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![]() For most Christians, there is one big reason for rejecting anarchism: it isn’t biblical. Or is it? A superficial reading of the Bible reveals a God who thinks of himself as a sort of Warrior King, who sanctions state-enacted genocide, and who promotes a string of saintly kings, like King David. When Jesus arrives, it is to start a Kingdom of God that, apparently, seems content to co-exist with early rulership. In fact, Jesus himself says to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” and Paul advocates being good subjects to the governing authorities. Therefore, Christian Anarchism is a contradiction in terms, right? Furthermore, the sorts of ideas many Christian Anarchists hold are also glaringly unbiblical. Like nonviolence (after all, many biblical heroes were prolific smiters). Like communism (after all, certain patriarchs were “blessed” with vast property–which they didn’t share equally with all). Like egalitarianism (after all, Paul tends to affirm male leadership, Jesus praises a Centurion who holds a position of authority, etc.). The Bible is the enemy of anarchism. Right? I don’t think so. While it is outside the scope of a single article to tackle every challenge that traditional readers of Scripture advance against anarchism, I would at least like to offer a sort of overview that can serve as a simple lens for seeing Scripture differently. I’ll try to provide links to other resources for those of you who’d like to dig deeper. To really address the myriad of issues that emerge from an anarchic reading of Scripture, one would probably better be served with a commentary series. What I’m offering here is a super simple overview, not a complete survey. If any Bible scholars out there want to publish an Anarchist Bible Commentary Series, I would not only be happy to buy a set, but also would have great ideas for who should contribute.
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11/7/2011 A Christian Nation?Eda Ruhiye Uca is the director of Hosanna! People’s Seminary and a regular contributor to Jesus Radicals. A first generation American of Middle Eastern heritage, she has lived in intentional communities and works on the Christian Peace Witness steering committee and Women’s Ordination Conference anti-racism team. Eda is currently a Justice, Missions and Reconciliation Certificate student at The Episcopal Divinity School. By: Eda Ruhiye Uca ![]() In one year USAmericans will elect the next President of the United States. Many anarchists, Christian radicals, Catholic Workers, New Monastics and others practicing anti-empire Christianities with community-oriented power nexus will say, “So what?” After all, fewer Americans are getting a piece of the (apple) pie, every 80 minutes a veteran takes his own life, and the prevailing winds have blown the spirit of revolution from the Middle East to North USAmerica in a post-colonial dream spiritually conceived in the Mary-minds of third wave feminist theologians, wherein Arabs and Muslims break the power of totalitarianism and spread freedom and democracy to USAmericans! An election? Just a choice between two evils. So what? I too am unsatisfied by the choice between elite big business military leaders. Yet I worry that some of us (and I put myself in this camp) have sometimes mistaken the entrenched, systematic, psychopathic malevolence of USAmerican politics for being so equally distributed that we’ve treated the tepid choice between “two evils” as being no choice at all. As we prepare for the coming election (or don’t- Election? Harrumph!) it may be of use to eavesdrop on the prayers of those others unabashedly proclaiming Christ Jesus. 10/28/2011 Comments Confessing Pacifism, Repenting in LoveBy: Nichola Torbett ![]() A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for this website that called for a confessing movement. Consider this my first confession, inspired largely by my participation in Occupy Oakland. Until recently, I have been what one of friends calls a “nonviolence fundamentalist.” Inspired by the movements of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, I have had a deep intuitive sense that our means of social change must be consonant with the ends we wish to achieve. If it is not just a reversal of oppressions that we seek to achieve but a real reign of love, then we must get there without straying from love. I believe this is also the message of the gospel, in which Jesus of Nazareth maintained his commitment to love, manifest in nonviolence, all the way to the cross and beyond, initiating a Reign of Love that is somehow both “at hand” now and yet not fully here, and by the tenants of which I am, as a disciple of Jesus, called to live now, no matter the cost. In an attempt to live out that discipleship, I have chosen to engage in justice struggles only when those struggles have been predicated on a strong commitment to nonviolence; as a result, there have been many movements with which I have not engaged and which I have sometimes even critiqued. These include many led by low-income communities of color. As woman with white-skin privilege and middle-class connections, I must repent of that now. 10/5/2011 Occupied Movements, Colonized MindsBy: Eda Ruhiye Uca ![]() Some of us who watch in awe and delight at the incredible well of energy, perseverance, and hope of the Occupy Wall Street movement are getting word of anti-racist critiques of the language and organizing strategies, particularly around declarative statements released on the Occupy Wall Street