Chapter 3 - The State’s Wickedness and the Church’s Infidelity

If Jesus’ teaching is as politically radical as Christian anarchists understand it to be, one might wonder why it is not clearly affirmed as so by more Christians. For Christian anarchists, the reason that their reading sounds so new can be surmised from the historical evolution of church teaching and practice. They believe that the church compromised Jesus’ teaching in order to sanction the state and derive benefits thereby, to the point that contemporary state violence, which should be denounced by the church, is instead approved of and defended as fully compatible with Christian doctrine.

The aim of this Chapter is to tease out this critique of church and state mounted by Christian anarchists, by outlining their understanding of the historical evolution of church and state since the days of Jesus, by fleshing out the details of their description of the state as violent and thus unchristian, and by going over the main reasons for which many of them express sometimes deep antipathy for the official church. Hence this Chapter outlines the Christian anarchist diagnosis of contemporary Christian societies - why they believe it to be unhealthy, unfair and unchristian. Unlike the previous two Chapters which focus on analysing Bible verses in order to then contrast them to the state, this Chapter focuses on describing state and church theory and practice in order to expose the contrast between these and the teaching articulated by Jesus. The first two Chapters examined the Bible; this one examines the history of church and state.

It should be noted that Christian anarchists’ criticisms of church and state are numerous and varied, and that therefore many of these can only be noted here fairly briefly, without exploring all the details of their full argumentation. Their reasoning is sometimes summarised in the footnotes, which anyway always point to the passages in Christian anarchist literature where these criticisms and further elaboration of these can be found.

The first section of this Chapter introduces the Christian anarchist account of the early church’s compromise with state power around the time of Constantine, and briefly describes the Christian anarchist opinion of Christendom. The second section begins with a few remarks on the historical emergence of the modern state, goes on to describe the Christian anarchist verdict on its violence, its deceitfulness, and its economic exploitation of the poor, and concludes by portraying the modern reverence for the state as a form of idolatry. The third section outlines the church’s arguments in support of state authority which Christian anarchists identify and reject: its misleading reinterpretations of the commandments given by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, especially non-resistance to evil, and some of its other legitimisations of state authority. The fourth section summarises many Christian anarchists’ deep suspicion of church dogmas: their mockery of the church’s claim to authority over truth, their dislike of what, to them, are obscure dogmas and rituals which hide the essence of Jesus’ teaching, and their general unease with institutional religion. The Chapter then concludes with the Christian anarchist call for humanity to awaken to true Christianity.

3.1 - The history of Christendom

When looking at the history of Christianity, Christian anarchists make one set of comments on the early church and what became of it, and another on the excesses of Christendom since the fourth century establishment of Christianity as the state religion. These are now analysed in turn.

3.1.1 - Constantine’s temptation of the early church

As further explained in Chapter 6, Christian anarchists understand the early church (to the extent that a good picture of it can be drawn today despite our limited knowledge of it) or (perhaps more appropriately, although Christian anarchists themselves rarely use the plural) the early churches to have faithfully strived to apply Jesus’ subversive political teaching, at least in the beginning. The early church was a “political community,” writes Bartley, and the martyrdom of its saints was often a “political act” which “bore witness to their citizenship of another kingdom” and “was a statement of opposition to the state and its idolatry, violence and injustice.”[1]

Gradually, however, Jesus’ radical teaching was compromised, especially over the question of military service. Penner explains that for a century and a half, there was hardly any debate on the question, which suggests that the “baptized Christian simply did not become a soldier.”[2] The debate intensified after around 170 AD, by which time, perhaps in part as a result of persecution, a number of “Christians” had joined the army and participated in other affairs of the state.[3] Many objected to this within the church, but the consequence was only a growing variety of dissenting factions within the church. Either way, by the end of the second century, significant sections of the Christian church had developed a more sympathetic approach to the affairs of the state.[4]

The more abrupt and symbolic change, however, came with Constantine, Roman emperor from 306 to 327 AD, who called a halt to persecutions of Christians, issued the Edict of Milan which mandated toleration of Christianity, and paved the way for Christianity to become the established state religion later that century. For Christian anarchists, if Constantine had to do this, it was because Christianity had become too “powerful” a “popular mass movement,”[5] because the “Christian truth” was therefore politically “dangerous,”[6] and because adopting and distorting Christianity could help him unite the fragmented Roman Empire.[7]

Andrews contends that Constantine tempted the clergy by exempting it from certain taxes and army duties, and by promising to silence the more defiant voices within the church using the powers of the state to enforce “unanimous acceptance of the Nicene creed.”[8] According to the myth of the “Donation of Constantine” which Chelčický vehemently criticises, Constantine allegedly donated land to Pope Sylvester I and bequeathed Rome to the Holy Roman Church.[9] That is, Constantine tempted the church with political power and economic comfort. The higher clergy was seduced: to borrow Alexis-Baker’s words, the church said “‘Yes’ to the very temptation that Jesus denies.”[10] Tempted by Constantine, the church opted for the very political power which Jesus rejects in the wilderness temptations.

Of course, for the church to move from being politically subversive to being more favourable to political powers, significant revisions to Christian theology would be required. To some extent, as already mentioned, this had begun before Constantine.[11] But these revisions accelerated: Penner notes that efforts now focused on arguing for the compatibility of war with the gospels, and that “Athanasius, Ambrose, and Augustine were the first Christian theologians to try” to do so.[12] For Christian anarchists, Augustine was particularly important: “If Constantine laid the foundations of Christendom,” writes Bartley, “its principal architect was Augustine.”[13] He played a central role in revising Christian theology to accommodate an alliance of throne and altar. This essential and detrimental contribution by Augustine and other theologians is further explored later in this Chapter.

The point here is that for most Christian anarchists, the reforms ushered by Constantine were pivotal in the transformation of the church from a subversive anarchist threat to a collaborator with the state. Andrews claims that under Constantine, “Christ, who had turned the Roman empire upside down, was turned into a lap-dog for the Roman emperor.”[14] As Tolstoy puts it, “they arranged a Christianity for him.”[15] Constantine’s empire, Eller explains, could now “become ‘Christian’ without having to make any changes at all; Christianity had done all the changing.”[16] For Tolstoy, this betrayal of Jesus which thereby saw the church become a “tangible fraud” was then sealed by the Council of Nicaea - convened by Constantine.[17]

Thereafter Christianity, which Andrews says had begun “as a voluntary, non-violent movement,” quickly “became a fierce reactionary force” which “ferociously suppressed political dissent.”[18] Moreover, O’Reilly writes, “The church as an intentional community disappeared as it became a civil obligation to be a christian.”[19] Bartley agrees: Christianity became associated with territory rather than “faith and commitment.”[20] From now on, as Berdyaev explains, “the Empire became Christian,” and “the Church became imperial” - which, he notes, “should have produced a revolutionary uprising.”[21] It did not, and as Penner remarks, the only two other alternatives for true Christians were “Monasticism and the sectarian churches.”[22] In the meantime, “To become a ‘Christian’ soon became the only religiously honourable thing to do.”[23] Imperial Christianity spread among the Roman middle classes and other similarly “ungodly persons,”[24] resulting in even further compromises with state power.[25]

Those who disagreed with these trends were persecuted, judged and condemned as heretics. Through the Edict of Milan and the Council of Nicaea, therefore, Constantine inaugurated the alliance of throne and altar that has carried the day for nearly two millennia - even though as O’Reilly remarks, “there have always been groups (large and small) who have refused to burn incense for Caesar.”[26] Thus for Christian anarchists like Chelčický, “the Constantinian merger of church and state marked the fall of the church.”[27] Constantine’s reign marks this fall in history - which is why Tolstoy refers to Constantine as “that canonized scoundrel.”[28]

Chelčický depicts this important moment in Christian history through a unique interpretation of the Gospel story of the miraculous inclusion of fishes.[29] This interpretation forms the backbone of The Net of Faith, the book which according to Molnár summarises Chelčický’s “whole philosophy of life and history” by examining the relation of church and state and the expected response of the true Christian to it.[30] It is worth relaying Chelčický’s illustration, which Wagner summarises as follows:

The net of faith is the law of God, bound together in the faithfulness of those believers loyal to the disciplined life of the early church. Out of the sea of the world, the net hauls in God’s elect. But the net has taken in more than ordinary fish. Its binding in the law of God has been ripped through by two huge predators, the pope and the emperor. [...] The two vicious intruders have thrashed around in the net, venting hostility toward God’s ordinances. The net of faith is now so mangled that there remain only the barely visible shreds of the apostle’s original net, the primitive church.[31]

Chelčický writes that even though the early churches “remained faithful” to Jesus’ teaching “for over three hundred years, [...] the net became greatly torn, when the two great whales had entered it.”[32] These two “fat and gluttonous Baals,”[33] as Chelčický calls them, compromised the “law of Christ” by adding “two other laws [...], namely the temporal and the papal law,” an addition which led to the immediate deterioration of “the Christian society.”[34]

Just like other Christian anarchists, Chelčický argues that instead of reforming the empire to conform to Christianity, Christianity was reformed to conform to the empire and its “laws, offices, courts,” and other forms of unchristian violence and coercion, not least war.[35] In other words, instead of giving their trust to and seeking help from God alone, Christians began to give their trust to and seek help from the emperor. Chelčický notes the parallels with the episode from the Book of Samuel examined in Chapter 2, and comments that “whenever man gives preference to human institutions and statutes rather than to the law of God, he chooses for himself other and foreign gods.”[36] For Chelčický, therefore, the net of true faith in God alone was rent by Constantine and Sylvester, and the church committed the twin sin of idolatry and betrayal of Jesus’ teaching in allying herself “with the state and with the secular methods of power, institutionalism, and coercion.”[37]

Perhaps the most immediately visible sign of this fall of Christianity was the adoption of the cross, the ultimate symbol of Jesus’ loving sacrifice, by the Roman army. As Tolstoy explains, the state’s conquest of the true church was soon complete: “Under Constantine the cross had already appeared on the standard of the Roman Legions. In 416 a decree was issued forbidding pagans to join the army. All the soldiers became Christians: that is, all the Christians, with only a few exceptions, renounced Christ.”[38] Soon after that, Andrews writes, “a law was promulgated which threatened any ‘heretic’ that was discovered in the empire with death,” so that “from then on, when it came to the matter of religion, the people in the empire had no choice.”[39] What Constantine had started was completed hardly a century later. Rome had successfully corrupted and overcome the threat posed by Christianity’s anarchist subversion. Faced by Christianity’s growing political force, the Roman state had nominally adopted it and perverted it with the complicity of church elites, tempted as they were by a combination of material comforts and perhaps naïve expectations that by acceding to political power, they might be able to hasten the kingdom of God on earth (a theme further discussed in the Conclusion). Thus began, for Christian anarchists, the Dark Ages of Christendom.

3.1.2 - Christendom and beyond

Christian anarchists see in Christian history since Constantine both the repressive reign of a perverted version of Christianity and examples of resistance by radical thinkers and sects.

On the dark side, Andrews argues that Christian elites, under the Holy Roman Empire, “slowly but surely, took control of the state.”[40] During the Middle Ages, the church extended its jurisdiction even further by regularly expanding the scope of canon law; and with the brutal European colonisation of the globe, the church extended its geographical sphere of influence to much of the known world.[41] Throughout this period, Penner therefore comments, “the state was an instrument in the hands of the [fallen] church.”[42] The church used the coercive tools of the state, for instance to launch the Crusades, to establish the Inquisition, and to hunt and slaughter rebellious heretics and quell political insurrections. For Christian anarchists, therefore, medieval Christianity was false, violent and vindictive.

Still, Christian anarchists take heart that now and again, dissenting voices expressing what they see as a truer Christianity could be heard, especially during the years of the Reformation. Given that Christian anarchists frequently tend to see them as examples of Christian anarchism, these voices are considered later, in Chapter 6. Here, however, suffice it to note that unfortunately, many of these Christian dissenters did tend to increasingly give in to violence, even sometimes to compromise with the state - thereby losing, from the Christian anarchist perspective, the Christian credentials with which they may have begun.

As discussed in the next section, the Reformation, modernity and the Enlightenment brought about a reconfiguration of church-state relations. Yet for Christian anarchists, even though the church lost much of the state power it had appropriated itself during the Middle Ages, it has nonetheless continued to behave in ways incompatible with Jesus’ radical political teaching.[43] Andrews cites the role of the church in the anti-Semitism that fed the Jewish Holocaust, but also the more recent church support for repressive regimes in Latin America.[44] For him, the church is often guilty of disregard for human rights and has a far from innocent hand in “the worst cases of genocide in the twentieth century.”[45]

Hence for Christian anarchists like Andrews, “the history of Christianity is as much a litany of cruelty as it is a legacy of charity.”[46] These acts of cruelty confront Christians, he adds, and they cannot be discounted too easily.[47] “To the victims” of the violence committed in the name of Christianity, Andrews warns, “Christianity is the Antichrist.”[48] It is therefore important to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, the true acts of authentic Christian witness from the violence disloyally committed, supported or implicitly tolerated by the church since Constantine. This Chapter has already cited examples of violence committed by the church; the rest of it exposes state violence and the arguments through which the church has justified its support for and participation in it.

