they are genuine manifestations of an inherent conflict within Islam between
world-embracing and world-rejecting perspectives. Whereas heretical Sufism gradually institu-
tionalised in an Islamic world dominated by the world-embracing approach, antinomian dervish
groups arose to affirm a more purist and anti-institutional approach to the world-rejecting spirit.
In their eyes, the Sufis were sell-outs. True lovers of God had no concern for mundane matters
or the approval of aristocrats.
Karamustafa demonstrates that despite the opposition of these dervishes to both the world-
embracing stance of mainstream Muslims and the compromising stance of institutional Sufism,
their practices and form of organisation copied that of their Sufi predecessors. Like the Sufi
tarîqahs, the communities of antinomian dervishes were headed by elders, they employed master-
disciple relationships, and they commonly applied Sufi spiritual concepts such as faqr (poverty),
fanâ’ (“death before dying”), and walâyah (sainthood). Thus, he regards Sufism as the institu-
tional parent and the antinomians as the rebellious anarchist offspring. He further exemplifies
this connection by noting that many antinomians were assimilated into Sufi orders. The “anar-
chist individualism” of the antinomians, Karamustafa maintains, is a “latent but potent current
within Sufism.”36
Danish-born Patricia Crone is Professor of Islamic History at Princeton University in New
Jersey. She is author of God’s Rule and “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists.”37 In both studies
she lays out the assertion that the only manifestations of anarchism within Islamic history can

34
Karamustafa, 17.
35
It can be noted here that Ocak states that there “are examples of militant Qalandarîs from the lower classes
who participated in revolts against established rule,” which suggests that the dervish anarchists were not always
or wholly unconcerned with political rule. See Ahmet Y. Ocak, “Sufi Milieux and Political Authority in Turkish
History: A General Overview (Thirteenth-Seventeenth Centuries),” in Sufism and Politics: The Power of Spirituality,
ed. Paul L. Heck (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2007), 181. Furthermore, Ocak’s treatment of the subject,
distinguishing between urban “conformist” Sufis and nomadic, rural “non-conformist” Sufis, offers an interesting
contrast to Karamustafa’s.
36
Karamustafa, 91.
37
Patricia Crone, God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Patricia Crone,
“Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists,” Past and Present, no. 167 (2000).

227
be traced to the Najdiyya Kharijites and certain members of the Mu‘tazilites. She begins “Ninth-
Century Muslim Anarchists” by writing:

The people with whom this paper is concerned were anarchists in the simple sense
of believers in an-archy, “no government.” They were not secularists, individual-
ists, communists, social reformers, revolutionaries or terrorists, merely thinkers who
held that Muslim society could function without what we would call the state.38

Thus, for Crone, anarchism is solely the belief in the dispensability of government. According
to her, Western anarchist thought can be generally traced to the concept of returning to a utopian
condition of innocence that pre-dated the emergence of the state. Islam, on the other hand, is
founded on the basic ideas that God is the ruler of the universe, government has always existed,
and the utopian goal is not a lack of government but rather an ideal form of government. In prac-
tical terms, human society should be governed by an imam, the first of whom was Muhammad.
Statelessness, the condition of society before Islam, is regarded pejoratively as jahiliyya, a state
of chaos and disorder. Hence, the institution of the imamate, following Muhammad’s example,
was to keep the potential for jahiliyya in check by governing society righteously.
The problem by the ninth-century however was that imams demonstrated a particularly prob-
lematic tendency of turning into tyrants. The general response to this quandary was one of three
options: replacement of the tyrants with righteous imams, acceptance of tyranny or rejection of
the imamate altogether. The first option was chosen by the majority of Mu‘tazilites and Khari-
jites (as well as Shi‘ites and a few Sunnis though she does not mention them here) who fought to
replace decadent leadership with righteous leadership. The second option became the standard
Sunni response to tyranny. Rather than divide the Muslim community through internal feuding,
kings—even corrupt ones—should be tolerated but should not be regarded as divinely guided. The
third response, which was to reject the imamate altogether, was chosen by a minority amongst
the Kharijites and Mu‘tazilites. As the latter reasoned, “since imams kept turning into kings, the
best solution was not to set them up in the first place.”39
These Muslim anarchist groups did not however argue that the state was an inherently bad
institution as such—only that it was no longer practical. Their point was that the imamate was
not to be regarded as a religious obligation in the same way as prayer and fasting. Government
was a human convention and an option which could be freely chosen or not according to circum-
stance. In such a circumstance where government was either impractical or undesirable some
Mu‘tazilites argued that the whole community—including criminals—had to chip in by observing
the law while others advocated mob rule (“people should take the law into their own hands”).40
Still others advocated a decentralised federalism in which power was vested in the hands of local
leaders and patriarchs.
Whereas the Mu‘tazilites were more philosophically based, the militant Najdiyya set up their
argument somewhat differently. The Najdiyya were building upon a tradition within the Khar-
ijites that righteous Muslims had an obligation to take to arms and replace corrupt leadership
with righteous leadership. As the Kharijite history of placing their faith in the power of the
sword invariably saw them losing more ground than they gained, the Najdiyya came up with
38
Crone, 3.
39
Crone, 13.
40
Crone, 17.

228
the practical idea that if they no longer believed in the idea that the imamate was necessary then
they would no longer be obligated to fight (and die) to establish it. Furthermore, the Najdiyya
argued that a righteous imamate had to be unanimously sanctioned by all Muslims and that this
consensus ( ijma) had never occurred. They were still open to the concept of replaceable chiefs
who would serve the community but they were strictly opposed to the idea of an imam who
would dictate over them. As Crone writes of the Najdiyya:

All believers were entitled to their own opinions on law and doctrine on the basis of
ijtihad, independent reasoning, for all of them were equally authoritative… Najdite
Islam was a do-it-yourself religion. Politically and intellectually a Najdite would
have no master apart from God.41

Within their own group then, the Najdiyya were anarchist and egalitarian. At the same time,
they regarded only themselves to be true Muslims. Outsiders were, in principle, fair game for
enslavement or extermination should they choose to rebel.42
Clearly, the groups that Crone described fell well within the fold of the Muslim community.
She makes no attempt to argue for their right to be classified as Muslims. That much is taken
for granted. Her argument then is based on the premise that these two groups qualify as anar-
chist and she demonstrates it through their ideological and theological stances—not through any
examination of their actual form of organisation or behaviour.
Peter Lamborn Wilson (also known as Hakim Bey) is an independent researcher who self-
identifies as both Muslim (non-practicing) and anarchist though he does not confine himself to
either of these two categories. He spent some years living and working in Iran under the reign
of the Shah and returned to the U. S. after the revolution. During the 1980s he authored the
seminal work Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy and followed it up with Sacred Drift: Essays on
the Margins of Islam.43 Through these works and other writings he has propagated for both
his own brand of anarchism (including but not restricted to individualist anarchism) as well
as heretical religiosity (including but not restricted to Islam). Although he lies outside of the
realm of officially sanctioned academic research, he has nevertheless made a significant impact
on the study, development, and practice of Islamic anarchism. Karamustafa, for example, cites
Scandal in his own work and Michael Muhammad Knight (discussed below) owes the spread of
his Taqwacore concept to Wilson’s anarchist publishing company Autonomedia.
It is not possible to do justice here to Wilson’s vision(s) of Islamic anarchism in that he offers
a number of variants throughout a great deal of writing (which significantly exceeds the amount
of consideration that any of the other researchers have given the subject).44 In general, Wilson’s
diverse range of anarchistic elements within Islam includes Qalandars, Ismailis (especially the
Assassins), the socialist Ali Shariati, Khezr (or the Green Man whom Wilson associates with
militant environmentalism), Khaldun’s Bedouins, Sufis (such as Ibn al-Arabi, al-Hallaj and Rumi),
Moammar Qaddafi’s Third Universal Theory, and his own Moorish Orthodox Church (originally
a white beatnik outgrowth of Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science Temple). In Scandal he devotes

41
Crone, 25–26.
42
Crone, 26.
43
Peter Lamborn Wilson, Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (San Francisco: City Lights, 1993); Peter
Lamborn Wilson, Scandal: Essays in Islamic Heresy (New York: Autonomedia, 1988).
44
Crone might be the closest in terms of quantity but her focus has been much narrower.

