Reading about Christian anarchism

I'm writing this blog post in response to a tweet that reads, "I've been thinking about Christian anarchism what would you suggest I read? Something theological with good praxis". Sometimes the answer is longer than a tweet allows! @NormalSteve

If it's reading about Christian anarchism you're after, I'd recommend starting somewhere else. Start by reading about anarchism and then do your theological thinking from there. Then do some reading on Christian anarchism. 

Start with the classics: Colin Ward's "Anarchy in Action" (which I can't find on hive.co.uk but his more up to date "Talking Anarchy" is likely to be great. But you can get even more classic than that with Emma Goldman's "Anarchy and other Essays" and the essential Peter Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid". Oh yes: and William Morris! 

The original Christian anarchist writer would be Leo Tolstoi; his acerbic "What I Believe" and "The Kingdom of God is Within You" are the foundations of much Christian anarchist thought. 

Online much of the foundational stuff for Christian anarchism is available form Jacques Ellul and Vernard Eller. 

If you want something that gives you an incredibly in depth overview of Christian anarchist thought you can't go wrong with Alexandre Christoyannopoulos's "Christian Anarchism" and if you want something that's both practical and accessible you've got Dave Andrews' "Christi-anarchy" or "Not Religion, But Love". 

And, of course, anything by Dorothy Day but I would warmly recommend her inspiring biography, "The Long Loneliness" which tells the story of a pioneering Catholic Anarchist with honesty that leaves you utterly humbled. 

If you've read this far, I'm sure you won't mind me recommending my own "Seeking Justice: The Radical Compassion of Jesus" which takes principles of Christian anarchist theory, without the language of anarchism, and translates them into genuine experiments in radical compassion. 

Tolstoy as a pedagogue

You are lucky when you can read Dutch - here is a page on a site, completely dedicated to Tolstoy as a pedagogue. There is one title in English and one in Russian and it is very much a work in progress so if you cannot read most of it quite likely there will be books on it you can read in the near future.

Tolstoy's unmarked grave

Chris Floyd, former columnist for the Moscow Times, now an independent journalist, speaks out as a closet Tolstoyan. Welcome!

To the Editor:

It is marvelous to see how Leo Tolstoy continues to have a disturbing effect on the power structures of church and state (“For Tolstoy and Russia, Still No Happy Ending,” front page, Jan. 4). This has always been the case, from czardom through Communism and now in Russia’s “managed democracy.”

For example, despite its promotion of his novels, the Soviet regime repressed vast swaths of Tolstoy’s work, especially his thoughts on nonviolence, the evils of state power and — ironically, given the Orthodox animus — his heartfelt religious writings. The “Tolstoyans” themselves were persecuted by the Bolsheviks.

I doubt if Tolstoy would want “forgiveness” from the Orthodox Church today, or marks of distinction from the state. But he would doubtless be pleased that his turbulent ideas are still alive, still radical and still troubling the powerful long after he was laid in his solitary, unmarked grave.

Chris Floyd
Oxford, England, Jan. 4, 2011

The article in the NY Times about the battle around Tolstoy's excommunication, to which Floyd is referring.

The strange idea that Jesus meant what He said

It seems like Tolstoy-year these days because of the death of the author, a hundred years ago (round of applause, please). There is even a film about his last days. Any idea whether his idea of Christian anarchy will get some attention in the mainstream media?
I'm not betting on it, he wrote from Las Vegas NV.

A rare specimen, Tolstoy. He held the strange idea that Jesus meant what he said. And so he taught: "Do not resist evil with evil." And: "Respect the personal integrity of each person." "Assume direct personal responsibility for the moral world which surrounds you. Never delegate your moral responsibility." "Seek out all opportunities for direct, creative ethical action." "Avoid violence, anger, the invasion of others, refuse bloodshed, and all kinds of theft and lies, covert or open -- especially in their approved and institutionalized forms."
He wrote: "Christianity, which demands from its followers meekness, humility, kindness, forgiveness of sins and love of enemies, is incompatible with violence, which forms an indispensable condition of power."
And: "War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves."

John Dear on Tolstoy.

Was Tolstoy right with his Kreutzer sonata?

This is a cover anyone who knows the book should have least expected. It is the first hit in the search engine: Leo Tolstoy's Kreutzer sonata. It was one of the first novels I read by the Russian count at the time I was discovering Christian anarchism and I thought it wildly eccentric, or rather: unacceptable. From the first biography I read in the same days I understood Tolstoy was practicing what he preaches in the book and his wife "had to accept it". Since the author of the biography was a prominent female religious anarchist from NL herself I thought this way over the top and offensive to Tolstoy's wife.
You can read the Kreutzer sonata online if you wish, here.

