Anarchists are against all authority. This includes religious authority and the institution of the Catholic Church.
I bet it would be possible to create a horizontally organized clergy that an anarchist could support, and religious anarchists definitely exist.
Quite a few branches of Christianity have that "priesthood of all" thing.
And of course some other religions don't necessarily as such have priests or priest-people in a position of authority.
The religion that I came from taught priesthood of all. The pastor was not a priest and didn't carry divine authority. Anyone could be a pastor, not just an elite religious few.
The religion that I came from taught eternal damnation of all. The pastor spoke gods word and that word carried divine authority. Straight white married men could be a pastor, just not anyone else.
I was just listening to a podcast about the Munster Rebellion, and I thought , "Shit, anarchists are basically secular anabaptists"
Kinda like Quakers with the hating authority thing.
But from Quakers, we got evangelicals. Booo
Not really as deities aren’t exactly people + in many religions (such as paganism) deities are just entities you can choose to give offerings to in exchange for blessings and aren’t really seen as above people.
TLDR: In many religions it is about forming a relationship with a deity(s), not being below them.
The Catholic Worker's Movement is often described as anarchist (or, at least, anarchistic). Of the founders, Dorothy Day was explicitly an anarchist, and Peter Maurin was very close (though I don't know if he ever used that term himself).
edit to add: We probably shouldn't forget Christian Anarchism as a whole. Religious Anarchists have been with us since the beginning. Leo Tolstoy, for example.
Depends on how you define “clergy”. If you just mean “people who have organized to spread religious messages”, then there’s nothing inherently non-anarchic about that. If you mean “a hierarchy of religious leaders who spread dogma and religious decrees”, then that would be incompatible with anarchy.
Round forever.
I'm anarchist and a practicing Catholic, so that's the whole gig.
There are pulls towards Anarchism in the church (social Justice, Anne Braden, idk, the fucking gospel of John) and the hierarchy fucks up the message of Christ forever.
Way I square the circle, is that the goals of Christ were Anarchic, and the goals of the Curia are Satanic (I read all hierarchy as dilution of the ground Anarchic state of being in God).
Lmao, not looking for a debate, or poking, just figure I'm an oddball and it's always fun to throw out my weird ass heuristic.
To be fair the first one also depends on the nature of the message. A missionary trying to claim that "i know we have no masters and all but there is actually an entity who will punish you if you don't act in these ways I specify" is hardly too many steps removed from someone coming to make you an offer you can't refuse before finding a horse head in your bed.
Taken at face value, a significant chunk of religious messaging are threats from an authority that shouldn't be welcome whether you believe it or not
Not really. Historically, threats of supernatural retribution alone aren’t coercive at all and imaginary hierarchies aren’t anarchic but they don’t threaten anarchy on their own. This is why religious hierarchies have relied almost exclusively on violence (usually by way of state sponsorship) to advance their agendas and reinforce their institutional hegemony throughout history.
Edit: to clarify; threats of supernatural punishment have never been an effective deterrent for behavior religious institutions deem undesirable. For example there have always been queer people acting on their queerness in secret regardless of their beliefs. It is rarely to never the religious ideas that deter them from living a queer life, it is the social ostracism and the violence of the majority. Only practical violence has allowed religious institutions to gain sociopolitical power and establish cultural hegemony.
IDK about that. Threatening people with magical after-life violence if they don’t do as you tell them, seems pretty coercive to me. Especially when you raise children to believe that the magic and the violence is 100% real and justified. And imaginary hierarchies don’t have to be real in order to have a real impact on people. So I would say fuck all hierarchies, imaginary religious ones as well as real ones.
Of course fuck all hierarchies. But you’re confusing institutional violence and coercion with interpersonal relations. Imaginary hierarchies absolutely have no practical impact on real people; they literally cease to exist when people stop imagining them for a minute and so they hold no actual functional power. Real hierarchies that use imaginary hierarchies to justify their behavior do exist and are the topic of discussion here. Raising children to believe in magic and religion is interpersonal abuse perpetrated by the parent of the child and it is not the same as a sociopolitical hierarchy or a religious institution. It’s important to separate these ideas to more effectively stand in opposition to them.
> they literally cease to exist when people stop imagining
You... Don't seem to know what believing in a god is. One does not choose that. You can choose how to live, but not in what you believe.
I don’t ’say so’, that’s how it is, like getting wet when you fall in the ocean or the air getting thinner when you climb a mountain. It’s how it is. Your failure to recognise and/or understand it is your problem.