229
an entire chapter to “Imaginal Yoga and Sacred Pedophilia,” an interest that is reflected by his
own membership and activism within the North American Man-Boy Association (N. A. M. B. L.
A. ).45
Wilson’s work is easy to read but difficult to follow. He seamlessly blends scholarly research
with manifesto in a quest for “poetic facts.”46 It would seem that historical research is being used
as a vehicle for his manifesto. On one hand, Wilson speaks of a need for the individual to be
bound by an ethical and spiritual stance:

The antinomian may commit crimes in the eyes of society or the Law but only out of
a personal ethics which reaches unimaginably higher than any moral code. Antino-
mian ethics does this precisely because it is Imaginal, “made up” by the individual,
personal, and central… Without a “spiritual dimension,” the sexual revolution can
only betray itself into libertinage and other distortions.47

On the other hand, he argues that the individual alone has the right to determine the validity
of those ethics. Ideally, no other authority above the individual ought to be recognised. Drawing
inspiration from his interpretation of the abrogation of the Law (Qiyamat) during the Assassin
reign at Alamut (approx. 1100–1250), he writes:

In a sense, anyone can be the Imam; in a sense, everyone already is the Imam…
the idea of the Imam-of-one’s-own-being implies the idea of self-rule, autarky: each
human being a potential king, and human relations carried out as a mutuality of “free
lords.” … To liberate everyday life … begins with the individual and spirals outward in
love to embrace others… “radical” (post-Qiyamat) Ismailism restores “sovereignty”
to the individual, who thus becomes his/her own “authority.” Spirituality is not a
master/slave relation—it is not an “Oriental despotism.” Not any more. Not now.
Maybe it never was. Who cares? Here and now:—we need something different.48

In other words, he personally sees a need for some sort of ethical boundaries but he regards
that it be up to each individual to determine where and how those boundaries are to be set
up. Interestingly, he also paints a picture of Assassin reign at Alamut as consisting of an “eco-
nomic communism” which is reminiscent of contemporary syndicalism and concludes that the
Assassins constituted “a curious blend of individualist anarchism, Bakuninism, and antinomian
mysticism.”49
While his approach to Islam is open-ended, his broad definition of anarchism fits in well with
that of Karamustafa. One distinction between Wilson’s and Karamustafa’s variations are that
while Karamustafa’s dervishes are rejecting society as a necessary means to acquire a certain
spiritual status, Wilson’s own tact is to advocate autonomous space that excludes society in order
45
Hakim Bey, “untitled letter,” The Spark, 1 no. 5 (1984); Hakim Bey, “My Political Beliefs,” NAMBLA Bulletin,
(1986): 14; Robert P. Helms, “Pedophilia and American Anarchism,” Indybay (2005), www.indybay.org (accessed March
24, 2006)
46
Peter Lamborn Wilson, Sacred Drift: Essays on the Margins of Islam (City Lights: San Francisco, 1993): 58.
47
Wilson, 70, 72.
48
Wilson, 64, 74, 75, 103, 107 (emphasis Wilson’s).
49
Wilson, 74. It can be noted that Wilson does not footnote his references regarding the Assassins in either
Sacred Drift or Scandal.

230
for individuals to “impose our absolute will, our royaume. L’etat, c’est moi.”50 Whether the goal
be personal transformation, spiritual insight, or spiritually rationalised hedonism, is irrelevant
in Wilson’s Islamic anarchism. The “anarcho-monarchism” that Wilson describes and advocates
is not just about rejecting society, it is also about establishing the individual as the highest form
of authority.51 Conversely, Karamustafa’s dervishes tend to be bound by the quasi-tarîqahs (the
lines of discipleship under the authority of elders) that they have formed with their community
of believers. They adhere to a uniform dress code, ritualised behaviour, and allegiance (even
obedience) to a spiritual master. Though such approaches are lauded by Wilson, such restrictions
are not necessary (or even desirable) in his own extended individualist conception of anarchism.
Rather than initiation through a living master, Wilson advocates self-initiation through dreams
which he associates with the Oveissi Order in Iran.52
Many of these groups that Wilson describes are on the margins of both anarchism and/or
Islam and yet Wilson does not make an attempt to argue for their legitimacy in either sense. For
him, heresy and the margins of legitimacy are perfectly respectable options. Indeed, this mirrors
his political stance that anarchism can remain on the margins of society within temporary (or
permanent) autonomous zones and need not aspire to completely overthrow or replace the state.
Harold Barclay made his contribution to the study of Islamic anarchism through his article
“Islam, Muslim Societies, and Anarchy” published in Anarchist Studies.53 As an anarchist and
anthropologist (but not a Muslim), his central concern is charting what might be regarded as
anarchist elements within Islam in general. He begins by distinguishing between “anarchism” as
a social-political theory largely developed within nineteenth-century Europe which rejects “all
forms of domination, whether it be the state, government, the church or family structure” and
“anarchy” as the “condition in which a society is stateless.”54 It could be noted here that Barclay
defines “anarchy” and “anarchism” quite differently. While “anarchism” is opposed to “all forms
of domination” (a narrow definition that could exclude various strains of anarchist thought),
“anarchy,” as Barclay defines it, refers to any society which is stateless (a broad definition which
could include societies that employ various forms of domination).
In his article he lays out a short summary of Crone’s work, mentions Sufi antinomianism
briefly, devotes a longer section to Arab Bedouin and Berber anarchic societies (whose anti-state
approach was documented by Ibn Khaldun), and ends the article with a critical view of Qaddafi’s
Third Universal Theory. Barclay’s presentation of the Mu‘tazilites and the Najdiyya amounts
to a concise and uncritical summary of Crone’s work and includes older research as well (i.e.
Salem, Levy, etc). Like Crone, Barclay denies that the Sufi antinomians are anarchist because
“they were all indifferent to the state rather than opposed to it” and likens them to Nietzsche
because they are exclusively concerned with personal as opposed to political transformation.55
He devotes most of his attention, unsurprisingly perhaps, to Bedouin and Berber societies.56
Citing his own previously published study and the work of fellow (social) anthropologists Ernest
50
Hakim Bey, T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism, 2nd ed. (New York:
Autonomedia, 2003): 66.
51
Wilson, Sacred Drift, 65.
52
Wilson, 117.
53
Harold Barclay, “Islam, Muslim Societies, and Anarchy,” Anarchist Studies 10, no. 2 (2002).
54
Barclay, 105.
55
Barclay, 108.
56
Before Barclay, Gellner used the term “anarchic” in 1991 when summarising Ibn Khaldun’s description of
tribal society bound together by “local, mutual-protection self-administrative units.” See Ernest Gellner, “Islam and