There we have it: Count Leo had a life of hunting, of shooting as an army officer, of sleeping around, also with prostitutes, behind him and suddenly he saw the Light and his wife had to comply. All sexuality is violence, that is what the Kreutzer sonata comes down to. Is it? Even though the authoritarian way in which the patriarch of Christian anarchism decreed it may be reprehensible and I still tend not to agree with him I have been growing more understanding about his point of view.

I once followed a reading tip from our friends at The Christian Radical to be confronted with the message

Guys who do not watch pornography do not exist,

Oh, don't they? Well, I probably am not "a guy" (don't like the word anyway and I should be too old to be called by that name). But I never watched pornography, just as I never went to a prostitute either. And I refuse to accept this qualifies me as not being "normal". As far as I am concerned it is still the other way around.

I realize I have angrily and impulsively written about having experienced assault by a man. There was an offensive prerson around this area who sang praises of gay porn which this guy presented as liberatory and all loveydovey, as a comment to the story of our sister Rebecca Mott who was called a heterosexist, whatever that may be. After the attack on Mott he withdrew his comment. Living in a country where the official gay movement is advocating the xenophobic proto-nazis who are making NL infamous these days I see no reason to agree with stories about the inherent liberatory character of being gay. Even if I thought the "actors" in gay porn are "acting" completely voluntarily, which is simply incredible. Gays are not naturally saints. They are human males, socialised with the idea of domination.

Men get raped too. Most often, they are raped by other men. However, there have been numerous recorded incidents where a man has been raped by a woman.
Because of the socialization of what it means to be “a man,” men raped by men
are reluctant to disclose having been raped for fear of being labeled homosexual.
Men raped by women fear being treated as less than a real man for allowing
themselves to be overpowered by a woman. One survey found that 7 percent
of men have experienced at least one episode of forced sexual contact. Among
college students, the incidence of sexual assaults of men by acquaintances is
much higher.

(from the cache of the New York Institute of Technology site)

It is mainly a male problem. As is the idea of violence. I think. But perhaps what Tolstoy has to say calls for more thought or scrutiny than I thought when I first came across it.

Christian anarchism: A Political Commentary on the Gospel

A Review of Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Christian Anarchism: A political commentary on the gospel, Exeter, Imprint Academic, 2010.
by Keith Hebden

Alex Christoyannopoulos's new publication, Christian anarchism has been a labour of love for the author who has worked with thoroughness and care to present an almost exhaustive everything of Christian anarchism.

The only word of caution would be that because it is a doctoral thesis – turned book it can feel dry in its thoroughness sometimes and so won't suit every reader. But as academic works go there's no fancy language and everything is properly explained so if you can read you can read this book.

Christoyannopoulos works with texts and ideas that have been key for Christian anarchists to show coherence and diversity in the tradition. Part one would make a great reading-circle for radical Christian groups to explore their own response to the Sermon on the Mount or Romans 13 for example or the relationship between the state and the Christian community. Almost all of part one and much of part two is Jesus-focused and Leo Tolstoy features heavily throughout. Plenty of room is left in the book for exploring Christian anarchist practices too.

Christoyannopoulos brings to our attention a need within Christian anarchist thinking to develop a more thought through Christology. He does this without criticising the present thinking but simply outlining them as he does reveals their inadequacy.

Christoyannopoulos refers to Christian anarchist understandings of history as mysteriously unfolding. He claims they are united by a refusal to “hasten God's kingdom by political means” (276). They anticipate the kingdom but they don't precipitate it. This is important because the Christian anarchist critique of the state arises out of a commitment to non-violent resistance and not vice-versa. This means Christian anarchists would rather live in submission to the state than violently overthrow but because the means matter as much as the ends. This is what sets the radical Christian approach in contrast to much of the secular anarchist approach to social change.

Christoyannopoulos's social ontology is a brilliantly clear apology for a theology of love as social transformer. He chooses to draw on Paul Ricoeur and Paul Tillich to describe society's struggle to articulate justice. This is a wonderful antidote to the cynical view it is so easy to fall into of a Manichean state hell-bent on domination for the sake of exploitation. Christoyannopoulos seeks to widen the Christian anarchist understanding of the state from “the monopoly over the legitimised use of violence,” to a more generously phrased “articulation of a society's definition of justice”.

The arguments of Christian anarchists are based largely in a literalistic or deferring reading of selected parts of the Bible, mostly in the New Testament – they often ignore church traditions, being skeptical of any theology produced within a Church grappling with its compromise with the state. But Christoyannopoulos draws Christian anarchists back to these Christendom theologians.