3.2 - The modern state and economy

After a brief subsection discussing what Christian anarchists mean by the state, this section summarises Christian anarchism’s diagnosis of the modern state: the way in which it perpetuates violence, deception and economic exploitation, and the extent to which unquestioned veneration of it amounts to idolatry.

Because he is by far the most prolific Christian anarchist writer on the subject, Tolstoy figures prominently in this section, and much of what is reported here can also be found in my article for Anarchist Studies on Tolstoy’s criticisms of the state.[49] Apart from reorganising the argument slightly, the main difference between this section and that article is the inclusion of other Christian anarchists’ criticisms when appropriate.

3.2.1 - The “state”

As the purpose of this section is to explore Christian anarchist criticisms of “the state,” it is worth conceding from the outset that Christian anarchists tend to use words like “state” and “government” somewhat interchangeably. Indeed, as Kinna notes in the first pages of her chapter on anarchist rejections of the state, all anarchists have been accused of not differentiating clearly enough between terms like “state,” “government,” “power” and “authority,” thus making it near impossible to settle on final and universal definitions for these.[50] Christian anarchists tend to use the first two terms more frequently that the last two, but a closer look at Kinna’s proposed definitions shows that they sometimes also have in mind what other anarchists mean by “power” and “authority.”

Kinna delineates the difference between the three “abstract concepts” associated with the state as follows: “By government, anarchists tend to think of a particular system of rule, based on violence. In authority they consider the social relationships sustained by this system, and in power they consider the means by which government secures its authority.”[51] She then reviews anarchist rejections of each of these “concepts” of the state.

Since they categorically reject the use of violence, Christian anarchists are particularly denunciatory of the state as “government:” like other anarchists, they see government as “rule by the use of physical force” through a mix of both deception and tangible coercion;[52] and like other anarchists, they also detect government violence in state-endorsed economic inequalities and in interstate relations.[53] Christian anarchists also denounce the state as “authority,” though only really in the sense of it being morally corrupting by encouraging a type of hypnotic hypocrisy through the reproduction of social roles that obscure the violence of the system.[54] And just like other anarchists, Christian anarchists reject state “power” as discernible in its legal institutions, in the army and in the patriotism that legitimises it.[55]

In the subsections that follow, each of these criticisms is explored in more detail, though the emphasis is placed predominantly on what Kinna discusses as “government.” Criticisms of state “authority” and “power” are also mentioned, but only as aspects of the state as “government.” This reflects both the main focus of Christian anarchist criticism of the state as violent and the general inconsistency in the choice of terms across the Christian anarchist literature. In light of this inconsistency, and despite this short discussion of definitions, no clear and final definition of terms can be offered here. Suffices to note that the main thrust of the Christian anarchist criticism of the state is directed at its use of violence, deception and economic exploitation, and that in that sense, the concept of “government” delineated by Kinna better captures what Christian anarchists mean by “the state” than “authority” or “power.” In any case, as already noted, Christian anarchists often use “government” and “state” as seemingly perfectly interchangeable terms.

Another difficulty raised by the word “state” is that it is a modern word; it was hardly used before the Renaissance. Indeed, the administrative colossus today known as “the state” only really took shape since the Reformation. Nevertheless, in the sense of human beings given or ascribing to themselves the power to legislate and to use violence to enforce such legislation, the “state” did exist long before Jesus. In that sense of the word, one can indeed speak of Jesus’ teaching as implying a denunciation of the “state.” Still, as the rest of this section illustrates, what Christian anarchists have in mind when they criticise the state is very much the modern state or nation-state.

A very interesting account of the rise of this modern state out of the Reformation and the ensuing “Wars of Religion” is provided by Cavanaugh, whose analysis is openly influenced by Tilly.[56] Cavanaugh contends that to call the wars out of which the modern liberal state emerged “Wars of Religion” is “an anachronism, for what was at issue in these wars was the very creat ion of religion as a set of privately held beliefs without direct political relevance.”[57] He further contends that these wars “were not the events which necessitated the birth of the modern State” as a sort of “scolding schoolteacher on the playground of doctrinal dispute to put fanatical religionists in their proper place,” but that these wars “were in fact themselves the birthpangs of the State.”[58]

For Cavanaugh, at stake in the “Wars of Religion” that animated the Reformation were both the privatisation of religion and the nascent state’s overpowering of the church as the highest political legislator and administrator. European monarchs wanted to reclaim the political power that the church had appropriated itself during the Middle Ages, a move which required the domestication of the church and the separation of religion from the public and political sphere. The pivotal victory for the emerging state over the church came with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, after which, fuelled by war and the spread of nationalism, the state’s centralisation of its administrative power and extension of its monopoly over the legitimate use of violence accelerated with little opposition.[59]

The evolution of the state towards its modern manifestation was thus precipitated by the outcome of the Reformation.[60] From the days of Constantine onwards, monarchs and bishops had competed for ultimate political supremacy; the monarchs came out of the Middle Ages as winners. Since then, “the state” gradually developed to become the modern phenomenon captured by the contemporary word to describe it.

Yet the Christian anarchist criticism of the state is not limited to this modern construct: accusations of violence, deception, exploitation as well as human idolatry in many cases echo back way before the word “state” was first coined. These accusations must now be examined in turn, starting with that of state violence.

3.2.2 - State violence

As already mentioned several times and in particular when discussing the anarchist implications of non-resistance in Chapter 1, Christian anarchists accuse the state of being violent in a number of ways. War is one obvious example, but the state also uses violence and the threat of violence against its own population. Tolstoy hints that this is inevitable: any state activity, some see as good, others as less so, and therefore since some will always disagree, some degree of violence or compulsion will always be required to carry out any state activity.[61] Inevitably, therefore, all states exercise violence and intimidation. No state could act otherwise.

Moreover, for Tolstoy, “the essence of legislation is organised violence.”[62] He disagrees with the view that “legislation is the expression of the will of the people.”[63] For him, legislation merely expresses the will of those in power, obedience to which can only be achieved by the threat of violent punishment. As a result, Tolstoy’s “exact and irrefutable definition of legislation, intelligible to all, is that: Laws are rules, made by people who govern by means of organised violence for non-compliance with which the non-complier is subjected to blows, to loss of liberty, or even to being murdered.”[64] Tolstoy is therefore adamant that legislation amounts to slavery. Moreover, by definition, no legislative fix can truly eradicate this slavery - only the abolition of human laws can.

Furthermore, scientific progress only makes things worse. In Tolstoy’s words, “every victory over Nature will inevitably serve only to increase” the governing minority’s “power” over and “oppression” of the majority.[65] Tolstoy twice quotes Herzen’s remark that governments have become “Genghis-Khans with telegraphs” - a technological invention that has now of course been far surpassed.[66] Pentecost gives the example of the electric chair as an invention that allows the state to avoid the uncomfortable spectacle of “sickening contortions” and unpleasant mishaps that accompany the more traditional hangings of criminals.[67] Scientific and technical progress has thus served the governing minority by extending the range of options available to violently oppress the masses.

The same progress has also helped transform the state into a more complex machine, as a result of which the violence this machine perpetrates becomes less obvious, more obscure. The next subsection shows how some of the complexities of the state’s organisation obscure the violence it is responsible for. The point to note here is that technical progress has allowed the state to be more violent in increasingly elaborate ways, and at the same time to conceal this violence under these same layers of elaboration and complexity. Technical progress has thus enabled the construction of a “terrible machine of power,” says Tolstoy - and yet people “are afraid of anarchists’ bombs, and are not afraid of this terrible organization which is always threatening them with the greatest calamities.”[68] As Hennacy also remarks, even though some anarchists are “bomb-throwers and killers,” “the biggest bomb-thrower [is] the government.”[69] Thanks in no small part to technical progress, state violence is more threatening and more cunning than that carried out by subversives. Those who see otherwise, for Christian anarchists, are deceiving themselves.

3.2.3 - State deception

Christian anarchists believe that people are deceived about the violence committed by the state in several ways. One such deception comes with the illusion that democratic government somehow limits, or provides safeguards against, the state’s abuses of power.

Christian anarchists refuse to share such a comforting view of democracy. For a start, they note that in the process of seeking elect ion, politicians display a behaviour that is far removed from the sort of temperance, restraint and integrity that could moderate any temptation to abuse the power they seek to be entrusted with. In other words, in their thirst for power, democratic candidates frequently resort to underhand tactics and rarely demonstrate the concern for morality or humanity that would justify the assurance that democratic states are less violent than others. Indeed, for Christian anarchists, the dishonest competition that characterises electoral campaigns is only likely to promote not the best but the worst candidates to office. Hence for Tolstoy, democracy provides no tighter guarantee than its alternatives against abuses of power by those in government.[70]

Likewise, Pentecost remarks that people are quick to criticise abuses of power by foreign dictators, but “they do not see how the same principle applies when it is, as with us, a question of supporting execut ive officers, judicial functionaries, and military people, who are pushed forward by a few cunning politicians and elected by a very decided minority of the people.”[71] Moreover, according to Tolstoy, the idea that democratic states are somehow constitutionally more just is absurd. He writes:

When among one hundred men, one rules over ninety-nine, it is unjust, it is a despotism; when ten rule over ninety, it is equally unjust, it is an oligarchy; but when fifty-one rule over forty-nine (and this is only theoretical, for in reality it is always ten or eleven of these fifty-one), it is entirely just, it is freedom!

Could there be anything funnier, in its manifest absurdity, than such reasoning? And yet it is this very reasoning that serves as the basis for all reformers of the political structure.[72]

Because they view the electoral process with deep suspicion, Christian anarchists doubt that democratic elections actually reflect the free will of the majority; but more importantly, they argue that abuses of power are no less abusive when conducted by a few more people.

Yet many believe that democratic government is less oppressive than its alternatives, and are prepared to die to be governed in this way. For Christian anarchists, this very deception whereby democratic states claim their use of force to be more legitimate actually makes the violence much worse. The claim to moral legitimacy makes it more excusable to commit acts that are in reality no less violent or abusive. Moreover and paradoxically, as Tolstoy points out, this deception turns democratic electorates into willing participants in their own slavery: “a member of a constitutional State is always a slave because, imagining that he has participated or can participate in his Government, he recognizes the legality of all violence perpetrated upon him.”[73] Democracy, therefore, is a deceptive form of government: the state is no less violent, but the legitimacy it claims makes the violence appear more acceptable - even to those against whom the violence is directed.

Another state deception denounced by Christian anarchists concerns the hypnotic sense of duty thanks to which each individual cog in the state’s violent machinery plays its part and yet evades its responsibility (a deception that is of course further concealed by the impression that “the existing conditions of society” are “the best and most sacred of which human life is possible”).[74] As the following quotation demonstrates, Tolstoy believes that the violence of the system is cunningly obscured by the complexity of the machinery that perpetrates it:

At the bottom of the social ladder soldiers with rifles, revolvers, and swords, torture and murder men and by those means compel them to become soldiers. And these soldiers are fully convinced that the responsibility for their deed is taken from them by the officers who order those actions. At the top of the ladder the Tsars, presidents, and ministers, decree these tortures and murders and conscriptions. And they are fully convinced that since they are either placed in authority by God, or the society they rule over demands such decrees from them, they cannot be held responsible.

Between these extremes are the intermediate folk who superintend the acts of violence and the murders and the conscriptions of the soldiers. And these, too, are fully convinced that they are relieved of all responsibility, partly because of orders received by them from their superiors, and partly because such orders are expected from them by those on the lower steps of the ladder.[75]

At each rung on the ladder, people think they are merely fulfilling their “duty,” they are just doing the job they were appointed to do. Some are bound by oaths of allegiance; others are just honouring their professional function; but they are certainly not answerable for the cruel deeds committed by the state as a whole.

As a result, the moral responsibility that human beings are built to feel is diluted in the system. Tolstoy explains:

Not a single judge will consent to strangle with a rope the man whom he has condemned to death in his court. No one of higher rank will consent to snatch a peasant from his weeping family and shut him up in prison. [...]

These things are due to that complicated machinery of Society and the State, which makes it its first business to destroy the feeling of responsibility for such deeds, so that no man shall feel them to be as unnatural as they are. Some make laws, others apply them. Others again train men and educate them in the habit of discipline, in the habit, that is to say, of senseless and irresponsible obedience. Again others, and these are the best trained of all, practise every kind of violence, even to the slaying of men, without the slightest knowledge of the why and wherefore. We need only clear our mind for an instant from the network of human institutions in which we are thus entangled, to feel how adverse it is to our true nature.[76]

This subdivision of tasks explains why people collectively commit such barbarous acts. They deceptively lose sight of the fact that their own contribution is at least partly morally responsible, along with the contribution of all the other individual cogs in the complex machinery, for the violence they inflict upon others (and indeed themselves).

Thus all the units of the state system are hypnotised into feeling they have special duties. They forget that they are just humans beings, equal to other human beings, and instead “represent themselves to others as being [...] some special conventional beings: noblemen, merchants, governors, judges, officers, Tsars, ministers, or soldiers, not subject to ordinary human duties but to aristocratic, commercial, governatorial, judicial, military, royal, or ministerial, obligations.”[77] They are intoxicated by their social function and overlook their most basic moral responsibilities as human beings.