231
Gellner and Pierre Bourdieu, he describes some of the key elements that characterise anarchy
within these Muslim societies: 1) they do not have a state; 2) they do not have a police force; 3)
they tend to use elders or councils of elders for their leadership; 4) they are organised according
to segmentary lineage principles; 5) social order is maintained by respect for the leadership as
opposed to the coercion of brute force; 6) mediation is typically applied in the event of disputes
as opposed to judicial arbitration; and 7) they believe in the principle of solidarity that “an injury
to one is an injury to all” which ultimately extends to all clans in the tribe but not to outsiders.
These elements of anarchy, according to Barclay, do not find their origins in Islam but have been
perpetuated alongside Islam. When it comes to Moammar Qaddafi, Barclay assesses his Third
Universal Theory as a “decentralized syndicalist type of arrangement” but regards the theory as
irrelevant due to Barclay’s perception of Qaddafi’s reign as profoundly authoritarian.57
In his conclusion of “Islam, Muslim Societies, and Anarchy” Barclay reveals his point which
is not necessarily to argue for the genuinely anarchist character of any particular Muslim group
or society but rather, by presenting a variety of anarchist and quasi-anarchist expressions, he
questions the traditional view that Islam and anarchism are necessarily incompatible.
Barclay continued his contribution to the debate on Islamic anarchism by responding to an
article that Wilson had written in the anarchist journal Fifth Estate entitled “Roses and Nightin-
gales: Looking for Traditional Anarchism in 1970s Iran.”58 In the Summer 2004 issue, the two
lock horns over which Islamic groups should qualify as anarchist and which should not. Barclay
critiques Sufis for being both hierarchical and often closely aligned with the aristocracy. He also
criticises the Sufis and Shi‘ites for their “obedience to a supreme leader,” and he refers to Crone’s
claim that the Najdiyya were anarchists.59 Wilson (who had not read any of Crone’s work) re-
sponds by referring to Karamustafa and pointing out the large diversity of stances and social
organisation within Sufism and Shi‘ism.60
According to Wilson, the dervishes and Ismailis may not be “card-carrying plumb-line anar-
chists [but] they may be our allies.” He concludes by stating:

Prof. Barclay feels that the rigid puritan Kharijites are more “anarchist” than the tol-
erant mystics—but political structure is not everything. The Lawless dervishes may
still have a guru … but they lead free lives (or so it appeared to me). The Kharijites
may not have a guru but they live like Cromwellian dragoons.
Wa salaam,
Peter Lamborn Wilson
New York.61

Marxism: Some Comparisons,” in Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology, ed. Bryan S. Turner (London and New York:
Routledge, 2003): 28.
57
Barclay, 115; Barclay’s swift dismissal of Qaddafi’s theory raises some interesting questions: What is the
relationship between anarchistic theory and praxis? To what extent is any given theory being put into practice and
to what extent is that question relevant for research? Does the imagining of an Islamic anarchism make it real (and
hence worthy of study) even if it only exists on paper?
58
Peter Lamborn Wilson, “Roses and Nightingales: Looking for Traditional Anarchism in 1970s Iran,” Fifth Estate
38, no. 4 (2003/2004): 43–47.
59
Harold Barclay, “Letter to Fifth Estate: Sufism & Anarchy,” Fifth Estate 39, no. 2 (2004): 53.
60
That Wilson had been unfamiliar with Crone’s work was acknowledged by him in a personal interview with
the author in New Paltz, New York, 4 January 2007.
61
Peter Lamborn Wilson, “Reply to Letter to Fifth Estate: Sufism & Anarchy,” Fifth Estate 39, no. 2 (2004): 54.

232
 In other words, Wilson’s priority is on the quality of life itself and he considers the freedom
experienced by the individual to be of more value in determining a desirable anarchist goal than
the technical presence or absence of a state or religious authority.
To the above research, it can be helpful to add a taste of recent material that explicitly advocates
some sort of Islamic anarchism (none of which has been treated by any of the major scholars who
have hitherto dealt with anarchism in Islam). Of these, the most well-known is probably that of
Michael Muhammad Knight who, with his book The Taqwacores, has created quite a stir both
within Islamic circles and beyond.62 The same year that his book was published there was a
young American scholar by the name of ‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney who presented a paper at the B.
R. I. S. M. E. S. (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) conference in London entitled “Islam:
A Libertarian Alternative?”63 Although his career, along with his life, came to an all-too early
end, he published a few pieces which relate to the subject at hand prior to his departure. While
there is much online material that is also relevant to the subject of Islamic anarchism, two have
been selected here to give an idea of the sort of range that such a synthesis can imply. The first is
Michael “Salim” McCarron. He is a U. S. Navy veteran, convert to Shi‘ite Islam and the author of
one of the first explicitly Islamic anarchist manifestos entitled “Natural Islam.”64 The second one,
Heba Raouf Ezzat, has published work but her article on anarchism is so far only available online
(in Arabic) as is the interview with her by Rosemary Bechler.65 Ezzat is an Egyptian activist and
political scientist who lectures at Cairo University. She has previously studied in Germany and
has been inspired by European anarchist thought (though she does not identify herself as an
anarchist).
Michael Muhammad Knight converted to Islam in the 1980s when he was fifteen years old.
Public Enemy videos on M. T. V. and then the Autobiography of Malcolm X had been the original
sources of inspiration for him. Eventually, this led him to live and study at the largest mosque
in the world—the Faisal Masjid in Pakistan.66 Ultimately, he became frustrated with the narrow
views and hypocrisy he found there and abandoned his orthodox Sunni religiosity. He went to
college in the U. S.
and began listening to punk rock. Then, bidding farewell to Islam, he wrote an essay of apos-
tasy entitled “Forget what is and is not Islam” and a novel called The Taqwacores.67 The latter
is a fictional account of a rag-tag bunch of Muslim punks living together in Buffalo, New York,
and describes the sort of openness that he wished had existed in Islam. In the end, his story
inspired real-life Muslims who identified with punk rock to rally together around the Taqwacore
ethic. By 2007, Knight’s vision had become reality and the first national Taqwacore tour was
organised with bands like The Kominas (Punjabi for “bastards”), Vote Hezbollah (a band name

62
Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores (New York: Autonomedia, 2004).
63
Abd al-Hakeem Carney, “Islam: A Libertarian Alternative?” BRISMES conference (July 4–5, 2004),
www.lmei.soas.ac.uk (accessed January 2, 2009).
64
Salim McCarron, “Natural Islam,” Illegal Voices, (December 23, 2004). www.illegalvoices.org (accessed March
21, 2006). This manifesto is alternately titled “Toward an Anti-Authoritarian Islam.”
65
Heba Raouf Ezzat, “Alfaudawie: Alfelsefe Aleti Zelemetha Altergeme,” Islam Online (July 29, 2001),
www.islamonline.net Layout (accessed October 8, 2008); Rosemary Bechler, “Islam and Democracy: An Interview
with Heba Ezzat,” Open Democracy (May 11, 2005), www.opendemocracy.net (accessed January 6, 2008).
66
Michael Muhammad Knight, Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America (New York: Autono-
media, 2006), 1.
67
Michael Muhammad Knight, “Forget what is and is not Islam,” in Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out, ed. Ibn
Warraq (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2003), 361–363.