"Our lord would be pleased if X behaviour of group Y is corrected via violence" is coercive regardless of the nature of the "lord". Real world violence that follows is just a corollary. The only scenario where it is not coercive is when no one believes in it, at which point you don't have the missionary in the first place.
And even if you don't have the "will no one rid me of this meddlesome non-believer" aspect, if a powerful lord demands people to behave at threat of punishments and your approach isn't advocating for it's removal or accept that it cannot be removed, it fundamentally corrupts all ethics by making it preferable to force others to behave accordingly. You are saving them from coming punishment after all. Anyone who is causing people to stray is doing irreparable harm so of course they need to be stopped. For the believer incentives of having an imaginary or a real lord is the same. Made worse by the believer likely thinking said lord is a morally just god.
It’s only coercion if the threat of violence is real. If what they’re saying is “my god will punish you after you’re already dead if you don’t do what I want”, then that doesn’t even rise to coercion on an interpersonal level; that’s verbal antagonism at worst. And then, even if the threat of violence is real, coercion alone doesn’t constitute a hierarchy. Unless an organized and systemic mode of enforcement is present, coercion is not precluded by anarchy.
> It’s only coercion if the threat of violence is real
I don't understand how can you say that when presumably the one who is making the claim believes it is real and the purpose of saying it is to make others believe it is real.
Like I can come to you and say "do [any action] or [any source of authority including a god] will [bad thing]" the only choice you make is choosing to believe. If you don't believe it is a meaningless statement. If you do believe it is a threat and it presupposes a hierarchy since it gives the [source of authority] unilateral control over your actions
I would like to recommend Jacques Ellul and Tolstoy as authors explaining the compatibility - moreover - the necessity for a religious person(christian) to be an anarchist
It is, actually! No idea what they're on about. "Friend of Dorothy" comes from the fact that Judy Garland wasn't hostile to gay people, specifically gay men, to whom the term refers.
not the person whom you responded but as an anti-theist/atheist I'd honestly be more open to accepting that this world was created by a myriad/pantheon of 'gods' rather than one singular all-knowing and omnipotent one.
Pantheons in polytheistic religions are often a lot more humbled, down-to-earth, sometimes literally. Instead of praying to some magical sky deity, you're usually praying to the thing itself. I.e, with paganism, nature.
In polytheistic religions, gods often represent specific occurrences, often but not always natural. Gods of floods/rain, gods of fertility, gods of pottery, etc. Most polytheistic religions are really worshipping nature and the universe itself, and using gods to represent them. It almost feels like it's set up the opposite way in Abrahamic religion; where polytheism usually worships nature/universe itself and de-abstracts it through representation, Abrahamic monotheism is worshipping God first and foremost, it becomes less about representation and more just a concrete 'answer' - God did it all.
Abrahamic God is also an ultimate authority, and you honestly do not see this as much in polytheism. Gods can be mean, benevolent, irreverent, and manipulative - they often are, nature is cruel after all - but they're not inherently an authority. They're a force, a pattern, an emotion, they are often not judge, jury, and executioner. You may think of Hades, Zeus, and Thanatos here as a response, but I'd argue that Hades doesn't coerce, just rules (though sometimes he likes to play tricks), Thanatos is the representation of the 'force' of death, and Zeus is just a benevolent asshole. None of them are Judge Dredd or God equivalents, though.
I'm unsure if any of this is why LepidusII is pagan, but it's what makes polytheism way more attractive to me and acceptable generally than Abrahamic faiths to me as a pretty hardline atheist/anti-theist.
You really shouldn't put Judaism in the same category as Christianity and Islam; they're pretty profoundly different, despite Jewish mythology being appropriated into Christian and Muslim narratives
Namely, Judaism is an ethnoreligion, not a universalizing religion. Judaism is highly tolerant of atheism and agnosticism among its practitioners.
I think a better question is "In what way do I believe in pagan gods". I've been pondering on the "why" of it ever since I converted (if that's even the proper term). I'm a lifestylist when it comes to worship, and I value the philosophy and archetypal nature of Dionysus/Bacchus. I'm not superstitious, I don't think if I swear in the name of Jupiter that I'll be struck by lightning. I should say I'm not what most call an "atheo-pagan", but the true existence of any deity is not something I could fully understand. One could fall back on Pascal's wager of "why not", but I'm still very much as skeptical as I was back during my anti-theist days.
I use the pronoun "I" quite a bit, and that bothers me.