Even the ruling classes hypnotise themselves to some extent. Consciously or unconsciously, however, they are responsible for the design and perpetuation of the system: Tolstoy believes that the subdivision of tasks that alleviates any feeling of responsibility for a public execution “is carefully arranged and planned by learned and enlightened people of the upper class.”[78] To some extent, state authorities are hypnotised just like everybody else; but as the people lucky enough to get an education, as the people formally in charge of the state machinery, they also ensure that the various tasks of any act of state violence remain cleverly subdivided so as to alleviate anybody’s potential feeling of responsibility. Besides, many in the upper classes have every incentive to tolerate this since they “can occupy advantageous positions only under such an organization.”[79] The better off have every incentive to perpetuate the collective hypnosis as well as to keep themselves hypnotised.

Ultimately, however, the state relies on brute force if and when deception fails. This, in turn, highlights the importance of military conscription, a subject on which Tolstoy has written extensively.[80] For Tolstoy, “The basis of state power is physical violence,” and “the possibility of inflicting physical violence on people is afforded chiefly by an organization of armed men trained to act in unison.”[81] Therefore “Power always lies in the hands of those who control the army.”[82] This army can then be used as a last resort to protect the ruling classes from the masses, the oppressors from the oppressed - indeed for Tolstoy, that is its main purpose. Yet the army is mostly composed of the working classes, who thus paradoxically become accomplices in the state violence committed against them. For them to do that therefore requires “special and intensive methods of stupefaction and brutalisation.”[83] Tolstoy thus lists the “methods of instruction” as: “deception, stupefaction, blows and vodka,” an overwhelming mix of delusions, coercion and intoxication.[84]

One of the most important deceptions in this regard - the final one to be considered here - is patriotism, which to Tolstoy is nothing but an artificial (and, as explained in Chapter 1, unchristian) preference for one’s people “at the expense of a higher unity.”[85] Tolstoy argues that patriotism is a “psychotic epidemic” which hypnotises whole nations and prepares them to commit the most terrible barbarities against fellow human beings.[86] It is a crucial deception in the further stupefaction of soldiers because it deludes them into thinking that the violence they commit has a higher purpose, that what they are doing is not upholding a deeply unjust system but defending the values and the territory of the “fatherland.”[87]

Tolstoy accuses the ruling classes of deliberately enflaming international rivalries and arms races in order to justify the existence of their armies, so that these same armies can be called upon to defend and expand their privileges. He also denounces the hypocrisy of international peace conferences, because he insists that only through the eradication of armies - a move never seriously considered at such conferences - can real peace be achieved. Moreover, international military alliances convened in the name of peace are for him nothing but alliances for war. Governments may strive to delude people into believing that their intentions are pure, but in reality they continue to cultivate and regularly call upon patriotic feelings in order to consolidate their grip over the army.

In sum, for Christian anarchists, the state relies on a set of powerful deceptions in order to nurture the alleged consent of the same people it commits violence against. Tolstoy speaks of people being hypnotised by these deceptions, a hypnosis which he repeatedly calls for humanity to shake off so that it can outgrow the violent state and realise the true society of peace and love envisioned by Jesus. In his political essays, his aim is to help this process by applying his literary talent to expose the state’s violence and deception. The following extract is a good example of such prose, and nicely summarises almost every theme discussed so far in this Chapter:

Take a man of our time - be he who he may - [...] living quietly when suddenly people come to him and say: “First you must promise and swear to us that you will slavishly obey us in everything we prescribe to you, and obey and unquestioningly accept as absolute truth everything we devise, decide on, and call law. Secondly you must hand over to us part of the fruits of your labour (we shall use the money to keep you in slavery and to prevent you forcibly resisting our arrangements). Thirdly you must elect others, or be yourself elected, to take a pretended part in the government, knowing all the while that the administration will proceed quite independently of the foolish speeches you and others like you may utter, and that things will proceed according to our will - the will of those in whose hands is the army. Fourthly you must at the appointed time come to the law-courts and take part in the senseless cruelties we perpetrate on erring people whom we have perverted - in the shape of imprisonments, banishments, solitary confinements, and executions. And fifthly and finally, besides all this, although you may be on the friendliest terms with men of other nations, you must be ready, as soon as we order it, to consider as your enemies those whom we shall point out to you, and co-operate, personally or by hiring others, in the destruction, plunder, and murder of their men, women, children and aged alike - perhaps also of your own fellow countrymen or even your parents, should we require that.”[88]

By explaining the situation in this manner, Tolstoy was hoping to arouse the masses out of their hypnotic submission to this violent, deceptive and exploitative machine. It is now time to turn to the only aspect of this exploitation which has not been discussed so far.

3.2.4 - Economic exploitation

Christian anarchists’ criticism of the state extends beyond the purely political into economics (although, on this topic, Christian anarcho-capitalists differ substantially from the majority of Christian anarchists).[89] They accuse the state not only of waging war to exploit foreign lands and peoples, and to thereby enrich its well-to-do classes, but also of deploying its full arsenal domestically to protect what the wealthy classes have stolen from the masses.

On the international scene, according to Christian anarchists, states wage war out of covetousness and lust, to (aggressively) exploit foreign resources and workforces as well as to (defensively) protect these unduly acquired riches. Tolstoy expresses this view by quoting the following words from Lichtenberg: “If a traveller were to see a people on some far-off island whose houses were protected by loaded cannon and around those houses sentinels patrolled night and day, he could not help thinking that the island was inhabited by brigands. Is it not thus,” he asks rhetorically, “with the European states?”[90] For Christian anarchists, all states - not just European ones - steal from other nations and then protect their loot behind their cannons and sentinels.

Domestically too, the state is an instrument of legalised robbery.[91] It transfers the wealth of the poor to the rich so that the latter can further consolidate the enslavement of the former. The state claims to protect its citizens from the worst of human nature - from robbers, criminals and the like - and demands taxes to provide this service, yet it thereby behaves precisely like the evil it claims to guard against. For Tolstoy (following Schmitt), the similarity with the mafia is striking: “Governments, justifying their existence on the ground that they ensure a certain kind of safety to their subjects, are like the Calabrian robber-thief who collected a regular tax from all who wished to travel in safety along the highways.”[92] The state will keep you safe - that is, it will not attack you - provided that you pay your dues and do not interfere with its business.

Similarly, writes Tolstoy, it is said about the right of property that it “is established in order to make the worker sure that no one will take from him the produce of his labour,” yet in practice, “the very thing happens which that right is intended to prevent: namely, all articles which have been, and continually are being, produced by working people, are possessed by, and as they are produced are continually taken by, those who have not produced them.”[93] Laws allegedly designed to protect the vulnerable in effect become the means by which they are further exploited. Thus, as Pentecost remarks, instead of being institutions for the meting out of justice, prisons and gallows “are instruments for the intimidation of the poor if they dare to get back some of the wealth that is daily juggled out of their hands.”[94]

For Pentecost, the most important source of social injustice is the private ownership of land. He strongly denounces wealthy landowners for keeping large swathes of land out of use, and for extorting rent from those who produce wealth on their land even though they have put no effort into its production. For him, “a taker of ground rent is exactly like a person who compels a starving man to deliver up his bag of gold for a crust of bread.”[95] Like other Christian anarchists, he is therefore outraged that instead of preventing such widespread injustice, the state arraigns the worker and supports the landowner.

Without being able to cultivate land freely, Christian anarchists contend, the landless masses become economically enslaved by the wage system. In The Slavery of Our Times, Tolstoy marvels at how “for a bare subsistence, people, considering themselves free men, [think] it necessary to give themselves up to work such as, in the days of serfdom, not one slave-owner, however cruel, would have sent his slaves to.”[96] For Tolstoy, there are three causes to this apparently freely accepted enslavement: these workers have no land to cultivate and live from; they are regularly forced by the state to pay taxes; and they are tempted and ensnared by the more luxurious habits of city life. Taken together, these factors convince the worker to submit to wage slavery. Thus, Tolstoy concludes, “one way or another, the labourer is always in slavery to those who control the taxes, the land, and the articles necessary to satisfy his requirements.”[97]

Tolstoy therefore argues that even though slavery was officially abolished long ago, the post-industrial economic system unmistakably amounts to a form of slavery. Even if “it is difficult to draw as sharp a dividing line as that which separated the former slaves from their masters,” because some can be both or move from one category to another, “this blending of the two classes at their point of contact does not upset the fact that the people of our time are divided into slaves and slave-owners.”[98] He explains:

If the slave-owner of our time has not slave John, whom he can send to the cess-pool to clear out his excrements, he has five shillings of which hundreds of Johns are in such need that the slave-owner of our times may choose anyone out of hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving him the preference, and allowing him, rather than another, to climb down into the cess-pool.[99]

Today’s complex globalised economy may have blurred the boundaries between slave and slave-owner even further, and may have succeeded in hiding all these Johns oceans away from those who keep them in slavery,[100] but the system remains essentially the same, and the work that many workers are forced to resort to is no less degrading. As Hopton remarks, such economic exploitation is “more subtle and more pervasive than direct physical violence” - but it is exploitation nonetheless, indeed exploitation on a greater scale than was allowed by the more visible slavery of the past.[101]

Tolstoy moreover refuses to accept that this system is natural or unchangeable. Most of us, he admits, “shrug our shoulders” and say that despite the injustice, “we can do nothing to alter it.”[102] Most of us try our best not to see the connection between their suffering and our luxurious lives. For Tolstoy, “This wonderful blindness which befalls people of our circle can only be explained by the fact that when people behave badly they always invent a philosophy of life which represents their bad actions to be not bad actions at all, but merely results of unalterable laws beyond their control.”[103] Among the excuses which have been invented and which are happily accepted as true since formulated by some respectable expert or other, Tolstoy lists the “Christian” doctrine that this social arrangement is the will of God; the Hegelian idea that the current order is a necessary manifestation of the spirit; and the more recent and more “scientific” view that human society is a perfect organism subject to iron laws which regulate the natural division of labour.[104] With each such excuse, Tolstoy comments, “We say, It is not we who have done all this; it has been done of itself; as children say when they break any thing, that it broke itself. [...] But that is not true.”[105]

The “Christian” excuse is examined below, and Tolstoy’s intrinsic suspicion of the Hegelian idea is explored elsewhere. As to the third excuse, Tolstoy accepts that some division of labour is indeed natural and appropriate, but he notes that as soon as any coercion is introduced, such division becomes an artificial usurpation of labour - in other words, slavery. For Tolstoy, as soon as the state protects and enforces private ownership of land, the resulting division of labour is not natural but imposed. Thus the so-called laws which regulate the division of labour do not describe “the general order of things” but “the condition of people in the whole world.”[106] The division of labour in our modern societies is not a result of some eternal and universal law, but the reflection of state-sanctioned economic exploitation - that is, wage slavery.

Christian anarchists are therefore suspicious of most conventional theories about the economy. These theories tend to be articulated by the more comfortable social classes, predictably exalt the status quo as sacrosanct if admittedly slightly unfair, and lead to proposed amendments that are not nearly radical enough since they hinge on the preservation of the foundations of this status quo. In the meantime, the economic enslavement of the masses continues undeterred.

While on the subject of economics, it is worth noting in passing that Tolstoy is also suspicious of money more generally, and economic theories about it. He sees money not as a neutral medium of exchange, but as yet another instrument of slavery, because its functions as wage or as tax are not separable from the violence and coercion which enchain modern slaves to their chore. Along the same lines, Maurin similarly condemns usury (the lending of money at interest) not only as against the teaching of the Prophets, but also as “trying to live on the sweat of somebody else’s brow.”[107] (Note that Christian anarcho-capitalist James Redford, however, believes usury to be perfectly compatible with Jesus’ teaching.) For these Christian anarchists, money is yet another tool with which the masses are exploited.

Besides, as several Christian anarchists remember, Jesus himself warns that “No one can serve two masters [...]. Ye cannot serve God and mammon [or money].”[108] Yet despite Jesus’ warning, “all our education is to try to find out how we can serve [these] two masters,”[109] and people continue to be tempted “to serve Mammon with all their heart.”[110] For Christian anarchists like Tolstoy, however, we must all decide which of the two masters we will serve and which we will give up. Indeed, consciously or unconsciously, that decision has usually already been made: if money has been chosen, God has been renounced. Instead of worshipping God, many “Christians” worship money - that is, they fall prey to idolatry.

3.2.5 - The state as idolatry

Christian anarchists accuse other “Christians” of idolatry not only in their worship of money, but also in their worship of the state. Simply put, they contend that the state is a human creation which dethrones God and His laws. As illustrated in 1 Samuel 8, this creation testifies to humanity’s lack of faith and trust in God.

Indeed, Pentecost notes that to rely on legislatures, judges or policemen implies “that we have a God who made a lot of laws which are so defective that the universe would go to smash if it were not for these honourables and big-wigs and blue-coat-and-brass-buttons, with all their authority and clubs.”[111] To rely on human laws and law-enforcement suggests both a lack of faith in God’s laws and providence and an arrogant confidence in humanity’s capacity for self-management. The state is therefore “an expression of man’s original sin, the desire to be as gods,” says one Christian anarchist.[112] It expresses the desire to rule (to make rules), which according to one Christian thinker “is the mother of all heresies.”[113] Hence the state embodies the sinful human desire to sit in God’s throne.