233
taken directly from Knight’s book), and Al-Thawra (Arabic for “revolution”). Furthermore, his
book inspired Asra Nomani to organise the first woman-led prayer in the United States with Dr.
Amina Wadud as imam.68
As a manifesto, The Taqwacores advocated a radically open Islam in which God is an immediate
experience, the Koran loses relevance as a “tiny little book for tiny little men” and a female
character crosses out a verse from the Koran that allows a man to beat his wife.69 Here is a
selection of concluding thoughts from the main protagonist:

Fuck the local imam, fuck the PhDs at al-Madina al-Munawwara … give me the
Islam of starry-night cornfields with wind rustling through my shirt and reckless
fisabilillah make-out sprees that won’t lead to anything but hurt. Knee-deep in a
creek is where I’ll find my kitab. If Allah wants to say anything to me He’ll do so on
the faces of my brothers and sisters. If there’s any Law that I need to follow, I’ll find
it out there in the world.70

After the rise of the Taqwacore scene in real life, Knight returned to the Muslim fold as a
marginal Muslim and ultimately performed hajj in 2008. He described aspects of his life-journey
as a Muslim seeker in Blue-Eyed Devil and devoted his next book entirely to the study of the
Five Percenters, originally an offshoot of the Nation of Islam (N. O. I.).71 Though still feeling
indebted to Wilson for publishing The Taqwacores, Knight has disavowed his former mentor due
to Wilson’s advocacy of paedophilia/pederasty. While standing up for an Islam that embraces all
sorts of heresies, Knight has felt compelled to draw boundaries of his own.72
‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney, a convert to Shi‘ite Islam, deals with the question of boundaries from
a more academic perspective. In “Analysing Political Islam: The Need for a New Taxonomy” he
makes a case for developing a new set of terms that could more adequately approach the realm
of Islamic politics. The standard set of terms such as “Islamic fundamentalism” or “Islamism,” he
contends, are too broad and/or misleading because they could often be just as easily applied to lib-
ertarian as well as authoritarian Muslims. According to Carney, even the term “Salafism,” which
is more precise, and hence preferable to “Islamic fundamentalism,” would have to be amended
in order to distinguish between apolitical and political or jihadi Salafis.73 In general, however,
Carney’s personal concern tends to revolve around an opposition to what he refers to as “authori-
tarian closures of interpretation” in which “a lay person blindly follows a religious scholar.”74 The
68
Knight, Blue-Eyed Devil, 206–209.
69
Michael Muhammad Knight, The Taqwacores (New York: Autonomedia, 2004), 105; Both of these parts were
later censored from the British edition of the book.
70
Knight, 252.
71
See Michael Muhammad Knight, Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey through Islamic America (New York Autono-
media, 2006); Michael Muhammad Knight, The Five Percenters (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007). Although slightly beyond
the range of this study, it may be interesting to note that, while they do not identify as either Muslim or anarchist, the
Five Percenters have developed a sort of anarcho-gnosis in which Islam stands for “I-Self-Lord-And-Master,” authority
is highly decentralised, members gather in leaderless parliaments to discuss ideas and share insights, and, as Knight
notes, they “would respond to anarchism’s ethos of ‘no gods, no masters’ with I God, I Master.” Knight, “The Five
Percenters,” 232.
72
Michael Muhammad Knight, email to author, 18 January 2008.
73
‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney, “Analysing Political Islam: The Need for a New Taxonomy,” Organization for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Yearbook (2003), www.core-hamburg.de (accessed January 20, 2009).
74
‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney, “Twilight of the Idols? Pluralism and Mystical Praxis in Islam,” International Journal
for Philosophy of Religion 64 (2008): 1–2.

234
alternative is the “basic Islamic commitment to obeying God and God alone” which Carney says
Islam shares in common with Christian anarchism.75 He finds inspiration and support for these
views in the writings of the famous poet and philosopher Muhîy ad-Dîn Ibn ‘Arabî, the mystic
Mullá Sadra, the Sudanese dissident Mahmoud Ta Ha, and the conception of the “hidden Imam”
within Twelver Shi‘ism. Elsewhere Carney treats what he terms the “desacralisation of power in
Islam” and argues that “the modern conception of the State is basically alien to classical Islamic
political concerns.”76 The ideas that he had begun to pursue in his unpublished presentation in
2004 are quite clear in the online abstract:

Islamic Libertarianism … does not assume that the creation of a righteous or just
society relies upon state power, but rather on the abolition of such power in most
contexts.77

Had his research continued it could certainly have grown into one of the more developed
expressions of Islamic anarchism.
Then there is the text written by Michael “Salim” McCarron which advocates a green socialist-
anarchist stance in alignment with Shi‘ite Islamic teaching. The majority of this three-thousand
word manifesto is devoted to a critique of consumerism, capitalism and the United States govern-
ment as well as the means by which those forces can be counteracted (direct action and auton-
omy). About a quarter of the manifesto is devoted to Islam. He declares that Islam has proven
to be the best inspirational source for his own resistance to the “culture of destruction” and adds
that Islam offers

communal consultation ( shura), stewardship of the Creator’s creation ( istikhlaf ),

equality (‘ adl), non-aggression ( salam), mutually beneficial economics ( mudarabat),
sharing and giving ( sadaqa wa zakat).78

Like Carney, McCarron cites Mullá Sadra, a Shi‘ite philosopher, as one of his key influences.
In accordance with Sadra’s teaching, McCarron believes that reasoning should be balanced with
inspiration “which is a transcendent source.”79 Hence, McCarron’s understanding of Islam is
based in “gnosis ( ma‘ rifat) [and] not just fiqh (jurisprudence).”80 This leads him to conclude
that guidance from the “hidden imam is open to all” and that

we are all equal and our affairs should be governed by communal consultation (
shura), there can be no hierarchy of the “righteous” no need for a Guardian Council
as it exists in Iran.81

75
Carney, “Twilight of the Idols?,” 4
76
‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney, “The Desacralisation of Power in Islam,” Religion, State and Society 31, no. 2 (2003):
203; ‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney, “Islam: A Libertarian Alternative?” British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES)
conference (July 4–5, 2004), www.lmei.soas.ac.uk (accessed January 2, 2009).
77
Carney, “Islam: A Libertarian Alternative?”
78
McCarron, “Natural Islam.”
79
McCarron, “Natural Islam.”
80
McCarron, “Natural Islam.”
81
McCarron, “Natural Islam.”