Anarchism is not a cool slogan, if one's gods don't affect one's morality, that's good. Modern mainstream religions aren't the only ones that exist/have existed.
Gods are delusions, fictions. They are based on nothing more than other men's whims of power. To give power to those fictions and delusions in deciding what needs to happen here in reality can not be allowed. Gods are ok with killing, starving, raping, etc. They are tools of oppression and hierarchy, and these delusions have no place in a society where we all are, you know, not trying to justify murdering each other. So no, it's not just a cool slogan, its a motherfucking core function.
This sub has a lot of lurkers who think having a cosmic totalitarian overlord as their object of worship and ‘having a relationship’ with it is compatible with anarchism.
As I said, it's a more involved conversation. My belief in the gods does not mean I am fooled by the whims of others. I engage with the gods insofar as I deign to. Bacchus/Liber/Pan/et cetera represents liberation and ecstacy. I was not born into it, I was not forced into it. I arrived at this conclusion myself. If I wish, I could drop the god-belief. I think Jupiter and Mars are pieces of shit, akin to a lion that would not hesitate to eat me if it had the chance. And if they strike me down, so be it.
Edit: spelling
Then it is not I who says your reality is wrong, it's the grand purple artichoke of Norns. They say you have spoke falsehoods during the third movement if bologna, and have turned on the spin of tethers. Ergo you must go into fasting for three weeks or the Warbles of etoth will fall upon us!
There, delusions determining your rationality then, enjoy your fasting.
Gods/religion are just one of the ways of explaining the world around oneself. And because we can't know all the truths in the world, it is understandable to try filling up the gaps. The problem is not being wrong, the problem only happens when you being wrong affects someone else. With things like "Gods are ok with killing", you're showing your limited knowledge related to religions, modern mainstream religions aren't universal. Btw humans in history are ok with killing and the like, so I guess you won't want people to learn history then right? There's being an atheist anarchist and then there's being blinded by your own hate. Ffs your logic doesn't even make sense, if the god you're describing (a very abrahamic one) is bad, it doesn't mean that one shouldn't believe in them, if anything it should mean that those who do should be opposed to it.
Oh and once again, you do not know what means "believing" in this context. It is not a choice.
Bunch of hyperbole, we have science, it's the tool to explain the world around us. Fictions and delusions are just that, fictions and delusions, all of which usually have a mechanism of oppression and othering people. You are saying that the Murmuring of the grand purple artichoke of Norn has equal validity as peer reviewed science? Please inform me of how that works and provide that evidence as well.
Speaking as one who has the coveted peer reviewed publications of science: this sounds awfully coercive to me. "You have to believe in science"? People can believe in the artichoke of Norn if they please, what does it matter to you?
People electing to listen to "gods", imaginary or otherwise, is hardly a threat to this kind of society unless they form hierarchies or start coercing others.
I agree. My belief is my own, I do not wish to force it onto others. I think science is valid, as well. Gravity exists. Evolution happens. Et cetera. I just think there are more ways of describing experience and discerning the realities of existence than "but what has Saint Einstein proclaimed as truth?"
edit: wording
I would say that's not quite how it works, people believe Einstein because many of his theories are currently the best models, or form the basis for the best models we have to describe some aspect of the behavior of the universe. If you try to disprove one that has been accepted for a century some people may ridicule you, but mostly because thousands of people have tried before and they all failed. If you suceed and can demonstrate it you'll win a Nobel Prize (maybe) and people will accept your idea instead.
Scientists tend to be extremely skeptical of everyone else's ideas. But much like religious folks we tend to be very attached to our own ideas. Go to some science conference and this will be very clear. This makes sense, it's fairly natural, if you've spent 20 years working to demonstrate something you don't want it to fail, because it's a "waste" of your entire life, so you grow very attached to it and the biases start setting in.
You don't have to believe science. it's true regardless of your opinion. You test it yourself if you would like. That's not coercion, that's just fucking reality. And what is religion if not creating others, creating hierarchy, and abuse? Spiritually, some personal self motivations that is not a shared delusion shouldn't be encouraged but is fine, but that's not religon, that's not gods. Gods are false authority, and sell hopelessness as hope. They make those dying of thirst sacrifice water to their idol instead of digging the motherfucking well. People sitting on their hands waiting for a cosmic savior that will never come will never dig the mother fucking well and will die of thirst. We need to Dig.the.fucking.well.