Furthermore, as Goddard explains, for Ellul, “the state has become a new locus of the sacred in our society.”[114] Instead of God, “It is the state that is held responsible for all that occurs and to which people now look for security, protection, and the solution of all their problems. The state in turn thrives upon this religious devotion, encourages it, and demands its citizens’ full compliance with all its decisions.”[115] People have faith in the state, obey it, and impute to it “the attributes and powers of God.”[116] Hence “the cult of the State” is today’s “golden calf.”[117] The state thus does indeed belong to “the realm of the demonic,”[118] as Jesus’ third wilderness temptation suggests: it demands worship, and it seeks total power to make and enforce laws.[119] It will not admit any competition from other gods.

Yet in Acts, Peter says clearly that “We ought to obey God rather than men.”[120] Ballou portrays this choice as between “human government,” which is “the will of man - whether of one, a few, many, or all in a state or nation - exercising absolute authority over man, by means of cunning and physical force,” and “divine government,” which is “the infallible will of God prescribing the duty of moral agents, and claiming their primary allegiance.”[121] The two types of government cannot be combined: Tolstoy insists that God’s laws “supplant all other laws,”[122] and he then reiterates that we “cannot serve two masters,” and that the oath of allegiance to human government “is the direct negation of Christianity.”[123] For Christian anarchists, a true Christian would recognise God as the sole King, Lawgiver and Judge, as sovereign over human society, and would thus reject government by other human beings as idolatry.

(Incidentally, Chelčický remarks that “he who obeys God needs no other authority,” because as Paul says, “Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”[124] As already discussed in Chapter 1, the Sermon on the Mount fulfils the demands of the Mosaic Law; similarly, some Christian anarchists claim that obeying God in itself makes the Christian somehow fulfil the intentions of most human laws. This, however, needs further elaboration, because sometimes there can be conflict between God’s laws and human laws - hence this question is revisited in Chapter 4, where the Christian anarchist response to the state is discussed, and again in the Conclusion, where love’s fulfilment of justice is explored further.)

The point for Christian anarchists is that true Christians would not elevate the state to the status of god. Ultimately, one can place one’s trust and have faith either in God’s law of love, or in the coercive and human state, not both.[125] Hence Christian anarchists speak out against the state, “such a center of power and violence,” being “given a Christian name and justification.”[126] For them, there is a fundamental contradiction between the state and the gospel: one is by nature violent and coercive, the other teaches love and forgiveness, and therefore the term “Christian state” is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron just like the term “hot ice.”[127] Tolstoy therefore calls “blasphemy” the “sanctification of political power by Christianity,” because “it is the negation of Christianity.”[128]

Tolstoy writes at length about this paradox of trying to combine Christianity and the state. For him, this paradox is visible in the life of the aristocracy, in domestic legislation, in international affairs, but especially in military conscription. He ridicules the irony of teaching the Sermon on the Mount at Sunday school only to then send the same pupils to the army - thus trying to make them both Christians and gladiators.[129] He recalls “the amazement of an Indian converted to Christianity, when, having absorbed the essence of the Christian teaching, he came to Europe and saw how Christians live. He could not overcome his astonishment,” Tolstoy continues, “at a sight so completely contrary to what he had expected to find.”[130] Tolstoy repeatedly insists that the state and Christianity are completely incompatible:

Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified. It has always been so understood by people who were not under the necessity of justifying a Christian State. Only since rulers adopted a nominal external Christianity have men begun to devise all those impossible, cunningly spun theories which pretend to make Christianity compatible with the State. But to every serious and sincere man of our time the incompatibility of true Christianity (the doctrine of humility, forgiveness, and love) with the State and its pomp, violence, executions, and wars, is quite obvious. The profession of true Christianity not only excludes the possibility of recognizing the State, but even destroys its foundations.[131]

In sum, for Christian anarchists like Tolstoy, the state is a violent, deceptive and exploitative human creation. To follow it is to deify it. One can either place the Christian God above the state, and thus follow Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or the state above God, and thus follow human laws. The former is truly Christian, the latter, idolatry. One cannot follow both, despite attempts to convince us of the contrary through the “cunningly spun theories” put forth by conformist theologians.[132] It is now time to analyse these theories from the Christian anarchist perspective.

3.3 - Church doctrine in support of the state

Christian anarchists accuse the church of deliberately misinterpreting Jesus’ instructions in the Sermon on the Mount, especially the passage counselling non-resistance, in order to conjure Christian support for authority. This section outlines these accusations one by one, but each briefly (the footnotes indicate where, in the Christian anarchist literature, further detail can be found). It begins with Jesus’ instructions aside from the one not to resist evil, which is important enough to be discussed on its own in the subsequent subsection.

3.3.1 - Reinterpretations of Jesus’ commandments in the Sermon on the Mount

Christian anarchists blame established theologians for disingenuously reinterpreting Jesus’ teaching in order to make it appear compatible with the state, but Augustine is frequently singled out given his pivotal role when Christianity was becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire. To be sure, Augustine’s interpretation of Jesus’ commandments in the Sermon on the Mount varies considerably from that of Christian anarchists.

One example of Augustine’s surprising reading concerns the commandment not to swear oaths, which he interprets as neither forbidding appeals to God as a witness nor indeed swearing in principle. He even argues that making “a good use of an oath” is not evil, because it is “necessary in order to persuade.”[133] For Tolstoy, however, this and other similar excuses put forward to justify the swearing of oaths are all dishonest and incompatible with Jesus’ simple instruction.[134] As explained in Chapter 1, Tolstoy sees Jesus as clearly proscribing the swearing of oaths, and “the chief obstacle to understanding” this commandment is for him precisely that “so-called Christian teachers have boldly forced men to take oaths on the Gospel itself.”[135]

Equally disingenuous, for Christian anarchists, is the reinterpretation of the commandment not to be angry, which conformist theologians have often argued applies somehow only to the motivation behind the act, not the act itself. This argument, Tolstoy argues, is founded on the words “without a cause” (forbidding anger “without a cause”).[136] Tolstoy explains that based on this clause “[church] Fathers were chiefly occupied with deciding the cases in which anger [is] excusable.”[137] Following these church Fathers, most conventional interpretations tolerate angry acts and, in many cases, anger itself - as long as it is not “without a cause.” Yet as Tolstoy remarks, “angry people” always “think their anger just;” they think they have a just cause for their anger.[138] Tolstoy thus felt that the clause “destroyed the whole meaning of the verse.”[139] Why forbid anger in situations that in reality never arise? He then consulted different versions of the Bible, and realised that the destructive clause was “an interpolation of the fifth century, not to be found in the most authentic copies of the gospel” - as is now recognised in more recent versions of the Bible.[140] For centuries, however, orthodox interpretations downplayed or even revised Jesus’ original meaning based on a clause which appears to have been disingenuously inserted into the original text.

Another commandment which Christian anarchists believe has traditionally been misinterpreted is the one to love our enemies. Augustine’s impossible difficulty was to interpret it in a way that did not contradict the articulation of his doctrine of just war, so here again he argued, as Johnston explains, that it refers “to an inner disposition, and not outward action.”[141] This position has been developed over time by other theologians, so that the absurd conclusion has been reached whereby it is said that it is fine to murder your enemy as long as a proper inner attitude of love is maintained - a position which, to non-Christians, betrays the hypocrisy of many professed “Christians.”[142] An alternative interpretation which Tolstoy also criticises is one whereby “the words of Jesus are generally corrected to mean that, though we cannot love our enemies [because it is too difficult], we may refrain from wishing them or doing them any ill.”[143] To Christian anarchists, of course, either of these methods are betraying the original commandment by attempting to justify its opposite - and anyway, early Christians would have never contemplated murder as compatible in any way with their ethos. Yet again, the established interpretations go against both the spirit and the letter of Jesus’ clear original intention.

Tolstoy is also critical of the church’s interpretation of the commandment not to judge, which it limits to verbal slander. This, to Tolstoy, is incoherent, and a close analysis of the original Greek confirms that what is meant in the text is judgement in the conventional sense of “passing a sentence on” or to “condemn to punishment.”[144] Based on this analysis, Tolstoy deduces that the translation into “evil-speaking, or slander, is the most fanciful and unauthorised of all.”[145]

Tolstoy also questions the traditional understanding of the commandment not to commit adultery. While this commandment is not important for Christian anarchism, its usual interpretation is nonetheless for Tolstoy yet another example of an “intentional corruption of the text” which “destroys the moral, the religious, the grammatical, and the logical meaning of the words of Jesus.”[146]

Christian anarchists like Tolstoy are therefore deeply suspicious of the conventional church’s interpretation of the Sermon commandments since Augustine. Too often, the obvious meaning of Jesus’ instructions is contradicted. Where this contradiction is even more pronounced, however, is with the commandment not to resist evil.

3.3.2 - Reinterpretations of non-resistance

Christian anarchists list various strategies and arguments that they accuse mainstream theologians of using to shy away from the radical implications of Jesus’ demand not to resist evil but to turn the other cheek.

The simplest strategy has been to ignore it, to deny that Jesus taught it, or to evade the question altogether. This, Tolstoy explains, was one of the main types of responses he received from church theologians to his earlier exegesis of the passage in What I Believe.[147] He says that much was made of his “misunderstanding” of various other Bible passages and of his lack of acknowledgement of key church dogmas, but that the questions he asked were often evaded or falsely said to have been settled long ago.[148] Some, he says, went as far as to deny that Jesus taught non-violence. According to Tolstoy, however, “It is useless to refute such assertions, for the men who make them refute themselves, or rather renounce Christ and invent a Christ and a Christianity of their own.”[149]

Another “ingenious” strategy employed by orthodox theologians, says Tolstoy, “consists in declaring that they do not deny this commandment but recognize it like all the others, only they do not ascribe any special and exclusive significance to it as the sectarians do.”[150] This view appears honest and legitimate, but as Tolstoy points out, it is rarely lived up to by its professors. Tolstoy demonstrates this by comparing the attitude of these church theologians towards non-resistance with their typical attitude towards adultery. He writes:

They never point out any cases in which the command against adultery ought to be broken, and always teach that allurements leading men to commit adultery should be avoided. But it is not so with the command about non-resistance.

All the Church preachers know cases in which this law should be broken, and they teach men so. [...] The clergy never advocate the violation of any other commandment, but in regard to the law of non-resistance they openly teach that it is not necessary to take it too literally, and that not merely is it unnecessary to fulfil it always, but that there are conditions when just the contrary should be done - that is, that men should go to law, wage wars, and execute people. [...]

So it is not true that this command is recognized by the preachers of the Church as of equal significance with the other commandments.[151]

Church theologians claim that it is wrong to place non-resistance on a pedestal and that all commandments should be treated equally, but they themselves do not actually treat and obey all of Jesus’ commandments with the same degree of diligence and sincerity.

Another allegedly dishonest interpretation of this commandment, which both Tolstoy and Ballou comment on, consists in claiming that the Sermon indicates “the perfection to which man should aspire, though, poor fallen creature, in bondage to sin, he is incapable of reaching that perfection, and can be saved only by faith, prayer, and divine grace.”[152] For Tolstoy, it would be “strange” for Jesus to give “such clear and beautiful rules directly applicable to every individual, well knowing the impossibility of this teaching being carried into practice by the unassisted strength of man.”[153] Instead, it seems to Tolstoy that “without even attempting it, both believers and unbelievers alike have decided that it is impossible.”[154] Yet as Ballou asks, “Who is to be the judge of what is possible - God, or man? Who is to judge what and how much shall be required - Jesus Christ, or his disciples?”[155] Ballou expects a true follower of Jesus to follow Jesus’ instructions. Hence instead of a big church of weak and dishonest “followers” claiming that Christianity is “impossible,” Ballou would rather have a much smaller church of honest and courageous Christian martyrs striving to live up to Jesus’ tough demands, and honest non-Christians openly admitting that since Christianity comes with such a difficult cross to bear, they cannot consistently profess it.[156]

A similar excuse put forward by mainstream theologians consists in saying that non-resistance is “impracticable” in today’s world and that we must therefore “wait until the millennium” before it can be practiced.[157] Ballou rejects this view. For a start, he wonders how “such state as the millennium should ever be developed among mankind” if no-one is prepared to usher it in by acting on this commandment.[158] He also accuses proponents of this argument of presupposing both that Jesus “enjoined on his disciples, duties [...] which he knew they could not perform,” and that “Jesus enjoined many particular duties for which there will be no possible occasion in the millennium, and which therefore can never be fulfilled.”[159] Indeed, in the millennium, there should be no occasion to practice non-resistance since “there will be no evil-doer to forbear with.”[160] In any case, Jesus “gives no intimation” of the “impracticability” of non-resistance “till some future period.”[161]

Christian anarchists also comment on other variations on this argument that non-resistance is impracticable, each time demonstrating that it is unchristian.[162] In the end, Tolstoy cannot avoid the conclusion that “Theological writers, in no way hindered by the authority of him whom they confess as God, calmly put a limit to the meaning of his words. [...] They admit his sentiments to be very lofty sentiments, but devoid of all possibility of a practical application to life, since they would destroy the whole of that social order which they feel we have so well arranged.”[163] In other words, these commentators have the audacity to claim that Jesus could not have meant to teach what they have decided to interpret as unrealistic and utopian because it would threaten the current political system.[164] Either way, it is on grounds foreign to Jesus’ teaching that these commentators are assessing the possibility or the practicality of his commandments.