235
 He then ties this in to a non-anthropocentric concept of stewardship which, according to Mc-
Carron, means to align oneself with the natural order of life and oppose mass industrialisation,
oppression, and states of aggressive warfare ( dar al-harab).82 McCarron also acknowledges
the presence of progressive Muslim thought which may not be explicitly anarchist but supports
common struggles such as feminism, queer rights, and deep ecology. He then links to, amongst
others, the website for Progressive Muslims and an article on Ezzat’s Islam Online.
Finally, there is the example of Heba Raouf Ezzat. In 2001, she wrote the article “Anarchism: A
Word Unjustly Maligned in Translation” for Islam Online, a popular information site about Islam
that she co-founded. She has described herself as an “Islamist Woman Social Democrat with
Anarchist Passion” and in a book produced by the British Council she, together with Ahmed
Mohammed Abdalla, lays out her vision of an Islamic secularism.83 Though she is herself a
Sunni Islamist, she is critical of the way that some Islamists and other Muslims have adopted
authoritarian positions. In an interview with Rosemary Bechler, she states:

Many intellectuals tried to Islamicise the model of the nation-state. From my point
of view, this is in fact an anti-Islamic direction to take. It is a model which disem-
powers the people, which tries to monopolise the public domain and which always
reduces civil society to dependence on the state in one way or another… What we
mean by “Islamic secularism” is not that Islam is subject to secular restructuring,
but that through Islam, we can arrive at a form of secularism which suits us. We
can decide where the power of the state should be minimal, where the power of the
people should be maximised, where law enters, and where morality rather than law
decides.84

Her point is that the rise of global civil society enables us to think in new ways about how we
conceive the nation-state, how we structure society, and what role religion ought to play in that
process. Ezzat contends that religious community acts as an empowering buffer zone between the
state and individuals. Ultimately, it is the umma, the community of the faithful,—not the state—
that is for her the central political term within Islam. It is in that context that she envisions
an “interactive fatwa, ” “grassroots civil ijtihad,” and “civil jihad.”85 Thus, structures of local
governance are interwoven with ritual practices that promote justice and equality. Salvation
is not merely an individual endeavour, according to Ezzat, but is explicitly collective as well.
Overall, Ezzat’s thinking is an independent development that makes no reference to the work or
thought of any of the other writers discussed here.

82
It was in light of these feelings that he tried to illegally cross the border into Canada. This landed him in jail
and it was there that he wrote his manifesto.
83
Heba Raouf Ezzat, email to author, 11 April 2008.
84
Rosemary Bechler, “Islam and democracy: an interview with Heba Ezzat,” Open Democracy (May 11, 2005).
www.opendemocracy.net (accessed January 6, 2008). For more on civil society within Islam see Masoud Kamali,
“Civil Society and Islam: A Sociological Perspective,” in Islam: Critical Concepts in Sociology, ed. Bryan S. Turner
(London and New York: Routledge, 2003): 95–118.
85
Ijtihad means roughly “re-interpretation of God’s word” while fatwa refers to a legal opinion or judgment.

236
Comparative Analysis
The most thorough and scholastic works completed in the study of anarchism in Islam so far
are that of Ahmed Karamustafa and Patricia Crone. Karamustafa portrays an Islamic anarchism
which bases itself on a profound rejection of society as a whole and is characterised by an indi-
vidualist emphasis on personal transformation. Writing as a scholar and a Muslim, his concern
is primarily about how these groups are seen in a Muslim and a scholarly context and not how
they are viewed by anarchists. Crone, on the other hand, concerns herself exclusively with two
otherwise quite orthodox Muslim groups. As she notes, the Najdiyya and anarchist Mu‘tazilites
were not interested in communism, revolution, or social reform but only sought to resolve the
dilemma of political and religious leadership of the Muslim community. We can also see how the
Muslim concept of ijma (consensus) helped incite the Najdiyya’s call for anarchism. Writing as a
scholar and from a secular European perspective, she seems primarily concerned with how these
groups are seen by academia and does not seem to be writing for either a primarily Muslim or
anarchist audience. All of these groups, from the heretical dervishes to the puritanical Najdiyya,
fall into Gemie’s quest for alternative conceptions of anarchism. While the differences between
them abound, the most notable commonality between them is that as far as their anarchistic
elements go, they are fairly uni-dimensional and undeveloped. Whether it be the Qalandars re-
jecting society as a whole or the Mu‘tazilites rejecting the imamate specifically, there is hardly
any degree of anarchistic theory beyond those areas. There is no clear articulated expression as to
how an anarchist society ought to be organised, attained or maintained nor is there a developed
concept of anti-statism. Instead, the more developed side of these groups’ thought and lifestyle
remains on the side of Islam (whether heretical or orthodox). Another more minor commonality
that these groups shared was their temporality: while strains of their thought and practice have
resurfaced throughout the centuries, the original groups faded away with no continual legacy or
tradition to carry on their anarchistic creeds.
When it comes to Wilson, we are treated to not one but several versions of Islamic anarchism
(including some of which he himself is a part of). Though he presents a number of alternative
visions, he notably rejects the version offered by Crone. Whereas both the Wilson and dervish
variants of Islamic anarchism involved a large degree of antinomianism including some degree
of pederasty or paedophilia, Wilson’s version exceeds that of the dervishes by liberating the indi-
vidual from any communal regulation or external authority whatsoever. Writing as an heretical/
non-practicing Muslim, independent researcher, and popular anarchist ideologue, he is primar-
ily concerned with inspiring a largely anarchist readership. Hence, the reliability of Wilson’s
research may have suffered in his quest for “poetic facts.”
Barclay, in his summary of the study of Islam and anarchism, aligns himself with Crone’s po-
sition and also raises the idea that Muslim societies based on tribal structures and segmentary
lineage may well be regarded as anarchic. Writing as a scholar and anarchist for an anarchist
audience, his primary goal is to argue that there may indeed be signs of anarchism within Islamic
history and society. Wilson’s writings (such as his complex and colourful depiction of the Assas-
sins) generally fall into the category of Gemie’s quest for alternative conceptions of anarchism
and potentially the category of anarchist practice as well. Barclay’s contribution, on the other
hand, is the first to fill the criteria for an anthropological anarchism according to Gemie’s model.
Then there are the more explicit advocacy-oriented contributions. Knight’s vision is one of
multiple heresies and quasi-orthodoxies living under the same roof and together manifesting

237
an Islam where individualists are bound together in a radically intentional pluralism. Writing
primarily as a seeker for whoever will read it—Muslims and subcultural punks in particular—his
book had the unintended consequence of manifesting that which he was writing about. Like
the dervishes, Knight’s emphasis is on Islam and the individual’s contact with God. Earthly
authority is in general disregarded as opposed to conceptually dismantled. Carney’s assertion
is more explicitly anarchist in its claim that state power is incongruent with an Islamic quest
for a just society. Directing himself primarily to academics and Muslims, Carney makes a case
for re-conceptualising the way we approach “political Islam.” For him the relationship to God
is personal and therefore liberty must be collective. While his stance may have been shared by
fellow Shi‘ites, he does not give any indication of being associated with a larger Islamic anarchist
community. McCarron, on the other hand, presents a green/anti-consumerist vision of Islamic
anarchism rooted in grassroots activism and utilises key Islamic concepts such as shura, salam,
and (like Carney) the specifically Shi‘ite concept of the “hidden Imam” in order to produce an
innovative synthesis which includes the religious as well as the political. Although he is writing
as an individual Muslim and anarchist, his political thought is collectivist and directed toward
an activist audience. While McCarron’s text innovatively bridges—or synthesises—Islamic and
Western green/socialist/anarchist concepts, Knight and Carney employ their inherently Western
minds to the development of libertarian tendencies already inherent within Islam. Though their
strategies are quite similar, their results are less so. Knight’s vision takes him down a path that
is rooted in antinomian mysticism and heresy (in line with Karamustafa’s dervishes and Wilson)
while Carney’s theological and philosophical discourse is built in a steady scholastic manner
more akin to Crone and focuses more on the state, liberty, and structural power in the history
of Islamic thought. Since neither Knight, Carney nor McCarron come from the “Third World,”
Gemie’s model would seem ill-suited to categorising their views.
Ezzat, however, seems to at least partially fulfil Gemie’s quest for a “Third world” anarchism
in her articulation of how an ideal Islamistic society would manifest. While not explicitly an-
archist herself, her vision uniquely blends inspiration from European anarchists with a social-
democratic interpretation of Islamist concepts in an era of global civil society. Unlike the hereti-
cal and individualist-oriented anarchism of Wilson and Karamustafa’s dervishes, she advocates
a distinctly umma-oriented version of Sunni Islamic social democracy with anarchistic elements.
She is writing as an academic and Muslim activist for a Muslim and predominantly non-anarchist
European and Middle Eastern audience.