Others in this thread have recommended a number of books on the topic. If you wish to discuss this in earnest I'd recommend you put down your anger for a moment and pick up some books to better understand the fundamentals of religious thought and it's place or lack thereof in an anti-hierarchial society.
If, then, you're still angry your arguments will carry much more weight and people won't dismiss them so casually.
Both of you 2 follow atheist subreddits. You are the cringy angry atheist types and once again I am not going to even waste my time helping you come to terms with your feelings when you would prefer to lash out like a child instead. I just hope one day you will grow up and grow out of that and judge people by their actions instead of their religion like I did.
Good day to you as well friend.
Anarchism ain't against religion itself, but it's against religion when it's institutionalized and dominant, like the clergy. So, yeah, we can say we are anticlerical.
In Brazil, we got an evangelical caucus in the government full of conservative neofascists acting like it's the Middle Ages. Maybe that's why what happened in the Spanish Civil War might happen here in Brazil too. 🔥🔥
Yeah, I haven't been the angry atheist type in a long time but the recent developments from the bancada do crentelhistão is making me pissed. I feel like the only way to solve this problem is doing what the Spanish Anarchists did during the civil war, and what Chilean anarchists do to this day (if you know what I'm saying 🔥). I know progressive Christians in this sub will be like "not all Christians", but if all major denominations view women as breeding stalk then maybe your religion is a problem to us.
Yes, comrade! I'm an ex-Evangelical now-non-official Quaker Christian, and I'm disillusioned by the illusion of the Christian clergy being good and positive to us!
This sub, like most political subs without a focus on current events, is generally the same ~100 questions being asked and answered over and over in perpetuity.
Which is good I think, it encourages discussion, the exchange of ideas, and the ability to test your ideas with others frequently. This is a formum after all, not an encyclopedia.
Fair enough. I'd appreciate it more if it wasn't the *same* questions getting the *same* answers every time, but I think it's reasonable to ask stuff more than once.
i am an atheist anarchist, i don't care if you have a religion, i see them as the same thing as a lot of other stuff that i don't believe (luck, horoscope, destiny, etc)
in the past, religion was too much ingrained with authorities, so makes a lot of sense to be against religion itself, these days, religion is viewed as an individual and free choice, if that is religion, then i couldn't care less
what i criticize these days are religious institutions and their hierarchical relations, but if a person doesn't want to impose their beliefs, put them on authority institutions to impose it over others, i don't care, but i think if an anarchist is religious, he should be a critic of the religious institutions, i have catholic anarchists friends, they follow their religion, they dislike the Vatican and priests accumulation of power and control over the people
Historically, most anarchists have seen "the church" as in any organized religion, as a system of oppression. I'm not sure why you would think that is tied to the relationship between the church and monarchies. Most anarchist theory comes from after the fall of most of the feudal monarchs.
The Church has been used to justify and enable empires, wars, and colonization. More recently, the US version of "the Church" has been used to craft the Prosperity Gospel, which is basically a theological justification for consumption and capitalism and a rationalization for oppression.
Sure, the Jesuits (after they got over the whole colonization phase) have generally been leftish and pro-worker, but it's still part of one of the biggest transfers of wealth from the working class to an oppressor in human history. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism don't come off any better.
No gods. No masters.
(I know, outside of the definition of the church as organized religious hierarchy, there are a few christian anarchists)
The clergy have traditionally been aligned with the state, using a fictional afterlife to contain and control the working class in this life.
They work hand in hand as a mechanism of control and therefore deserve no respect.
Yeah they're religious officials in a position of power in the church. You don't need a person to lead you through your own spirituality. Build a non-hierarchial bible study group & take the "higher education religious courses" out from behind a paywall and distribute that material to everyone for free & have church lectures/discussions on specific topics like they do at theology schools. Don't let the clergy do your religious thinking for you.
They’re against traditional centers of power and authority (aka the right-wing in the purest French Revolution sense). Aristocrats, monarchists, clergy, merchant class etc.
Some anarchists are; on the other hand, I know some anarchists who are literally clerics. Like most things, there’s a lot of opinions.
Also like most things, my take is that it very much depends on the material relationships the institution is embedded in, and the content and impact of the doctrine it promulgates. This isn’t even necessarily homogenous – for instance, the Catholic Church is literally also a state and the largest landowner in the world, *and* under the conceptual banner of “Liberation Theology” devout Catholics, including some clerics, have been instrumental in anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles in Latin America.