A slightly different evasion of Jesus’ instruction, in line with several aforementioned reinterpretations of other commandments, is the claim that Jesus “does not prohibit the act, but only a vindictive, revengeful spirit in performing it.”[165] Again, the implication seems to be that one can actually resist evil as long as this resistance is not informed by a spirit of resistance. For Ballou, however, this “is to make [Jesus] the mere echo of Moses and his expounders; whereas he goes absolutely against the deed - the act of inflicting evil.”[166] Besides, “however gently and politely inflicted,” resistance is resistance, and only a spirit of resistance will actually enact it.[167]

Yet another evasion discussed by Ballou is the claim that the commandment only applied to Jesus’ early followers, because “To resist then would be of no avail; it was better therefore patiently to endure.”[168] Ballou finds this view astonishing: “What a despicable expediency,” he exclaims, “does this ascribe to the Savior! What a skulking prudence! Resist not evil when unable to do so!”[169] For Ballou, this argument is “utterly derogatory to the character of Jesus, and utterly unsupported by a single hint in the context,” hence it needs not be refuted in any more detail.[170]

A different method which has been employed to evade Jesus’ instruction is to cite other Bible passages said to justify violence. Christian anarchists thus accuse many theologians of deliberately searching the Bible in the hope that a justification for violence can be constructed. One obvious place to search into is the Old Testament, with its many laws and wars; but for Tolstoy, the teaching that is then followed is not Jesus’ but Moses’; and anyway, as already discussed in Chapter 1 and as Ballou puts it, “That resistance of evil which Moses sanctioned and enjoined, Jesus obviously repudiates and forbids,” and therefore “The prohibition is made precisely coextensive in all its bearings with the allowances and injunctions of the Olden Code.”[171] Aside from references to the Old Testament, passages from the New have also been deliberately misinterpreted to justify “Christian” war. For instance, it is said that if war was really meant to be unchristian, John the Baptist had the opportunity to outlaw it in his reply to the Roman soldier; but for Chelčický, “John, who preceded our Lord Jesus in time, was still under the Law of Moses,” hence he “could not have changed the laws (concerning) the (established) order of things.”[172] For other theologians, the obligation to care for one’s neighbour implies a duty to use force to protect him; but for Tolstoy, this interpretation is both arbitrary and anyway absent from the gospels.[173] Also cited are New Testament passages calling for sacrifice, which have been misused to eulogise military glory even though their actual meaning concerns sacrifice or bearing one’s cross but not violence or killing.[174] In the end, all these passages may distract from Jesus’ commandment not to resist evil, but for Christian anarchists, honestly interpreted, they do not abrogate it.

In any case, even when the commandment not to resist evil is acknowledged, some theologians argue that it applies only to private or small matters, not to public or national ones - again an evasion unwarranted by scripture. Others say that although Jesus did preach non-resistance, “there are malefactors in the world, and if these evil men are not curbed by force the whole world will perish”[175] - an argument which, for Tolstoy, is once again not informed by the text, and opens up an impossible debate on how to all agree on distinguishing the evil from the good.

Augustine, for his part, argues that coercion is a natural part of political authority after the Fall, a necessary pedagogical tool in a sinful world. For Christian anarchists, however, Christian love and non-resistance are meant precisely as an alternative pedagogy to that of punishment and violence. Christian anarchists therefore accuse the church, which was supposed to embody Jesus’ radical teaching, of abandoning it and instead following conformist theologians like Augustine, who not only justified punishment and coercion but also was the first to develop “just war” theory - all “to the benefit of state and king.”[176] For Christian anarchists, this blessing of violence and war by the church, this “just war theory” which it further developed over the centuries, is horrifying, and further obscures the radical truth of Jesus’ teaching.

Myers calls it “the profoundest historical betrayal of the Gospel” for the church to have thus “turned the cross into a sword.”[177] Instead of bravely teaching and embodying non-resistance and the turning of the other cheek, to Tolstoy the very essence of Jesus’ message, the church shows indifference to it and justifies violence and war. It exalts the Sermon on the Mount in words, but in practice has no intention of following it. It honours dead saints and radicals, but alive it finds them too uncomfortable to deal with, let alone praise.[178] To Christian anarchists, the church is therefore guilty of gradually renouncing Jesus’ radical commandments and endorsing the very instruments which had once shed the blood of its martyrs.

• It is for that reason that according to Christian anarchists, a proper exegesis of these verses must bypass the church’s conventional interpretations. The many Christian teachers who justify violence, for them, are false teachers. Jesus teaches love, non-violence and non-resistance to evil. According to Christian anarchists, whatever the church says, this is obvious to anyone reading the Gospels. Gandhi once observed that “The only people on earth who do not see Christ and his teachings as nonviolent are Christians.”[179] For Christian anarchists, provided it is approached with a mind purged from the many layers of conventional interpretation, the Sermon of the Mount’s true, radical and politically subversive meaning is obvious for all to see.

3.3.3 - Support for political authority

According to Christian anarchists, the church’s misinterpretation of Jesus’ teaching has one particular purpose: to pave the way for its support of political authority - that is, of the state. But to legitimise this support, on top of playing down the anarchist implications of Jesus’ teaching, church theologians have had to devise positive arguments in direct support of the state and its instruments of coercion. These arguments can be divided into two broad sets: those that are based on passages from scripture, and those that are not.

Among the New Testament passages said to imply support for political authority, the most frequently cited must be Romans 13. Chapter 4 discusses Christian anarchists’ rejection of the standard interpretations of this passage and their alternative interpretation. Another passage often cited by those supporting the state is the “render unto Caesar” episode, likewise discussed in Chapter 4. Sometimes apologists of the state ground their support on Jesus’ reply to Pilate during his trial. The Christian anarchist alternative interpretation is mentioned in Chapter 2. Apologists of the state also sometimes interpret Paul’s call for Christians to pray for all, including kings, as biblical foundation for political power. Christian anarchists rarely comment on this particular argument, but Chelčický makes it clear that for him, it is a deliberate misunderstanding of a simple hope that these kings might repent. Several other - less weighty - New Testament passages have also been cited as implying support for authority. For Christian anarchists, however, as shown where these passages are discussed in Chapters 2 and 4, they are all dishonest interpretations of the original text.

Christian apologists of the state also rationalise their support using arguments not directly derived from scripture. These tend to focus on justifying the use of political violence. One way this has been done has been to say that because “God can kill since He is the giver of life and death, [...] Therefore the kings whom God has authorized to rule can kill in the exercise of their justice.”[180] Another way has been to see it as “not cruelty but kindliness to punish the sins for God.”[181] Similarly, the church has at times argued that any political authority to use force must proceed “from God.”[182] Either way, a false distinction between violence and political force (which, as Chapter 1 shows, Christian anarchists reject) has to be maintained “to clear the state of the charge of violence.”[183]

Another line of reasoning has consisted in claiming that the church would never be able to maintain its strength and thereby fulfil its mission in the world without the support of the state. Christian anarchists reject this, and Chapters 4 and 5 discuss how they think the church should be striving to fulfil its mission in a world in which the state is as dominant as it is today. They certainlydo not believe that the good ends of Christianity can be realised through the wrong means of the state.

For Christian anarchists, all these arguments which the church has deployed to legitimise its support of the state and its instruments are unchristian, and they actually have a hidden motive: the accumulation and the protection of wealth. The church has “converted faith into a lucrative business,” says Chelčický, and the state is happy to shelter the church’s luxuries in exchange for divine sanctification.[184] Because it has grown so accustomed to these luxuries, the church is usually happy to defend and consecrate the state’s prevailing ideology, whatever the ideology - provided of course that it does not threaten the church’s wealth. Hence instead of being a force for an anarchist revolution, the church has usually sided with the establishment and, in times of trouble, with right-wing military dictatorships like that of Franco or Peron rather than with the poor and their revolutionary ideologies.

Thus church and state mutually support one another. Although the precise constitutional details of their relationship has varied greatly over time and place, they have become one another’s auxiliary, relying on one another to provide either the ideology or the sheer force required to ensure they both continue to enjoy their power and material comforts. Of course, this has required the church to reinterpret the politically radical elements of Jesus’ teaching, but ever since Constantine and Augustine, many church theologians have laboured hard to do just that. The other important deception which Christian anarchists accuse the church of developing in order to further obscure Jesus’ subversive message is its set of dogmas, creeds, and other such tenets of faith.

3.4 - Deceptive dogmas

Tolstoy has produced some scathing criticisms of church dogmas. Other Christian anarchists have been far less prolific on this particular topic, although one can find scattered hints here and there that suggest that their opinion can often be similar to Tolstoy’s. As this section outlines these criticisms, it relies predominantly on Tolstoy.

These criticisms are admittedly not crucial to the main theme of this book, since they do not impact directly on Christian anarchists’ critique of the state. It is nonetheless valuable to outline them in that they demonstrate that several Christian anarchists - especially Tolstoy, Hennacy and Chelčický - do take their criticism of the church as far as many other anarchists do, and thus that Christian anarchism does include a significant strand that shares such anticlericalism with significant strands of secular anarchism. At the same time, in order not to delve too much on this sub-topic, the detailed elaboration of most of these criticisms is relegated to the footnotes, and to the texts referenced therein (but as explained in the Acknowledgements, the footnotes were trimmed down to the bare minimum for this abridged version, so readers interested in these fuller elaborations will find them in the original, hardback version of this book).

3.4.1 - Sanctimonious self-righteousness

Christian anarchists believe that one of the church’s cardinal sins has been to appoint itself as the sole authority for the interpretation of the Bible. Tolstoy is upset that “the very people Christ denounced came to consider themselves the sole preachers and expositors of His doctrines.”[185] Jesus had warned his followers that “the self-styled Orthodox [...] were, and are, the enemies of all that is good,” and therefore that such “self-appointed teachers” are “to be feared.”[186] He also told his followers “to call no man master or father.”[187] Moreover, says Tolstoy, “nowhere [in the Gospels] is anything said of the foundation of what churchmen call the Church.”[188] The word “church” is only mentioned twice in the Gospels, once meaning “an assembly of men to settle a dispute,” the other “in connexion with the obscure utterance about the rock, Peter, and the gates of hell.”[189] Nowhere does Jesus announce the coming of what became the church.

Yet from these two mentions by Jesus, the church has derived its authority and its “monopoly of Christian preaching.”[190] Besides, according to Tolstoy, “A slight addition to the Gospels was invented, telling how Christ, when about to go up into the sky, handed over to certain men the exclusive right - not merely to teach others divine truth [...] - but also to decide which people should be saved or the reverse, and, above all, to confer this power on others.”[191] Thus the “great priest” of the church, Chelčický writes, “has arrogated to himself divine power, no, the power of the Savior himself, the power to forgive sins, which is God’s prerogative” - a prerogative which, he notes, also happens to be very “lucrative.”[192] On the basis of this authority, the church tells believers what is right and wrong, defines “heresies” and persecutes its proponents. To Christian anarchists, the parallel with the scribes and Pharisees condemned by Jesus is striking.

Hence for Tolstoy, “the whole fraud” in Christianity “is built up on the fantastic conception of a ‘Church.’”[193] In “The Restoration of Hell,” Tolstoy describes the creation of the church in a conversation Beelzebub has with his subordinate devils. Beelzebub had “understood that all was lost” when Jesus had just died, since his teaching had been “so clear, so easy to follow, and so evidently saved men from evil.”[194] A devil then explains that although things were rosy among followers of Jesus for a while, they gradually began disagreeing on things like circumcision. At that point, explains the devil, “I invented ‘The Church.’ And when once they believed in ‘The Church’ I was at peace. I understood that we were saved, and that Hell was restored.”[195] Beelzebub then asks the devil to explain what this welcome “Church” is, and the devil spells out Tolstoy’s definition:

Well, when people tell lies and feel that they won’t be believed, they always call God to witness, and say: “By God, what I say is true!” That, in substance, is “the Church,” but with this peculiarity, that those who recognize themselves as being “the Church” become convinced that they cannot err, and so whatever nonsense they may utter they can never recant it. The Church is constituted in this way: Men assure themselves and others that their teacher, God, to ensure that the law he revealed to men should not be misinterpreted, has given power to certain men, who, with those to whom they transfer this power, can alone correctly interpret his teaching. So these men, who call themselves “the Church,” regard themselves as holding the truth not because what they preach is true but because they consider themselves the only true successors of the disciples of the disciples of the disciples, and finally of the disciples of the teacher - God - himself.[196]

For Tolstoy, this arrogant self-righteousness about possessing the truth is what has allowed hell to be restored, and this fraud must be exposed.[197] Tolstoy even wrote an open appeal directly to the clergy, calling it to “forego for a while your assurance that you [...] are the true disciples of the God Christ” - predictably, to no avail.[198]

Other Christian anarchists are also suspicious of the self-righteousness of the church and its members. Andrews repeats the words of a friend of his, who says that “Religious people love to play a game called ‘church.’ We all dress up, and go through our paces in the service together, and whoever looks the most religious wins.”[199] Hennacy likewise accuses each church of “[praying] more and [doing] less than the other.”[200] The church, for them, is hypnotised by its self-importance, and thus forgets about Jesus’ subversive teaching.