Christoyannopoulos notes the literalism in much of the Christian anarchist tradition as evidence of its place in a modernist worldview. This happens to be the same enlightenment worldview out of which anarchist theory was born. A post-modern shift in thinking for Christian anarchism would helpfully push boundaries of thinking, speaking and doing. Perhaps engagement with other faiths and contemporary anarchists will help make this happen.

Alexandre Christoyannopoulos does a great job of outlining the arguments that have been made and suggesting a number of possible directions for future discussion. This book could easily be for Christian anarchism what Gustavo Guttierez's A Theology of Liberation was for that school of thought. And if anyone thinks theology can't change anything look at The Jubilee Debt campaign, Fair Trade and the many other ways in which liberation theology has shaped political agenda's and policies over the last fifty years. Then buy this book and see if Christian anarchism can do it all over again.

Come my Eton fellows, er, Comrades, let us unite for the common man.

The Conservatives have announced there latest policy 'revolution'. Yes, that it, the tories are now using the word revolution to describe their policies. Fair play to them - this is what clever propagandaists to: they take the language of the other and co-opt, subvert, and redeploy it's energy into their own agenda. If you don't believe it just look at the gospel of Mark or the First Pauline letters.

So the Conservatives are having a "Big Bang Revolution" And it doesn't involved their already highly publicised wife-swapping policy. It's about the deregulation of the media in order to help generate monopolies that can compete with the BBC. Because poor old ITV etc are struggling to make ends meet.

So it's a dergulation policy then? Yep! And it's about creating a liberalised market that favours the rich at the expense of the poor? Yes again! It's a revolution, apparently.

Those piss-takers at Tory spin-Q have also come up with: "Genuine Schools Revolution"; a "decentralised energy Revolution"; a "revolution to break the cycle of crime"; a "Green consumer revolution"; a "Tourism Revolution"; "London Cycling Revolution"; "Apprenticeship Revolution"; "Skills Revolution"; "NHS Information Revolution" and even - and you really couldn't make this bollocks up unless you were in big-p politics - a "supply-side revolution".

Any talk of revolution on the left or the right is suspicious because it tends to be violent or in never-never-land, or both. Perhaps that's why it's one of the safest words to borrow: it was just sitting there and nobody was doing anything with it...

The most radical people I've met have been people who aim for a constant revolution of the heart. They challenge themselves to be converted to the point of view of their neighbour, to find ways to love and understand their enemies. To make sure that those who want to get at the poor have to step over their bodies to get there.

Colin Ward wrote about the anarchist society being like "a seed beneath the snow" and Jesus talked about a mustard plant (a creeping weed of a plant) speading slowly but providing shelter. Neither of these are the posturing images of revolution that the Conservatives are about to pummel us with as they drew up to their billowing heights for the next general election.

So us ordinary folk will have to sit out another bloody (sic.) revolution: getting on with our ordinary lives of loving and living: building a new world in the shell of the old. Until this old-etonian revolutions finally realise how thoroughly redundant they really are.

Hasta la vicotoria: Siempre!

Wired to the wireless

In case you have not heard the interview on Tolstoy's anarchism with Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, last year on KPFA - here is your new chance:


More to come on that channel...

The Anarchist "Movement" Conference

I went to the first of two days of the Anarchist Movement Conference in London but having just moved house three days before I had to hot-foot-it back to Gloucester on the Sunday.

We were split into groups of as diverse as the organisers could manage and allocated rooms and facilitators. If the group wanted to change the facilitators they could but they were asked to stick to the same groups all weekend.

We were suggested topics to cover like whether or not there is an anarchists movement in Britain and whether talk of 'class' is still relevant.

Our group had some interesting conversations on race, gender, class, and 'what works and what doesn't'. Few of us were particularly excited by the idea of an anarchist 'movement'.

I was dissapointed that some had the same mentality as the centralists "we need greater unity" they said: except the mantra of fascists and national socialists everywhere.

I was disappointed that we didn't break new ground as a group and all the more disappointed not to make it to the Sunday when perhaps we might have. I may never know.

The conference was due to end with all the groups re-joining for a plenary and I hear back from two others that this was a much more constructive day. I suspected as much.

We were promised at the outset that a written report would follow. When it does you will see it here...

On a personal note I met Gerrard from Tolstoyans (UK), and Dan from Jewdas.org . Also I left about 25 copies of 'A Pinch of Salt: Issue 19' on the table and they went like hot cakes. If they were removed by someone anti-Christian then I hope they recycled them! At least one made it into safe hands since I got an email from a new reader who happens to have been the protestor mentioned in Dan Stork Banks' report on AWE. He's going to pen a reply.