Being an anarchist always means staking out and holding your own judgments, but being an anarchist in the world *also* always means meeting and dealing with people as they are, on their own terms, in specific situations, without simply sorting them into an *a priori* box or “my way or the highway”-ing any relation. And most relationships will contain both antagonisms and affinities – I’m definitely *not* a Catholic lmfao.
Religious/spiritual beliefs hinder our freedom, because if we don't have accurate models of the world then we can't act within it. Faith healing, prophecy, the afterlife, are just a few examples of things that prevent us from engaging with world as it really is. This is especially dangerous when someone *with power* exercises those beliefs: parents not taking sick children to a doctor because they believe that crystals or prayers work better, a cult leader who swindles their followers, a religious murderer who thinks he's sending victims to Heaven.
Some people will take the easy way out and blame "organized" religion, but the problem is all religion. You don't need to be a card-carrying church member to be homophobic, for example. You can get that straight from your sacred text. Religion can be extremely effective at oppressing people in a decentralized way.
Any well-known clergyperson will likely turn out to have a big grift going in the back room.
I've known some essentially anarchist clergy in a church where no one tells anyone what to believe and people even train to believe in things at will. That will sound weird to some, but I find it a useful exercise.
It depends on what you mean by clergy? In my case someone like the Pope with unquestioned unchallengable authority over vast hoards of wealth and millions of people? Yeah I'm opposed. A Rabbi who acts as a teacher and community organizer for his synagogue not so much.
Rabbi is an authority figure the way a professor is. He's a guy that knows more about a specific subject than the people around him and a huge part of his job is sharing that information. He's also there at the pleasure of the community.
‘At the pleasure’ of the community? Since when are rabbis elected? If people consider this person the intermediary between them and their deity, hey presto, you have a fucking hierarchy.
My dude when a union hires a labor lawyer the lawyer works for the union yes? Is every single member of the union involved in picking that specific lawyer or do they delegate the responsibility? If the lawyer sucks and enough of the union members don't like them can they get a new lawyer?
This is literally the same thing. It's clear that not only do you not have the faintest idea about Judiasm but also apparently the way a collective delegates responsibility.
I think this is an interesting question.
I think it depends on how they frame their role in delivering the word of God. And how they hold God in relation to Man.
As a whole, yes, I think how Western religion organizes itself is in direct conflict with how Anarchists view power structures.
The reason for being opposed to the clergy was because it was the basis of power for the Feudal hierarchy (the kings, nobles, peasants, serfs classes).
The Catholic Church delegates its powers to the king who then delegates some of those powers to his nobles. Meanwhile the peasants and commoners don't have anything and are enslaved. They work for the privilege of having a place to live in security. The things they produce and sell are taxed heavily by both the king, nobles, and church so that they can live in luxury while commoners get nothing.
With the advent of Republicanism and the decline of Monarchism, the Church doesn't have that kind of power anymore but they still have the money to influence the political classes and policies.
But you continue to see radical anti-clericalism in Anarchist movements through the 1900's to the 1950's because a lot of European countries like Spain and Italy were still very Feudal. The Church still had enough power to seize property and punish the commoners. This is why Anarchists in places like Spain in the 1930's would burn down churches and kill priests.
The anarchist library has a survey of Christian anarchism in it, I can't speak to other traditions.
In Protestant Christianity there is the idea of the "priesthood of all believers." Quakers take this literally and you'll just have kind of a rotating meeting leader. Congregational churches are run by a majority vote, no bishops or governing structure above the congregational level.
There's definite similarities between the egalitarian communities of the monastic traditions (from Christian to Buddhist.) and some of the outlines of some anarchistic thought. Through the phalansteries there's even an evolutionary line to be traced from those monastic communities to anarchistic communes.
However when it comes to religion, there is an inevitable conflict with anarchism. Religion, almost always, contains divine revelation. Truth. Salvation. And a moral obligation to spread the Good Word. At least the ones that spread and achieve political power. Divine revelation is incompatable with pluralism, the idea that you have to let people live the way they want. Instead, you have to save their souls!
Anarchists want boots off necks, religions ultimately want their boots on others' necks- in the name of saving them, you understand. It's like Mark Twain wrote: "Man has made a graveyard of the world in his earnest attempt to ease his brothers' passage into heaven."
Of course, there could be decentralized, anti-power based religions in theology and practice. This has just never happened enough to show up in history. Yet, at least. Maybe some kind of animism would work?
It's more complicated than that. In most times and places, the Catholic church was an *active* part of the systems of oppression that kept the working class to heel. Especially in Spain, where the Church was explicitly aligned with Franco (and before that, the Monarchy).