3.4.2 - Obscure rituals and beliefs

Indeed, Christian anarchists criticise the church for concealing Jesus’ political teaching by prioritising obscure and hypnotic external rituals. Tolstoy maintains that Jesus himself denounces such “external forms of religion” and “ceremonial performances” as “harmful” and “injurious” delusion.[201] Tolstoy goes even further: for him, the sacraments amount to “coarse, degrading sorcery,” and belief in the Eucharist, to “blasphemy.”[202] Christian anarchists like Tolstoy (hence with the exception of at least the Catholic Workers)[203] therefore see church liturgy as an instrument of deception.

Tolstoy accuses the church of inventing not just obscure rituals but also obscure dogmas and beliefs, again to further distract its flock from Jesus’ radical teaching. One example Tolstoy highlights is the church’s claim that the Bible is infallible and sacred, and its consequent regard for the Old and New Testaments as “equally divinely inspired.”[204] According to Tolstoy, this belief forces the church to seek to justify every bizarre assertion in the Bible, again to the neglect of Jesus’ revolutionary teaching. It also “makes the importance of the New Testament consist not in its moral teaching, not in the Sermon on the Mount, but in the conformity of the Gospels with the stories of the Old Testament.”[205] Tolstoy believes that this endeavour “harms” the “mind,” is morally perverting, and deludes people into thinking that just by “professing this teaching, [...] they are living a really Christian life.”[206] Even the four Gospels, for Tolstoy, are not “infallible expressions of divine truth,” but the attempt of “innumerable minds and hands” to summarise the teaching of a man who wrote nothing himself - hence they are full of “errors” and inaccuracies.[207] Thus, to claim that the Christian scriptures are infallible is for Tolstoy just another trick to distract from the subversive implications of Jesus’ teaching.

Related to this, of course, is the church’s affirmation that Jesus does not reject Moses’ law, the Christian anarchist position on which is discussed in Chapter 1. For Tolstoy, this claim is clearly contradictory,[208] and results in a deliberately “cloudy interpretation” of the Sermon on the Mount.[209]

According to Christian anarchists, the church has also intentionally obscured Jesus’ condemnation of the rich and preference for voluntary poverty (which is discussed in Chapter 5). Myers, for instance, rejects the standard interpretation of the “eye of a needle” saying,[210] and Pentecost refuses to interpret “ye have the poor always with you” as implying that striving to alleviate poverty is to act against God’s intentions.[211] These interpretations, for Christian anarchists, deliberately blur Jesus’ clear denunciation of the accumulation of riches.

Yet another theme from the Gospels which is intentionally clouded by “standard interpretations,” for Myers, is the narrative of Jesus’ last days, traditionally celebrated during “Holy Week.”[212] He remarks that

Conditioned by centuries of liturgical and theological reproductions, we think of the “Upper Room” as a lofty eucharistic moment, rather than the conflict-ridden final hours of a fugitive community in hiding, whose solidarity is crumbling in the face of state power. We envision Gethsemane as Jesus’ obedient submission to the preordained plan of salvation history, rather than the deep internal struggle of a leader coming to terms with the consequences of his subversive practice.[213]

Again, the established understanding and liturgy linked to these Biblical passages obfuscates an alternative, more politically subversive reading of them.

Aside from these suspicious interpretations of scripture, Christian anarchists also denounce specific church dogmas as superstitious and absurd. One example which Tolstoy singles out is the Nicene Creed. He maintains that it is “impossible to believe” in both “salvation through faith in the redemption or the sacraments,” as posited by the Nicene Creed, and in “applying Christ’s moral teaching in [one’s] life.”[214] For him, this Creed is nonsensical - if it were true, then it would suffice “to communicate it with reasonable persuasion plainly and simply.”[215] Instead, the church preaches it through violence and hypnotism, claims Tolstoy, especially directed to children and the uneducated - all this to conceal the radical nature of Jesus’ teaching.

Thus several Christian anarchists reject the standard doctrine that Jesus died to atone for our sins. Tolstoy also mocks the doctrine of the Trinity. He argues that if these and other dogmas were crucial tenets of his teaching, then Jesus would have surely made a point of saying so.[216] Tolstoy therefore denounces the whole of dogmatic theology as a fraud, “not only false but [...] an immoral deception.”[217] Initially, he says, he “wilfully closed [his] eyes” to these dogmas as he tried to embrace church Christianity, but he gradually found himself obliged to “throw aside, one after the other, the propositions of the Church,” since they were getting in the way of Jesus’ teaching.[218]

Tolstoy thereafter spent much time and effort deriding these dogmas in order to expose their irrationality. “I am hopelessly evil,” he writes,

and I must know it. My salvation is not to be found by guiding my life by the gift of reason, and, having recognized good and evil, by making choice of the good. No, Adam once for all has committed evil for me, and Christ once for all has redeemed Adam’s sin, and therefore I, as a mere spectator, have but to lament over the fall of Adam and to rejoice over the redemption by Christ.[219]

Moreover, this life “is an evil, fallen, and degenerate life - a parody of the life which we imagine God meant to give us,” and “the chief aim of life is not to try to live this mortal life” according to the Sermon on the Mount, but “to convince ourselves that after this life will begin the real life.”[220] As to “reason,” not only is it “of no importance,” but it is “a temptation and an impertinence.”[221] It is obvious from excerpts like these that Tolstoy does not hesitate to use irony to ridicule church dogmas.

Tolstoy therefore sees dogmatic theology as containing the “most incomprehensible, blasphemous and shocking propositions, not merely incompatible with reason, but quite incomprehensible and contrary to morality.”[222] He also finds it incredible that “In this demand for belief in the impossible and unreasonable, we go so far that the very unreasonableness of what we ask to be believed is taken as a sign of its truth.”[223] For Tolstoy, “To assert that the supernatural and irrational form the essential characteristic of religion is like observing only rotten apples, and then asserting that a flabby bitterness and a harmful effect to the stomach are the prime characteristics of the fruit called Apple.”[224] Dogmatic theology, for Tolstoy, is not the prime characteristic of Christianity, and to see it as such is to surrender to the church’s obfuscation of Jesus’ subversive teaching. Moreover, even though, nowadays, only few people still genuinely believe in these dogmas, the tragedy remains that the church’s version of Christianity is accepted as the authoritative one. “Christianity” is understood to be this official and dogmatic Christianity preached by the church.

Yet this perspective on Christianity, according to Andrews, “is essentially static,” “admits no questions,” and “demands complete conformity.”[225] It therefore “rips the heart out of Christianity, replacing the warm, kind-hearted compassion of Christ with cold, hard-headed propositions about Christ, and relating to people, often violently, in terms of an ideology of Christianity, rather than the non-violent love of Christ.”[226] As a result, “we tend to treat Christ as our idol, someone we’d like to be like, but know we never will be like; rather than our model, someone we’d like to be like, and do our best to be sure we are like.”[227] Yet “Christ doesn’t merely tell us the way, he is the way.”[228] Hence Andrews encourages us to “become less concerned about being ‘Christian’ and a lot more concerned about being ‘Christlike.’”[229] Christian anarchists therefore wish Christians were less preoccupied with performing rituals and preaching dogmatic theology, and more with embodying Jesus’ teaching and example.

The difficulty, of course, is that the church has “hidden” the “clearness, simplicity, and reasonableness [...] of the teaching of Jesus [...] under the veil of cunning,” says Tolstoy, “under a pretended teaching which is falsely attributed to him.”[230] The church has consciously mixed truth with falsehood, and cemented the mix with a plethora of rules about external worship. It has thus succeeded in keeping the radical truth mostly hidden - to such an extent that to quote Chelčický, people “hold Christian faith to be a heresy, while heresies they often parade around as faith.”[231] Christians are convinced they have understood Jesus’ teaching, and believe that this teaching “can be accepted without changing our life.”[232] They are so hypnotised that they “deceive one another and cannot get out of that enchanted circle,” says Tolstoy.[233] If one exposes the contradictions, it causes unease and confusion, because people generally assume that they can trust the learned authorities’ pronouncements on Jesus’ teaching.

For that matter, Tolstoy believes that many theologians are fully aware of the revolutionary potential of Jesus’ teaching - but while they sometimes debate it amongst themselves, they keep it hidden from the masses. If one reminds them of Jesus’ teaching, they become angry and publicly contradict it. Tolstoy cannot avoid the conclusion that church theologians are hypocrites preaching hypocrisy. He reminds them that Jesus roundly condemns such hypocrisy, and warns that false interpretations of his teaching will not be forgiven. As to the laity, Tolstoy calls it to use reason - the one gift which he believes God to have granted to all human beings - to deconstruct traditional interpretations, separate truth from falsehood, and uncover the truly radical potential of Jesus’ teaching and example.[234]

Jesus founded neither church nor state - indeed he subverted both - yet church and state elites have managed to hide his teaching behind obscure beliefs and rituals, and use their professed authority to bless the violent state with apparent religious endorsement. These dogmas and ceremonies hypnotise and stupefy the masses into submission - particularly soldiers, the state’s guardians and cannon-fodder. Thus institutionalised Christianity, with its textual reinterpretations, theological doctrines and liturgical performances, is itself the heart of the deception which has kept a lid on the revolutionary potential of Jesus’ anarchist message.

3.4.3 - Institutional religion

Christian anarchists maintain that Jesus did not intend to be the founder of an institutionalised religion. One of Jesus’ intentions, for them, was indeed to bypass such human intermediaries and do away with priests. In line with this, the early church was more of a popular movement than an institution - Elliott and Andrews call it the “Jesus Movement.”[235] Tolstoy argues that this early church “existed in her purity as long as her teachers endured patiently and suffered,” but that this ended “as soon as they became fat and sleek.”[236] For Christian anarchists, today’s institutionalised “church” bears little resemblance to its oldest ancestor, and must be clearly dissociated from the church or assembly which Jesus initially intended.

Given this assessment on the corruption of the church, several Christian anarchists (with significant exceptions)[237] are very critical of institutionalised or organised religion. Hennacy writes that “All religions are a mockery of God no matter if they were once started by inspired prophets.”[238] He frequently and pointedly describes himself as a “nonchurch Christian.”[239] He insists that when an organisation becomes more important than its alleged ideal, it becomes institutionalised and thus corrupt. In turn, institutionalised religion typically seeks support and protection from the state. Over time, the corrupt and powerful organisation becomes tyrannical and dictatorial. For Tolstoy, as Jesus says, a tree must be judged by its fruits, and since organised religion and its priesthood produces evil fruits, it must be rejected.

Christian anarchists therefore sometimes use strong language against the church and its clergy. The priests, for Tolstoy, “are not only not the pillars of Christianity they profess to be, but are its greatest enemies.”[240] The church is a “church of Satan,” says one contributor to A Pinch of Salt.[241] Chelčický calls the pope the Antichrist, and a contemporary Church Council “an assembly of harlots, assassins of righteous men, and transgressors of all commandments of God.”[242] Hennacy, however, concedes that he does not think that churchmen “are knowingly wicked people,” but simply that “they are in a bad business.”[243]

Not all Christian anarchists use strong language to describe the church and clergy (again, Catholic Workers like Day spring to mind as exceptions), but the majority are very critical of the institutional church and its historical achievements. Either way, implicitly or explicitly, all Christian anarchists call for a frank re-examination of Jesus’ teaching and life. All see revolutionary potential in it. All see criticism of the state implicit in it. All see an anarchist society envisioned in it. Few believe the institutional church to be founded in it, and most are very critical of what the church made of it. For them, for true Christianity to be embraced by humanity, Jesus’ teaching and example must be examined anew.

3.5 - Awakening to true Christianity

For many Christian anarchists, therefore, Christianity has never been properly tried yet on a significant enough scale. Catholic Workers often repeat a quote from Chesterton: “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”[244] Maurin comments that it “has not been tried because people thought it was impractical. And men have tried everything except Christianity.”[245] Hence he says of “Catholic scholars” that they “have failed to blow the dynamite of the Church.”[246] For Christian anarchists, “The Christian truth about society has not yet been revealed,” and Jesus’ radical teaching is still waiting to be discovered.[247]

In the meantime, and because Jesus’ revolutionary teaching has not been articulated by the church, people have turned their attention to secular, socialist ideals. The poor rightly feel “betrayed by Christianity,” remarks Day, and they have therefore sought emancipation in alternative ideals.[248] Tolstoy, however, is very critical of these. For him, not only are progressive secular ideals based on a mistaken understanding of human nature, but they will not truly alleviate the plight of the poor. He believes that nineteenth century socialists and similar proponents of secular ethics are mostly hypocrites giving false hopes to the oppressed (partly because their answers to the big questions of life do not go honestly and deep enough to the full truth about life, reason and violence in the way in which Tolstoy felt his own deliberations did) while continuing to benefit from their privileged position. Either that or they are deluded, for reasons discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. Either way, their secular programme will not address the root of social injustice, because the state is left intact. For Tolstoy, Jesus said that “Men’s lives, with their different creeds and governments, must all be changed. All human authorities must disappear.”[249] The only revolution that can save humanity, therefore, is the Christian anarchist revolution.