website and dispersed to media outlets. It is important to note- as the organizers do- that “demand is a process” and the new day voice of the community-in-process emerges continually without necessarily being pinned down by the bulletin board messages of the passing day. The voices of people of color, it seems, are being heard and integrated, though not without the fearless contributions of people of color sometimes in the face of serious resistance. I want to highlight some of the discussion as it is occurring mainly through articles and online forums not, as some might fear, to disparage the movement but rather to learn from the anti-racism discussion in progress. For the sake of utmost transparency: I am a woman of color who approaches movement work predominantly led by white people with a hermeneutic of suspicion and, while I have gotten some word on the happenings in Occupy Boston, I have not gone to see what’s happening on the ground there since it officially started this past Friday. (I do plan to go down there with a faith community of which I’m a part sometime in October.) ![]() In my previous article, I tried to offer some introductory definitions of “anarchism” and “Christianity”–which are both too complex to define. This, therefore, presents some challenges in presenting a simple description to “Christian anarchism.” In part two, I’ll briefly trace those historical Christian movements that express an “anarchic impulse.” What follows is by no means exhaustive. My goal in sharing them is to show that Graeber is right: “the basic principles of anarchism—self-organization, voluntary association, mutual aid—referred to forms of human behavior they assumed to have been around about as long as humanity.”1 Christian history has a number of examples that demonstrate an anarchic impulse and it is illustrative to see the common features between these groups. Notice that, for most of these groups, the anarchic tendencies of each group was intertwined with their own spiritual and theological convictions. It is important to see that there is something deeply lacking when we imagine a Christian anarchism that simply “slaps together” one’s Christianity and one’s anarchism. It is not only possible, but (I believe) necessary to have an anarchism that flows out of one’s spirituality (or, perhaps, vice versa). So, what are some expressions of Christianity that authentically express the anarchic impulse? 9/21/2011 Confessions of a Present Day Anarchist![]() My name is Nekeisha and I was not born a radical. This revelation is probably not much of a revelation at all—very few people I know can honestly claim to have had a revolutionary outlook on the world upon exiting the womb. The bigger surprise might just be how “un-radical” I used to be for much of my life and how painstaking of a process it was for me to adopt a Christian and anarchist perspective as my own. Dubbed a “Super-Christian” by high-school, I was the kind of teen that didn’t drink, smoke, or do drugs, and who had no problem telling anyone who would listen about my choices. I was a proud soldier in the True Love Waits brigade, a lover of Christian musicians (Carman, Newsboys and Michael W. Smith anyone?), and an avid reader of Focus on the Family publications. I believed strongly in hell and knew for a fact that nonbelievers and other unseemly types were going to end up there. I was no war-mongerer but I was definitely no pacifist, believing instead in the right to violent self-defense if needed. Jesus as Son of God was indisputable to me. But Jesus the nonviolent revolutionary who overturned social systems of domination was a foreign concept. I was what some might call your typical evangelical Christian, part of what some us would say is wrong with the church today. Unless someone out there counts listening to Alice in Chains on the low-low or being a bit of a “tom-boy” or giving the usual teenage attitude signs of a budding radical, there was nothing obvious in my upbringing to suggest I would be anything near who I am now. ![]() Generally, Jesus Radicals exists to explore the intersection of Christianity and anarchism. Most people think such a combination is an impossibility (or a delusion). It would be a mistake to suggest that bringing the two together is mere novelty. Most of the negative reactions to such an interplay are based upon misunderstanding. Most folks assume that anarchism is for angry youth who long for chaos and disorder. Other folks assume that Christianity is (and always has been) about domination. Both are unfortunate stereotypes that, while having some basis in reality, are gross over-simplified dismissals (though, in all fairness, it is easier to find evidence for the oppressiveness of Christianity than it is for the chaotic immaturity of anarchism). Anyone who has called themselves a “Christian” or an “anarchist” for very long can tell you that neither “tradition” is easy to define. Neither is monolithic. And both are profoundly misunderstood. So talking about how they relate is a complicated task. This is why, at every year’s Jesus Radicals conference, we have a “primer” session on Christianity and Anarchism. For the past two years, I’ve participated as a presenter in that primer session. What follows is based upon those primers. Sarah Lynne Gershon helped present the primer at the 2011 conference, so her digital fingerprints can be found in this article as well. But such a primer doesn’t exist online. I’ve found some that attempt a solid-yet-brief explanation, but none of them seem sufficient. My goal here is to write a short