A Tentative New Model for the Study of Islamic Anarchism

Now in light of the above material, we can return to what this might tell us about the model
provided by Sharif Gemie. Its most useful distinction seems to be that of drawing a line be-
tween anthropological anarchisms and alternative conceptions of anarchism. Here, however, it
would seem that Barclay provides a helpful tip in his own distinction between “anarchism” and
“anarchy.” Hence, Gemie’s model could be revised to speak of anthropological “anarchies” as
opposed to “anarchisms.” Gemie’s model also helps distinguish between Islamic anarchism and
those whom he refers to as “imitations of Euro-American anarchism,” that is, secular anarchist
groups in the Muslim world who base themselves on classical European anarchist arguments and
worldviews. Beyond that, Gemie’s model can tell us little about Islamic anarchism as such (nor

238
was it his intent to do so). The category of “alternative conceptions” is so broad so as to be nearly
all-inclusive in this area and the category of “anarchist practice” is only of limited relevance here
and all-too hingent on how that term is defined. Even the act of defining it may lean closer to
anarchist polemics than anarchist studies. Finally, there are cases that arise in which Gemie’s
model becomes impotent when the anarchisms that are articulated can hardly be termed “Third
World” (i.e. Knight, Carney, etc).
Alternative models are required. It is not possible right now to do justice to the richness and
complexity of the material but a crude tool might be crafted in order to at least begin digging. In
the tentative model that follows, I suggest distinguishing between three different vantage points:
studies of anarchist theory (wherein Islamic anarchism appears in contrast to any other religious
anarchism such as Taoist or Christian anarchism), studies in the anarchic traits of tribal Muslim
societies (corresponding to Gemie’s anthropological anarchism and Barclay’s conception of tribal
“anarchy”), and finally, studies of the anarchical structure of Islam (not covered here but discussed
elsewhere in the work of Mandaville, Volpi, Turner and others).86 Within each category further
distinctions can be made based on qualitative developments. A general charting of them might
appear like this:
Type 1. Studies of Islamic anarchist theory.

a. Organic Islamic anarchism (including the work of Crone and Karamustafa).

b. Postmodern Islamic anarchism (including Wilson, Knight, McCarron, etc).

Type 2. Studies in the anarchic traits of tribal Muslim societies.

a. Premodern Muslim anarchy (Barclay’s Berbers and Bedouins).

b. Postmodern Muslim anarchy (not yet manifest or studied).

Type 3. Studies of the anarchical structure of Islam.

a. Anarchical Islam (Caliphate period).

b. Hyper-anarchical Islam (Post-caliphate period).

Regarding type 1, “organic” is meant to refer to any religious anarchism that arises indepen-
dent of influence from classical anarchist theory and this would include all religious anarchism
that preceded the eighteenth century whether European or otherwise. “Postmodern” is meant
to refer to that point (historically and culturally) at which the two worlds meet and are capable
of producing a synthesis. Either of these subtypes could potentially draw further distinctions
between, for example, esoteric and literalist or individualist and communist variations of Islamic
anarchism. What all of these variants share in common is that Islam as a conceptual framework is
the base from which an anarchist theory is developed. While Carney is correct in observing that
both Muslim and Christian anarchists refer to God as the sole authority, there are differences
86
It might be argued that a fourth category appears through those studies which attempt to draw parallels
between anarchist terrorism and Islamic terrorism, but this perspective, based primarily on similarities of strategy be-
tween certain factions within each movement, remains unconvincing in its ability to speak of intrinsic commonalities
between Islam and anarchism as such.

239
as well. Firstly, as Crone points out, the two traditions base themselves on different utopian
premises. Secondly, it is not uncommon for Christian anarchists to situate themselves within
a larger tradition of Christian nonviolence (See Christoyannopoulos).87 While Christian anar-
chists, such as Leo Tolstoy or Jacques Ellul, may develop a critique of the state as violent, Islamic
anarchists rarely, if ever, apply a theory of nonviolence as an argument against the state. Nonvi-
olent activism does appear within Islam but either the nonviolent activists are not anarchist or
researchers in Islamic anarchism simply do not regard them as such.88
In regard to studies in the anarchic traits of tribal Muslim societies (type 2), there is already
a question of synthesis inherent in the material—that of the potential synthesis between tribal
culture and Islamic religion. Therefore, the term “organic,” in this case, might be replaced by
“premodern” to better characterise the point of distinction. A “postmodern” tribal anarchy in
Islam, wherein anarchist theory and Muslim faith meets tribal culture, may not even yet exist
but it has the potential to do so.89
As for the final category (type 3), the study of Islam as anarchical has not been covered here
but it appears nonetheless to be a related area of study that is clearly distinct from the other two
types.
This tentative model is far from developed and, even so, is only a starting point from which
one might begin to examine the junctures between Islam and anarchism. In any case, what all
these expressions do reveal is that there exist a set of concepts which within the structural and
conceptual framework of Islam can lend themselves to anarchistic interpretations. A basic theme
is that of devoting allegiance to none other than God (Karamustafa’s dervishes, Latif, and Carney).
We have also seen the following ideas espoused: shura, the idea that leadership has to consult
with the community about decision-making; jihad as a call for social justice; the concept of umma
as a form of civil society; ijma which refers to the need for consensus in the community; and
finally the idea of ijtihad which enables all traditional concepts to be reinterpreted in a modern
light.
These ideas demonstrate that concepts do exist within the heart of Islam that can lend them-
selves to anarchistic interpretations (and have done so).
We can also see how research on Islamic anarchism can generally be divided into several
camps depending on how anarchism and Islam are defined. The researchers and the goals in
their writing are as diverse as the results of their studies. We have seen individualist-anarchist
heretical Muslims as well as strictly anti-statist orthodox Muslims and even socialist-anarchist
manifestos within the Muslim fold. None of these can tell us what Islamic anarchism is but all of
them tell us how an Islamic anarchism might be imagined—even if the imagining borders on the

87
Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos, “Turning the Other Cheek to Terrorism: Reflections on the Contem-
porary Significance of Leo Tolstoy’s Exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount,” Politics and Religion 1, no. 1 (2008):
27–54; Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos, “Christian Anarchism: A Revolutionary Reading of the Bible,” in New
Perspectives on Anarchism, ed. Nathan Jun and Shane Wahl (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 135–152.
88
For an example of nonviolent activism within Islam see Robert C. Johansen, “Radical Islam and Nonviolence:
A Case Study of Religious Empowerment and Constraint Among Pashtuns,” Journal of Peace Research 34, no. 1 (1997):
53–71. This article addresses the story of Abdul Ghaffar Khan. An ally of Ghandi, he does not seem to have advocated
anarchism, nor have any of the scholars of Islamic anarchism covered him.
89
One example of such potential that comes to mind is when Somali emigrants seem to have encountered West-
ern anarcho-capitalists on an Internet forum about Somalia, a scenario which involves both Islam as a religion, an-
archism as a theory and the cultural reference point of tribal anarchy. See Project for the New Anarchist Century,
Somalia Board, anti-state.com index.php?board=23 (accessed April 9, 2008).