Hence Tolstoy repeatedly calls humanity to bethink and awaken itself out of its hypnotic state, its orthodox trap, and fully embrace Jesus’ teaching.[250] He is quite hopeful in that he believes in a natural evolution of humanity from darkness into light, and he believes that the desired awakening can happen at any moment. What is needed is for enough people to see through and shake off orthodox deceptions, to see the truth of Jesus’ revolutionary teaching.[251] Just as it took a long time for “Christians” to awaken to the injustice of the slave trade, but they eventually did, one day, they will awaken to the violence and injustice of the state. When enough people will have freed themselves from the deceptions of the state and church, a final push by public opinion will usher the age of true Christianity, of Christian anarchy.[252] People will recognise that the state is violent, cunning and exploitative, that the church’s dogmas are deceptive, and its interpretation of Jesus’ teaching dishonest. At that point, the loving society envisioned by Jesus might finally come about.

In the meantime, however, Christian anarchists have to live in a world in which the state is strong. Hence they need to decide how to respond to this state, as well as on how to embody Jesus’ teaching and example in this context. The first is the theme of Chapter 4, the second, of Chapter 5.

1 Bartley, Faith and Politics after Christendom, 18, 25.

2 Adolf Harnack, quoted in Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State, 24.

3 Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State, 26.

4 Bartley, Faith and Politics after Christendom, 30; Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State, 26-27.

5 Elliott, Freedom, Justice and Christian Counter-Culture, 86.

6 Berdyaev, The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, 21.

7 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 26; Berdyaev, The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, 21.

8 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 26.

9 Molnár explains that in Chelčický’s times, the “papal theocracy based its whole legal justification on” this alleged Donation, the authenticity of which Chelčický does not seem to doubt, but the validity of which he criticises “on ethical and Biblical grounds.” Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 27, 29.

10 Alexis-Baker, “Embracing God, Rejecting Masters,” 2.

11 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 62.

12 Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State, 27-28 (Penner’s emphasis).

13 Bartley, Faith and Politics after Christendom, 33.

14 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 70.

15 Tolstoy, “Church and State,” 339.

16 Eller, Christian Anarchy, 23.

17 Tolstoy, “Church and State,” 337-343 (the actual expression is quoted from page 342).

18 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 26.

19 O’Reilly, “The Anarchist Implications of Christian Discipleship,” 10.

20 Bartley, Faith and Politics after Christendom, 34.

21 Berdyaev, The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, 74.

22 Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State, 28.

23 Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State, 27.

24 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 57 (quoting Chelčický).

25 Elliott, Freedom, Justice and Christian Counter-Culture, 173.

26 O’Reilly, “The Anarchist Implications of Christian Discipleship,” 10.

27 Brock, The Political and Social Doctrines, 45; Wagner, Petr Chelčický, 96.

28 That expression is reported by Sampson, but without full reference details, in Sampson, Tolstoy, 171.

29 The story can be found in Luke 5:4-11. Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 25, 33, 49-57 (for the actual interpretation of the passage; Wagner, Petr Chelčický, 132-137.

30 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 25.

31 Wagner, Petr Chelčický, 132.

32 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 68, 73 (quoting Chelčický).

33 Chelčický, quoted in Wagner, Petr Chelčický, 137.

34 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 67 (quoting Chelčický).

35 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 73-90 (84 for Chelčický’s quoted words).

36 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 86 (quoting Chelčický).

37 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 35.

38 Tolstoy, “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence,” 190.

39 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 27.

40 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 29.

41 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 32-35.

42 Penner, The New Testament, the Christian, and the State, 29.

43 One example often denounced by Maurin is Calvin’s legalisation of money-lending at interest, against the teachings of the prophets and the Church Fathers. Maurin, Easy Essays (2003), 78-83 (see also 199).

44 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 39-46.

45 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 10.

46 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 25.

47 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 46-47.

48 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 61 (emphasis removed).

49 Alexandre J. M. E. Christoyannopoulos, “Leo Tolstoy on the State: A Detailed Picture of Tolstoy’s Denunciation of State Violence and Deception,” Anarchist Studies 16/1 (2008).

50 Kinna, Anarchism, 45-46.

51 Kinna, Anarchism, 46.

52 Kinna, Anarchism, 46.

53 Kinna, Anarchism, 49-52.

54 Kinna reviews three aspects of authority which anarchists reject: authority as commanding, as controlling and as corrupting. Christian anarchists say very little about the first two. Kinna, Anarchism, 53-58. Later in her chapter (pages 69-72) Kinna argues that anarchists do not reject all forms of authority, and she explains this by discussing the distinctions between being in authority and being an authority, and between natural and artificial authority. Like other anarchists, Christian anarchists are adamant that no human being should have artificial powers of coercion, but of course, they do take the word of God as authoritative even though some of them (Tolstoy, for instance) only do so because they think it is purely rational. Hence while Christian anarchists very much share other anarchists’ concerns about human authority, some do ascribe some form of divine authority to Jesus’ teaching which other anarchists would frown upon.

55 Kinna, Anarchism, 58-62.

56 Cavanaugh, “A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House.”; William T. Cavanaugh, “Killing for the Telephone Company: Why the Nation-State Is Not the Keeper of the Common Good,” Modern Theology 20/2 (2004); Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” in Bringing the State Back In, ed. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

57 Cavanaugh, “A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House,” 398.

58 Cavanaugh, “A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House,” 398 (408 for the middle quote).

59 For Cavanaugh’s view of this process, see Cavanaugh, “A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House.”; Cavanaugh, “Killing for the Telephone Company.”; Cavanaugh, Torture and Eucharist, 5, 9, 191-197, 216-221.

60 For how this process has already begun during the Middle Ages, see Cavanaugh, “Killing for the Telephone Company,” 246-250; Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime.”

61 Lyof N. Tolstoï, What to Do? (London: Walter Scott), 148.

62 (The words quoted form the title of section 12.) Leo Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” in Essays from Tula, trans. Free Age Press (London: Sheppard, 1948), 109.

63 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 109-110.

64 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 112 (Tolstoy’s emphasis removed).

65 Leo Tolstoy, “Modern Science,” in Recollections and Essays, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 185.

66 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 211, 312.

67 Pentecost, Murder by Law, para. 11-16.

68 Leo Tolstoy, “Patriotism and Government,” in The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays, trans. Aylmer Maude (New Delhi: Rupa, 2001), 517.

69 Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 218.

70 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 184-185. Barr moreover notes that even though people vote, this “does not necessarily affect the kinds of policies” which their representatives implement, not least because away from those rare moments of democracy, the election cycle “will likely be heavily influenced by powerful economic entities that are not accountable to the general public.” Barr, Radical Hope, 8.

71 He adds: “If among the sixty million people in the United States there are twelve million voters, six million and one can elect a President, who has been selected as one of two candidates by, perhaps, a hundred politicians; selected because with him the best bargain for a division of the tax money with them could be made.” Hugh O. Pentecost, The Sins of the Government, available from http://www.deadanarchists.org/Pentecost/sins.html (accessed 22 November 2007), para. 2.

72 Tolstoy, “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence,” 165.

73 Tolstoy, “The End of the Age,” 28.

74 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 46.

75 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 351 (the same idea is expressed pages 325-326).

76 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 46-47.

77 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 354.

78 Leo Tolstoy, “I Cannot Be Silent,” in Recollections and Essays, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 396.

79 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 346.

80 When Tolstoy was writing, military conscription was becoming universal and compulsory across the West, a development which he opposed and repeatedly denounced (more on this in Chapter 4).

81 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 183.

82 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 184.

83 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 214.

84 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 341.

85 Gregg, The Power of Nonviolence, 61.

86 Tolstoy, “Bethink Yourselves!,” 212; Leo Tolstoy, “Christianity and Patriotism,” in The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays, trans. Aylmer Maude (New Delhi: Rupa, 2001), 435-438, 448-449, 458; Leo Tolstoy, “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” in Recollections and Essays, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 196.

87 Tolstoy, “Bethink Yourselves!,” 219-222, 229.

88 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 238-239.

89 Christian anarcho-capitalists such as Redford are perfectly happy with private property, usury and so on (themes which are addressed further below in this subsection). Hence they do not follow the majority of Christian anarchists in their criticism of economy, although they do strongly criticise any state interference in the operation of the market. After all, their defining argument is that the market (and, by extension, private property) should be truly and completely free from such public interference. Redford, Jesus Is an Anarchist.

90 Lichtenberg, quoted in Tolstoy, “Bethink Yourselves!,” 253.

91 The expression is taken from Brock, The Political and Social Doctrines, 46.

92 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 124-125.

93 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 104-105.

94 Pentecost, Murder by Law, para. 22.

95 Hugh O. Pentecost, The Crime of Owning Vacant Land, available from http://www.deadanarchists.org/Pentecost/vacantland.html (accessed 22 November 2007), para. 22. Pentecost further remarks that the resulting poverty which is produced is also “the nest in which thieves and murderers are hatched.” Pentecost, Murder by Law, para. 21.

96 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 71.

97 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 100.

98 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 94-95.

99 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 95.

100 Tolstoy notes that the social customs of the aristocracy ensure that a gulf is maintained between the poor and the rich. He would no doubt remark today that the globalisation of the world economy allows to enlarge this gulf by increasing the geographical distance between rich consumers and the sweatshops in which the poor produce what they are consuming. Tolstoï, What to Do?, 58.

101 Hopton, “Tolstoy, God and Anarchism,” 39; Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 96-97.

102 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 74.

103 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 74-75.

104 Tolstoï, What to Do?, 143-146, 154-171; Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 75-77.

105 Tolstoï, What to Do?, 133.

106 Tolstoy, “The Slavery of Our Times,” 76.

107 Peter Maurin, Easy Essays (London: Sheed and Ward, 1938), 32.

108 Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13.

109 Stevenson, quoted in Maurin, Easy Essays (2003), 216.

110 ter Kuile, “Anarcho Theologie,” 16.

111 Pentecost, Murder by Law, para. 20.

112 [Anonymous], Ninety-Five Theses in Defense of Patriarchy, overview to section B (see also section E).

113 St. John Chrysostom, quoted in an epigraph in Carson, Biblical Anarchism.

114 Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World, 268.

115 Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World, 269.

116 Tennant, Government as Idolatry, para. 3 (for the quoted words).

117 Simon Birch, Religion, Politics and Liberty (Libertarian Alliance), available from http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/relin003.pdf (accessed 21 November 2007), 1.

118 Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World, 273.

119 Both Berdyaev and Ellul argue that technology has helped the state turn into a totalitarian, omnipotent god - or rather demon - which should be opposed. See for instance Berdyaev, The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, 42, 48, 50-51, 69, 72, 100, 156; Goddard, Living the Word, Resisting the World, 206-207, 220-221, 260, 262-273; Wogaman, Christian Perspectives on Politics, 55.

120 Acts 5:29 (see also Acts 4:19-20).

121 Ballou, Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments, 3.

122 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 231.

123 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 232-233.

124 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 92 (paraphrasing Chelčický - see also 32). (Romans 13:10.)

125 Tennant, Christianarchy?, para. 33; Tennant, Government as Idolatry, para. 18. Along these lines, a contributor to A Pinch of Salt writes: “There are two ways of educating children and of governing society: through fear and its counter-point hate, or through love.” Meggitt [?], “Anarchism and the New Testament,” 11.

126 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 32.

127 Tolstoy, “Church and State,” 338.

128 Tolstoy, “Church and State,” 338.

129 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 139, 146.

130 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 220.

131 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 259.

132 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 259.

133 Augustine, The Sermon on the Mount Expounded, 43.

134 The four excuses which Tolstoy lists are: that Jesus himself confirmed the use of oaths when he replied “thou hast said” to the high priest; that Paul calls God to witness several times and that this amounts to an oath; that oaths were prescribed by the Mosaic Law and not revoked by Jesus; and that the only oaths forbidden are the vain ones like those of the Pharisees. Tolstoy considers the first excuse as almost childish: Jesus’ reply, he says, plainly does not amount to an oath. Neither does Paul’s calling of God to witness - and anyway, as mentioned in the Introduction and in Chapter 4, Tolstoy does not consider Paul reliable. Also, that only vain oaths are forbidden is not an exception that Jesus allows. So the only potential point that could be valid for Tolstoy would be that Jesus does not revoke the prescription of oaths, but for Tolstoy, that is exactly what Jesus does with this commandment in the Sermon. Tolstoy, What I Believe, 82-84.

135 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 84-85.

136 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 70-71. (Matthew 5:48.)

137 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 68.

138 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 69.

139 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 69.

140 (That the clause was added to the original text is now acknowledged in most contemporary versions of the Bible, although it does figure in the King James Version.) Tolstoy, What I Believe, 72.

141 Johnston, “Love Your Enemies - Even in the Age of Terrorism?,” 93.

142 Johnston, “Love Your Enemies - Even in the Age of Terrorism?,” 95-96. On page 95, Johnston also remarks that “Limiting the scope of love of enemy is like limiting the category ‘neighbor’ - a limit which Jesus subverted.”

143 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 89.

144 On the incoherence of the interpretation of it as slander, Tolstoy comments (on pages 37-38): “Why should it be supposed that Jesus, while forbidding as an evil thing the condemnation of our neighbour by words involuntarily breaking from the lips, does not regard as evil, and does not forbid the very same condemnation, when accomplished deliberately, and accompanied by the use of force against the one condemned?” Tolstoy, What I Believe, 37-39.

145 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 39.

146 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 80.

147 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 34-46.