series of essays that one could pass along to (confused) friends. By: Eda Ruhiye Uca ![]() In The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible(New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006), Allen Dwight Callahan illuminates the unique history of African American exegesis, highlighting especially Exile, Exodus, Ethiopia, and Emmanuel. In it, Callahan takes on the American myth and the grotesque irony that “the land that the Puritan founders called the Promised Land has been Pharaoh’s Egypt for African Americans”, a ‘promised land’ beyond reach of a people without the resources to take it; as put by freed man, Charles Davenport: “how us gwine a-take lan’ what’s already been took?”1 Callahan’s thesis is that which was the vast gulf between the political and religious experiences of Puritans and Africans in North America continues on in their descendants today. The breadth of his brilliant book will not be summarized by this writer here. (You’ll have to read it for yourselves.) Yet in the face of crumbling gains in wealth among African Americans Callahan’s thesis takes on a renewed urgency for those followers and friends of Jesus who are aching for racial reconciliation. 8/22/2011 Comments Book Review: CaptivityBy: Christopher Knestrick ![]() Captivity: 118 days in Iraq and the Struggle for a World without War by James Loney, a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and a Catholic Worker is a great book for anyone seeking to create peace and justice in this world. The book is the story of when James Loney and three other Christian Peacemaker Teams members, Tom Fox, Harmeet Singh Soode, and Norman Kember, were kidnapped in Iraq while participating in a delegation and held for 118 days. It is a book about humanity in all its paradoxes—a humanity that searches for freedom and forgiveness in the midst of war. The Christian Peacemaker Teams started in 1986 with a question, “What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devoted to war?” Struggling to live out this question, CPT began to ally with local nonviolent peacemakers around the world who are risking their lives to bring peace and justice to their communities. Today, CPT has teams in Colombia, Iraq, Palestine, and Canada. 7/29/2011 Comments On Christian AnimismBy: Ric Hudgens ![]() Animism was practiced before it was “believed in”. Human beings living life immersed in a living world of “other” voices is a universal phenomenon found in every indigenous culture. By “indigenous” please understand that I mean the dominant worldview of the majority of human beings for the majority of our time on this planet. Animism is our native belief. Sir Edward Tylor, the founder of the “science” of anthropology, was the first to give a formal, academic (and pejorative) definition of “animism”. Tylor defined animism as “an idea of pervading life and will in nature.” Writing in 1871 in his tellingly titled magnum opus Primitive Culture, Tylor asserted that this naïve idea was a childish and underdeveloped stage in human development common only among primitive hunter-gatherers. A century later psychologist Jean Piaget proposed that the ability to distinguish the animate from the inanimate was the inevitable product of education and learning. The consensus of the great Western intellectual tradition has been that the majority of human beings for the majority of human history have been fundamentally and tragically mistaken about the world in which they lived. It is not a coincidence that the academic disparagement of “animism” as the primitive belief of primitive peoples arose simultaneous with the rise of industrial and technological civilization. Before nature can be bound it must be gagged. The world must be silenced so that only the human voice can be heard; and only the human will can dominate. In 1997 philosopher David Abram wrote The Spell of the Sensuous, a sophisticated philosophical work that questioned this Western prejudice against animism. Abram drew upon a broad survey of oral, indigenous societies, weaving these insights together with the phenomenological philosophical work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Martin Heidegger. Abram’s first book and it’s recent sequel Becoming Animal (2010) should become foundational reading for anyone concerned with life on this planet: human and (in Abram’s wonderful phrase) “more-than-human”. |
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The viewpoints expressed in each reader-submitted article are the authors own, and not an “official Jesus Radicals” position. For more on our editorial policies, visit our submissions page. If you want to contact an author or you have questions, suggestions, or concerns, please contact us. CategoriesAll Accountability Advent Anarchism Animal Liberation Anthropocentrism Appropriation Biblical Exegesis Book Reviews Bread Capitalism Catholic Worker Christmas Civilization Community Complicity Confessing Cultural Hegemony Decolonization Direct Action Easter Economics Feminism Heteropatriarchy Immigration Imperialism Intersectionality Jesus Justice Lent Liberation Theology Love Mutual Liberation Nation-state Nonviolence Occupy Othering Pacifisim Peace Pedagogies Of Liberation Police Privilege Property Queer Racism Resistance Resurrection Sexuality Solidarity Speciesism Spiritual Practices Technology Temptation Veganism Violence War What We're Reading On . . . White Supremacy Zionism ContributorsNekeisha Alayna Alexis
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October 2017
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