Obama is marching into Jerusalem on the back of a Beast of his own

Obama is marching into Jerusalem on the back of a Beast of his own

“They say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them” (St Paul 1 Thessalonians 5:3).

In 1894, in his book “Christianity and Patriotism”, Leo Tolstoy noted that among the Russian and French political and military leaders there was much celebrating of renewed relations and present and future peace. Generals from both sides dined together at international meetings, public embraces were exchanged.

Tolstoy has great fun satirising the propaganda of these two great states and their new found affection for one another: quoting the presses eager interest in the menus and bar tabs of the soldiers and statesmen.

“With each menu a description was also given of the drinks swallowed by the festive party, some sort of 'vudka', some sort of Bourgogne vieux, Grand Moet and so on. In an English newspaper all the intoxicating drinks consumed during these fetes were enumerated, the quantity of it being so enormous that all the drunkards in Russia and in France could hardly have swallowed it in such short a time.”1

Little has changed in media obsession. It takes a second or two to discover that the G20 leaders at the London summit in April had Bakewell tart and custard for pudding coutesy of celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver.2 How much booze was involved we may never know.

In his early months as USA President, Barak Obama has made diplomatic and deliberate recourses to better relations with the Russians than Bush. And not just Russia – a video link to Iranian T.V., a change of course in Iraq and Afghanistan. It all looks pretty good. The prince of HOPE is doing the job he was elected to do.

But then again.

“It is true that in all the speeches and toasts uttered during those festivities, and in all the articles about them, it was constantly proclaimed that the object of what was happening was to secure peace. [However,...] this constant repetition of the sentence: 'We don't want war, we want peace!” and the silence about what is in everyone's mind, is a most menacing symptom.”3 Tolstoy was offering an educated and insightful guess but things were more complicated: Germany initial saw itself as having to capitulate diplomatically to Russia as Britain lost influence along the Mediterranean but the threat of Russia's greater alliance with France lead indirectly to the Schleiffen Plan and a greater alliance between German and Austria against Russia as a means of self-defense. So the Franco-Russian talk of peace was really another of the many examples of one nation posturing militarily alongside another to threaten the neighbours.

In 1894 the peace between Russia and France only made a strong alliance for war with Germany. St Paul, wise to the ways of empire, warned the Thessalonian Christians of those political leaders who made much talk of peace and held out his own hope that they would be subject to God's judgment (1 Thess. 5:3).

That is why we should take note of Obama's words in Turkey on Palm Sunday this year. He does not ride into Europe on a donkey but in “The Beast”, his armoured gas-guzzler. And like the Sanhedrin, he is looking for the next scapegoat to save a whole nation.

"All nations must come together to build a stronger, global regime. And that's why we must stand shoulder to shoulder to pressure the North Koreans to change course."
(Obama in Prague 5 April 2009)

So what does Obama mean when he calls for unity, peace, hope, and an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons as president of a country developing “usable” nuclear weapons as we sleep and eat? He means what we must listen for in the silence.

Alex interviewed on radio about Tolstoy

Listen here to Alex being interviewed about his research on Tolstoy. Alex holds his own well in a very long interview. Most of the questions are quite closed but the answers are always interesting.

Alex's paper at last years ASN

If you haven't read Alex's excellent paper on Christian anarchism at last years 'Anarchists Studies Network' eventI recommend it. It is available here as a .pdf.

The first conference will be at Loughborough university this September. Alex is facilitating a whole panel of faith anarchists for this conference.

Feedback from new reader

I got a couple of encouraging letters today - one with a cheque from a couple who've always been very encouraging and another with an encouraging letter. He writes:

Dear Keith Hebden,

Thank you! I have just received a copy of 'A Pinch of Salt' (No. 17 July 2008) and I was stimulated , encouraged and delighted! I was, I have to admit, expecting a rather low-grade magazine, but it was very well put together and the writing was of a very good calibre!

Since delving into anarchy and Christianity, I have felt rather alone (My university, St Andrews, is not exactly a hotbed of leftist Christians!) and it was greatly encouraging to realise both that there were many other people of a similar frame of mind and that there was such a vibrant community in the UK. I fouind the article of the Bruderhof (P. 7-9) particularly fascinating as this is something I am deeply interested in.

I plan on attending some of the conference etc. and meeting more 'Christian-Anarchists' and putting all the stuff I've read (Adin Ballou, Jacques Ellul, Tolstoy, not to mention the Bible!) together as it were, adn forming a good idea of what 'Christi-anarchy' is and where it will lead me.

Than you once more, and good luck with the magazine (I hope to contribute at some point too!).

Yours sincerely,

Calum (Killearn)