148 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 35, 42-46.

149 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 37.

150 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 40.

151 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 41-42.

152 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 14.

153 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 14.

154 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 43.

155 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 6, para. 11.

156 He further asserts that Jesus, the apostles, and the early church were precisely examples of such martyrdom, and that it was precisely the courage of such martyrs that helped convert “robbers” and “wild savages” to Christianity. Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 6, para. 11-13.

157 Ballou, Non-Resistance in Relation to Human Governments, 11.

158 He affirms “that the righteous would exterminate the wicked, in the best sense of the word, were they to act on strict non-resistant principles. They would immediately usher in the millennium, with all its blessings, were they to act on these principles in true and persevering fidelity. How else is it imaginable that any such state as the millennium should ever be developed among mankind?” Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 6, para. 2.

159 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 6, para. 4-5.

160 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 6, para. 8.

161 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 6, para. 7.

162 Tolstoy for instance rejects the view that the commandment not to resist is meant to be heard allegorically, and insists that this commandment, the essence of Christianity, must be understood literally, because a failure to do so abrogates Jesus’ whole teaching: Tolstoy, What I Believe, 19-23.

163 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 86.

164 There is an interesting parallel here with anarchism in general, which is also often dismissed as “a nice idea on paper, but impossible in the real world” (although of course the authority behind that idea, in the case of classical anarchism, is neither Jesus nor God but often - though not always - reason, liberty, or some similar enlightenment value). Kinna, Anarchism, 170.

165 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 2, para. 16.

166 Ballou cites several passages from the Old Testament illustrating Moses’ commandments, and concludes that “From these and other passages in the writings of Moses, it will be seen that, notwithstanding the severity of his code, he did not authorize individual hatred, revenge and wanton cruelty in punishing the wicked. To make Christ prohibit only a personal, spiteful, malicious, cruel spirit in executing the authorized punishments of the law, is to make his the mere echo of Moses and his expounders; whereas he goes absolutely against the deed - the act of inflicting evil on the persons of offending.” Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 2, para. 19 (Ballou’s emphasis).

167 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 2, para. 19.

168 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 2, para. 22 (Ballou’s emphasis).

169 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 2, para. 22 (Ballou’s emphasis).

170 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 2, para. 22.

171 Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance, chap. 2, para. 13 (Ballou’s emphasis).

172 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 107 (quoting Chelčický).

173 Tolstoy says that it arbitrarily reduces the question to “defining what constitutes danger for another person,” which involves “personal judgement.” As a result, violence can always be justified, since “there is no case of violence that cannot be justified on the ground of danger threatening somebody.” Moreover, while the violence one feels threatened by remains hypothetical, one’s own pre-emptive violence is real - that is, while the other may not have been violent and may have left the cycle of violence unaffected, one’s own violence is certain to affect it. In any case, as Tolstoy insists, “no such limitation is indicated in [Jesus’] whole life or in his teaching.” Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 39-40.

174 Leo Tolstoy, “Notes for Soldiers,” in Tolstoy’s Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence, trans. V. Tchertkoff and A. C. Fifield (New York: Bergman, 1967), 35-37.

175 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 37.

176 Elliott, Freedom, Justice and Christian Counter-Culture, 178-179. Note that while he certainly frequently condemns the violent excesses of the church over the centuries, Andrews appears to be fairly comfortable with Augustine’s criteria: he says that “Ambrose and Augustine developed a set of criteria to call those in power - who make war - to be accountable to the principles of justice;” he then briefly describes the eight specific conditions articulated by them with that purpose; and he concludes that “According to these criteria, our current wars are not ‘just wars.’ As Christians committed to peace and justice, we should robustly oppose these hostilities and actively seek reconciliation with our enemies.” It is worth noting, however, that he avoids calling these criteria “Christian” - he just says they are about “justice,” and that Christians should oppose current wars, which are unjust. Andrews, Plan Be, 57-58.

177 Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 403.

178 This sentence paraphrases a Commonweal editorial cited in Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 312. Pentecost makes the same point: “We worship men who said and did certain things long, long ago, but we persecute and slay the men who say and do substantially the same things today.” Hugh O. Pentecost, Anarchism, available from http://www.deadanarchists.org/Pentecost/anarchism.html (accessed 22 November 2007), para. 13.

179 Gandhi, quoted in Wink, Engaging the Powers, 216.

180 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 125 (quoting Chelčický).

181 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 125 (quoting Chelčický).

182 Tolstoy, “Church and State,” 340.

183 Ellul, Violence, 5.

184 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 109 (paraphrasing Chelčický).

185 Tolstoy, “Letter to Ernest Howard Crosby,” 189.

186 Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,” 233-234. (Matthew 23:1-34; Luke 20:46-47)

187 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 63, 76. (Matthew 23:8.)

188 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 63.

189 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 63. (Matthew 16:18, 18:17.)

190 Tolstoy, “Letter to Ernest Howard Crosby,” 189.

191 Tolstoy, “What Is Religion?,” 240-241.

192 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 79-80 (quoting Chelčický). He adds (page 80): “Now to go further, he not only initiates such lucrative pilgrimages to Rome from all countries, but he even sends to those countries letters containing the forgiveness of sins and sufferings; (he tells them) not to inconvenience themselves with a long journey to him, that he will forgive them everything provided they pay for it in golden ducats; that the sinner is free to specify what sins he wants to have forgiven and that, if he pays for it, he (the Pope) will grant him in a letter a freedom to sin for as many years as are paid for, even until a man’s death if so desired.” Chelčický thus complained about the selling of indulgences several decades before Luther (Chelčický wrote this around 1440-1443, and Luther published his ninety-five theses in 1517).

193 Tolstoy, “Church and State,” 333.

194 Leo Tolstoy, “The Restoration of Hell,” in On Life and Essays on Religion, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 309.

195 Tolstoy, “The Restoration of Hell,” 313.

196 Tolstoy, “The Restoration of Hell,” 313-314.

197 For Tolstoy, it is also the chief cause of division among Christians, since different churches each believe they hold the truth and seeks to preserve their own tradition. Leo Tolstoy, “A Confession,” in A Confession and Other Religious Writings, trans. Jane Kentish (London: Penguin, 1987), 73-76; Tolstoy, “Introduction to an Examination of the Gospels,” 96-99.

198 Leo Tolstoy, “An Appeal to the Clergy,” in On Life and Essays on Religion, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 282.

199 He continues: “The prize for the winner is approval. No one gives a damn about really being involved in one another’s lives.” Andrews, Not Religion, but Love, 116.

200 Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 108.

201 Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,” 265-267.

202 Tolstoy, “A Reply to the Synod’s Edict of Excommunication,” 219, 220 (respectively).

203 Many Catholic Workers, Dorothy Day in particular, regularly attend mass and have faith in the mysterious power of the sacraments.

204 Tolstoy, “Introduction to an Examination of the Gospels,” 103.

205 The full sentence reads as follows: “Besides the history of the Old Testament you also impart the New Testament to children and to ignorant people in a way that makes the importance of the New Testament consist not in its moral teaching, not in the Sermon on the Mount, but in the conformity of the Gospels with the stories of the Old Testament, in the fulfilment of prophecies, and in miracles, the movement of a star, songs from the sky, talks with the devil, the turning of water into wine, walking on the water, healings, calling people back to life, and finally the resurrection of Jesus himself and his flying up to the sky.” Tolstoy, “An Appeal to the Clergy,” 287.

206 Tolstoy, “An Appeal to the Clergy,” 288-297. (The first two words are from page 288, and the longer sentence from page 294.)

207 Leo Tolstoy, “How to Read the Gospels and What Is Essential in Them,” in On Life and Essays on Religion, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 207 (in the footnote). See also Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,” 121-122. Indeed, if Tolstoy wrote this harmonised version of the Gospel, it was precisely to iron out the inconsistencies between the four competing accounts, and to weed out their irrational sections. On page 128 of his Gospel, Tolstoy also remarks that since the church claims that its position has been inspired by the Holy Ghost, it should call its faith “Holy Ghostism after the name of the last revealer.”

208 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 64.

209 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 61.

210 Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 274-275.

211 Hugh O. Pentecost, First Anniversary Address, available from http://www.deadanarchists.org/Pentecost/anniversary.html (accessed 22 November 2007), para. 14. (Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8.)

212 Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 354.

213 Myers, Binding the Strong Man, 354.

214 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 84.

215 Tolstoy, “An Appeal to the Clergy,” 284.

216 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 137. On this topic, while describing Tolstoy’s views, Maude writes: “It must strike any one who reads the Gospels with an open mind and compares them with the Church Creeds, that if Jesus knew that God would go on punishing mankind for Adam’s sin until atonement was made, and if Jesus approved of this and made it the chief aim of his life and death to appease such a God, and if, moreover, he knew that men’s eternal salvation depends on these things and on their believing rightly about them, it is singularly unfortunate that he forgot to mention the matter and left us to pick it up from obscure remarks made years later by St. Paul, whom he never met, and whose mind, character, and work, differed considerably from his own.” Maude, The Life of Tolstóy, 32.

217 Tolstoy, “Introduction to an Examination of the Gospels,” 96.

218 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 181.

219 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 103-106.

220 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 137.

221 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 106.

222 Tolstoy, “Introduction to an Examination of the Gospels,” 96.

223 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 152.

224 Tolstoy, “What Is Religion?,” 272.

225 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 76-77.

226 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 77.

227 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 114 (Andrews’ emphasis).

228 Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 115 (Andrews’ emphasis).

229 Dave Andrews, The Urgent Need for a Global Ethic, available from http://www.daveandrews.com.au/publications.html (accessed 3 December 2006), 7. See also Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 83-84. Elsewhere, Andrews comments that “One of the problems people have with Christians is that we are not only un-Christ-like, but we also use our Christian theology to rationalize our continuing to be un-Christ-like. [...] This sticks in the throats of many non-Christians who hoped Christians might be better.” Moreover, “Gandhi [...] was not afraid to confront Christians with our misuse of the theology of the cross in rationalizing our continued un-Christ-likeness.” Andrews, The Crux of the Struggle, 37.

230 Tolstoy, What I Believe, 50.

231 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, 55 (quoting Chelčický). Andrews quotes Ellul, who says that “Christianity is the very opposite of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ,” in Andrews, Christi-Anarchy, 69. As to Hennacy, he finds it astonishing “To have to argue with Christians that God would take care of those who seek first the Kingdom; to have to try to prove to a priest that Jesus really meant the Sermon on the Mount; to have to tell so-called metaphysical leaders that their Mammon worship was not important and that ‘all things work together for good to those that love God.’” Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 118.

232 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 120.

233 Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 86.

234 Tolstoy understands true “faith” to be precisely about using reason to clarify the truth, and he interprets the famous saying about Peter as the rock of the church to be precisely about that. Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,” 212, 219; Leo Tolstoy, “The Teaching of Jesus,” in On Life and Essays on Religion, trans. Aylmer Maude (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 388; Tolstoy, What I Believe, 149-152.

235 Andrews, Plan Be, 56; Elliott, Freedom, Justice and Christian Counter-Culture, 174.

236 Tolstoï, What to Do?, 203-204.

237 As already noted in the Introduction, Catholic Workers (Day in particular) are generally respectful of the Catholic Church. Maurin was also not necessarily critical of the Pope, as evidenced in Maurin, Easy Essays (2003), 89.

238 Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 472.

239 For instance: Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 204, 472.

240 Leo Tolstoy, “Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer,” in Tolstoy’s Writings on Civil Disobedience and Non-Violence, trans. Aylmer Maude (New York: Bergman, 1967), 121.

241 Kenny Hone [?], “The Church of Satan,” A Pinch of Salt, issue 14, March 1990, 8.

242 Molnár, A Study of Peter Chelčický’s Life, vii, 34, 71 (for the Chelčický quote), 74; Wagner, Petr Chelčický, 96 (for the Antichrist comment), 140-143.

243 Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 468.

244 Maurin, Easy Essays (2003), 87.

245 Maurin, Easy Essays (2003), 87.

246 Maurin, Easy Essays (2003), 3. Hennacy says something similar but using a different analogy: “God is a powerline, and a person can pray and do anything he wishes, but unless he connects with this powerline he is not connected up. It is all talk. If the average person tries to ‘connect up’ without using a transformer he is likely to get shocked or killed [...]. Churches should be these transformers to do the ‘connecting,’ but they weaken the current until it hardly means a thing.” Hennacy, The Book of Ammon, 172.

247 Berdyaev, The Realm of the Spirit and the Realm of Caesar, 61.

248 Day, Selected Writings, 41.

249 Tolstoy, “The Gospel in Brief,” 293.

250 The expressions of “bethinking” and “awakening,” here paraphrased, are Tolstoy’s. Tolstoy, “An Appeal to the Clergy,” 307-308; Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 202, 358-368, 398-407, 420-421; Tolstoy, “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence,” 217-219.

251 The notions of “shaking off” the “deception” and “hypnosis,” here paraphrased, are Tolstoy’s. Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 202, 384-385, 393, 420-421. Tolstoy, “Letter to a Non-Commissioned Officer,” 124-126.

252 The expressions of a “push” and “public opinion,” here paraphrased, are Tolstoy’s. Tolstoy, “The Kingdom of God Is within You,” 359-368; Tolstoy, “The Law of Love and the Law of Violence,” 199-203.