240
realm of wishful thinking and fantasy. We have seen in the case of Knight how even a fantasy
can manifest in reality.
Yet the study of an Islamic anarchism is not merely about imagining potential options for
how things could be, it is also about engendering a genuine historical understanding of human
relations and social organisation as close to the facts as we can come. When Wilson describes
the Assassin community in relation to syndicalism, individualist anarchism, and Bakuninism, one
can only wonder the degree to which he is reflecting his own personal inclinations. Furthermore,
one could also ask how applicable the Western conception of individualist versus collectivist
anarchism is in an Islamic context. Are we really understanding what Ezzat means by umma or
do we take a mental short-cut and merely translate it to mean “community” or “civil society”?
As Carney suggests, our taxonomy of Islamic politics in general is in need of revising.
Even the terms “anarchism” and “anarchy” in and of themselves may unduly taint our abili-
ties to conceive the political and social realities and conceptual frameworks of cultures far apart
from our own such as the Berbers, the Qalandars, or the Najdiyya. Imagining history can easily
be overrun by conscious or unconscious projections rather than an open and uninhibited sense
of discovery. How does terminology, the cultural location of the terminology (as well as the
researcher) and the potential emotional charge that is often tied to such terminology affect the
researcher’s ability to grasp that which has taken place in distantly foreign times and situations?
Might the very term “anarchism” obfuscate rather than clarify our understanding of groups or
individuals who have not historically self-identified as anarchist or even been exposed to it as we
tend to conceive it? Might Western political concepts in general hinder us from grasping even
modern innovative proposals such as Ezzat’s conception of an Islamic secularism and a minarchic-
umma? Is “anarchism” even a useful term or would researchers be better served by using more
precise terms? For example, one might refer to the dispersal of authority (“polycentric” or the
“pluralization of authority”—the latter having been applied by Mandaville), the minimalisation
of authority (“minarchy”—the preferred term by the anarcho-capitalists at Minaret of Freedom),
the expansion of individual freedom (“libertarian” as applied by Carney), opposition to all forms
of tyranny (“anti-authoritarian”—one of the terms used by McCarron) or opposition to the state
as such (“antistatist”). What “language” and concepts are ultimately going to draw the bound-
aries for our scholastic imagination and which ones will maximally expand our potential? Will
our definitions be very restrictive (Crone) or highly inclusive (Wilson)? As long as there is a
broad plurality in the definitions of anarchism and Islam then it could be maintained that re-
search on Islam and anarchism ought to embrace that plurality. The alternative could derail into
internal disputes within Islamologist and/or anarchist scholarship about the “real” meaning of
those words. It may be that, to paraphrase and modify Crone’s axiom, “If precise definitions
keep leading to unconstructive scholarly conflict, the best solution may be to not create them.”
More general working definitions seem better suited to sorting out the array of material in this
new field. Precise definitions can follow in the wake of advanced study but need not lead to a
partisan quest for the “true” meaning of any given term. Rather, the challenges that the material
provides can be used to question the limits of our cultural references and inevitably limited sense
of imagination.
This chapter has reviewed the main threads of the brief history of English-based research on
anarchism within Islam and attempted to apply Sharif Gemie’s model for categorising various
types of “Third World” anarchisms. From the more academic-oriented work of Patricia Crone,
Ahmet Karamustafa, and Harold Barclay to the more activist and advocacy-oriented work of

241
Peter Lamborn Wilson, Michael Muhammad Knight, ‘Abd al-Hakeem Carney, Michael “Salim”
McCarron, and Heba Raouf Ezzat, a great diversity was seen which ranged from extreme anarcho-
individualism and contemporary heresy to religiously conservative and reluctant anarchists of
the ninth century. Gemie’s model for approaching “Third World anarchism,” together with in-
sights garnered from Barclay, helped lead to the tentative proposal of a new model. It was con-
cluded that sufficient material exists to fruitfully investigate the degree and manner in which
anarchist, anti-authoritarian, or libertarian elements manifest within the Islamic community. Ul-
timately, the attempt to imagine an Islamic anarchism has unfurled a host of questions with
implications that stretch far beyond the boundaries of the subject at hand. At the very least, we
may want to question the authority of our own conclusions even before they have been drawn.
At the most, the next step in research can provide us with new questions to grapple with and
hopefully somewhat sturdier ground to stand on in order to face them.

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CONTRIBUTORS
Bojan Aleksov studied history in Belgrade, Budapest and Berlin and in 2005, obtained a Ph. D.
at the Central European University. After that Bojan was collecting post-docs for some time
and was proud to be called Humboldtian fellow in Berlin, Collegium fellow in Budapest and
Max Weber fellow in Florence, before obtaining a lectureship in history at the University Col-
lege London’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. His main research interests are
in the relationship between religion and nationalism and the influence of modernisation on re-
ligious institutions and popular religiosity. Furthermore, he is attracted by issues of religious
conversions, transition from Ottoman to “European” rule and the politics of history and histori-
ography. His Religious Dissent between the Modern and the National: Nazarenes in Hungary and
Serbia 1850–1914 appeared with Harrassowitz Verlag in 2006.
Nekeisha Alexis-Baker received her Masters of Arts: Theological Studies degree from Asso-
ciated Mennonite Biblical Seminary with a concentration in theology and ethics. She received
her Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University, where she majored in Africana Studies.
Her current research interests include animal ethics and creation care from a Christian perspec-
tive; the intersection between anarchist politics and Christian faith and veganism as embodied
resistance to racism and sexism. She is actively engaged in education on anti-racism. She also
authored the essay “Freedom of Voice: Non-Voting and the Political Imagination,” featured in the
edited collection Electing Not to Vote: Christian Reflections on Reasons for Not Voting.
Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos completed his doctoral thesis on Christian anar-
chist theory at the University of Kent, U. K., where he had previously studied economics and
international politics. As of the 2008–09 academic year, he was teaching politics and interna-
tional relations as an Associate/Sessional Lecturer at the University of Kent and at Canterbury
Christ Church University. Alexandre’s research interests are in the area of religion and politics,
in particular religion and political philosophy. He has presented papers and convened work-
shops at several national and international conferences. His publications include articles in An-
archist Studies, The Heythrop Journal and Politics and Religion, book chapters in Anti-Democratic
Thought and New Perspectives on Anarchism, and the Tolstoy entry in the International Encyclo-
pedia of Revolution and Protest. His thesis will soon be published by Imprint Academic, and
he is also working on a book on Tolstoy’s Christian anarchist political thought. His website is
www.christoyannopoulos.com.
Richard A. Davis has degrees in theology and political philosophy from universities in
Aotearoa New Zealand, and is currently pursuing doctoral studies in political theology at the
University of Edinburgh with research focused on contemporary theologies of the state. He
has diverse scholarly interests, but he is especially interested in the intersection of political
thought and Christian theology. Richard has published articles and reviews in social ecology,
social capital and religion and politics. Prior to pursing doctoral work he worked in both central
and local government, and was formerly Executive Officer for the Churches’ Agency on Social

246
Issues. In that capacity he was a commentator on a wide range of moral and political questions
facing New Zealand society.
Anthony Fiscella. As-Salaam-aleikum. Neither a devout anarchist nor Muslim, Fiscella has
been researching the inter-junction between the two worlds for several years in his work on
a book about anarchism within Islam. Previous research by Fiscella has been published about
the MOVE Organization and the role that early followers play in the charismatic process of a
new religious movement. The author would like to thank all of the researchers and interviewees
discussed in this chapter and also Charlotte O’Kelly, Mai Greitz, Anders Ackefeldt, Bob Doto,
Sharif Gemie, Mark Andersen, Timothy Peace, Jonas Otterbeck, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, Philip
Haldén, Andrew Smart, Mattias Gardell and Gabriel Kuhn for much help with tips and material,
Sureyyya Evren and Edda Manga for insightful feedback, Jan Hjärpe for inspiration, Mohamed
Jean Veneuse for a wonderful meeting of minds, Evin Omar for generous help with translation
and Alexandre Christoyannopoulos for an incredible job and just as incredible patience. Sabr.
Richard Fitch is a doctoral candidate in jurisprudence at the School of Law, Birkbeck, Uni-
versity of London. He is a graduate of the Universities of Edinburgh and London and holds
qualifications in Religious Studies, Law, and Political Science. His doctoral thesis explores the re-
deployment of argumentative strategies from Pyrrhonian scepticism to contemporary legal and
political philosophy with specific reference to demonstrating the logical inefficacy of the concept
of sovereignty.
Keith Hebden, after seven years teaching Religious Education in predominantly Asian in-
ner city schools, retrained as an Anglican minister and will be ordained in the Gloucester dio-
cese. Whilst training, he has co-tutored political theology and Missiology at Queen’s Foundation
Birmingham, and he co-wrote a national research document for “Churches Together England.”
Through more than a decade of research and voluntary sector visits to India, Keith has witnessed
huge economic, political and theological shifts, and visited areas and projects of fragile reconcilia-
tion and advocacy work. His M. Th. and Ph. D. in Dalit theology at Birmingham University were
largely informed by these research trips. Keith is involved in various forms of political activism
including direct action and protest. He helped organise the 2005 and 2007 “Christianity and an-
archism” conferences in the U. K. and re-launched the magazine A Pinch of Salt: Christianity and
anarchism in dialogue as editor in 2005.
Peter Marshall is a philosopher, historian and travel writer. He has written fifteen highly
acclaimed books which are being translated into fourteen different languages. They include
William Godwin, The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin, William Blake: Visionary Anarchist,
Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, Nature’s Web: Rethinking our Place on Earth,
Riding the Wind: Liberation Ecology for a New Era, The Philosopher’s Stone and Europe’s Lost Civ-
ilizatio n. His circumnavigation of Africa was made into a six-part T. V. series. His website is
www.petermarshall.net.
Peter Pick was born in Leicester in 1957. He spent many years scuffling around at the fringes
of the entertainment business as writer, singer, saxophonist and engineer. He has worked as a
gardener and a van driver, cleaned hospitals and taught at Universities. In his late thirties he
took a degree in English Literature at Sussex University and subsequently completed his Ph. D.
at the University of Birmingham. He has a daughter, and she has a daughter. He spends a lot of
his time taking photographs.
André de Raaij is an independent political scientist and historian from Amsterdam, The
Netherlands. He wrote a dissertation on Dutch Christian anarchism ( Onze God is een arbeider)

247
and for the past years has been working on a biography of the main Dutch Christian anarchist,
Felix Ortt (working title: Dream and dimension). Lectures on the subject for several conferences
can be found on his site www.christianarchy.org or his weblog christianarchie.blogspot.com. Ar-
ticles on this subject were published in De AS, Jaarboek Anarchisme, Tijdschrift voor de geschiede-
nis van de wijsbegeerte in Nederland and Onvoltooid verleden. Other subjects he has published
on include: the final days of the communist press in the Netherlands, and other media matters;
multiculturalism as a cult of the Noble Savage; public transport; nature study and anarchism;
and biographical sketches of less known Dutch anarchists. Furthermore, he has been active as a
journalist and radio presenter and as a deejay (one of the oldest living teenagers in captivity).
John A. Rapp is a professor of political science at Beloit College, in Beloit, Wisconsin, U. S.
A., where he teaches classes in comparative politics and Asian Studies. His research focuses on
ancient and modern Chinese political ideology. His published works include articles on dissident
Marxist thought in the People’s Republic of China as well as the book (co-authored with Anita M.
Andrew) Autocracy and China’s Rebel Founding Emperors: Comparing Chairman Mao and Ming
Taizu (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2000). He is currently working on a book of essays on
Daoism and anarchism. He is very grateful to Beloit College for a Sanger Summer Scholars grant
that allowed for the translation of the Wunengzi by his student colleague, Catrina Siu, and his
faculty colleague, Daniel Youd, a translation which was edited for use in this book.
Michael T. Van Dyke has a Ph. D. in American Studies from Michigan State University,
and has taught at Michigan State and at Cornerstone University in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Most of his published writing over the last few years has explored the various intersections
between literature, religion, and radical politics in American cultural history. In 2001 he helped
to create an interactive educational website about the 1937 Flint, Michigan sit-down strike. The
site is notable for its integration of audio interviews done in the 1970s with surviving strikers
(www.historicalvoices.org/flint). Presently he is working on an intellectual biography of Ken-
neth Rexroth.
Mohamed Jean Veneuse is an activist/Graduate Student of Sociology at Queen’s University,
Kingston. He is currently completing a Masters Degree/Dissertation under the supervision of Dr.
Richard J. F. Day, titled “Anarca-Islam: A Politics of Friendship and an Ethics of Disagreement”
addressing the rights of transsexuals in Islam; a particular misunderstanding amidst Muslims
and anarchists, disrupting the thought amidst most anarchists, respective to every reading of
Islam as necessarily trans-phobic. Thereafter he offers a Politics of Friendship & an Ethics of
Disagreement between open-minded (non-essentialist/non-dogmatic) Muslims and anarchists
to ease the circumstances of their (further) divisions, collaborating and knowing each the other,
in the context of Day’s Newest Social Movements of the Present. He has further been active
in affinity groups as No One Is Illegal (N. O. I. I.), Anarchist People of Color (A. P. O. C.) and
A. K. A.’s engagement(s) of solidarity with Indigenous Mohawk Warriors of the Bay of Quinte,
Tyendinaga, Canada.

248
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