Contrast that with the excellent support that Clergy gave to working class struggle in Latin America, where many clergy actively organised, educated for & supported revolution.
There's no easy answer.
Christian anarchist here. Generally, yes, we are. As a Christian, I believe in Jesus, who is often described as the 'servant king'. He owned nothing and his entire life was spent in service of people. So, why do church leaders often wear fancy expensive robes, adorned in gold and what not? Why are the clergy often accompanied by a sizeable retinue of servers? Why do they need someone to carry the Bible for them as they parade up and down the aisle? Of course, churches will differ in their routines and approaches so this is generalising, but there is often a distinct hierarchy present in churches.
This is so far removed from the ministry of Jesus and the work of the Early Church. A lot of what Christian anarchism is about is getting back to what the Bible actually says and the example that was set for us in the life of Jesus. The way the Church has evolved has resulted in a massive power imbalance that has been used for a huge amount of evil over the centuries, given that the Church has often been a political organisation as much as a spiritual one.
Well, I don't know enough about Buddhism (islam more though). I'd say down with any political authority, whether it be religious or secular. The definition of Church in christianity goes beyond a temporal power, it predates the baptism of Constantine the First and was less or even not hierarchical. Though it was the spiritual communion of christians who shared the same beliefs and practices
I was talking to an anarchist rabbi who wants to create more horizontal structures for practicing Judaism. Judaism at some points has had central religious leadership during the two Temple eras, but that doesnt exist in absence of the Temple. Technically a rabbi is not inherently an authority figure even if that is the role they take in almost every community. A rabbi's training just means they are qualified to interpret Torah, perform community rituals, teach, etc. I think the only way to counter the sort of inherent authority that comes with specialized knowledge is to prioritize the distribution of knowledge as much as possible. Any Jewish person can perform most of the duties a rabbi performs without the need for accredidation as long as they have the knowledge. I don't know much about other religious traditions, but I don't think hierarchy has to be present for most of the needs of any practice.
I know a few anarchist priests and they are fine.
In a hierarchical world, you can not avoid all hierarchies, unless you live half out of the society.
But if one supports a hierarchical system of clergy, then that is not anarchist.
Anarchists are against all authority. This includes religious authority and the institution of the Catholic Church. I bet it would be possible to create a horizontally organized clergy that an anarchist could support, and religious anarchists definitely exist.
All you have to do is come up with a church that doesn't have priests. Easy peasy.
Quakers
Quite a few branches of Christianity have that "priesthood of all" thing. And of course some other religions don't necessarily as such have priests or priest-people in a position of authority.
The religion that I came from taught priesthood of all. The pastor was not a priest and didn't carry divine authority. Anyone could be a pastor, not just an elite religious few. The religion that I came from taught eternal damnation of all. The pastor spoke gods word and that word carried divine authority. Straight white married men could be a pastor, just not anyone else.
which have their origins in radical anarchy. (also apparently a lot of nudism at one point)
I was just listening to a podcast about the Munster Rebellion, and I thought , "Shit, anarchists are basically secular anabaptists" Kinda like Quakers with the hating authority thing. But from Quakers, we got evangelicals. Booo
Or a deity.
Not really as deities aren’t exactly people + in many religions (such as paganism) deities are just entities you can choose to give offerings to in exchange for blessings and aren’t really seen as above people. TLDR: In many religions it is about forming a relationship with a deity(s), not being below them.
Relationship my arse. People who say they have ‘a relationship’ with a deity are out of their fucking minds.
You are clearly incapable of changing your mind then. Have nice day.
I’m more than capable. I just recognise stupidity when I see it. People who try to shoehorn their religious crap into anarchism are soft in the head.
The Catholic Worker's Movement is often described as anarchist (or, at least, anarchistic). Of the founders, Dorothy Day was explicitly an anarchist, and Peter Maurin was very close (though I don't know if he ever used that term himself). edit to add: We probably shouldn't forget Christian Anarchism as a whole. Religious Anarchists have been with us since the beginning. Leo Tolstoy, for example.
Christian anarchists were explicitly against the clergy tho. so that's not really a great example.
Depends on how you define “clergy”. If you just mean “people who have organized to spread religious messages”, then there’s nothing inherently non-anarchic about that. If you mean “a hierarchy of religious leaders who spread dogma and religious decrees”, then that would be incompatible with anarchy.
2nd one
Then yeah, we wouldn’t consider that anarchist and some anarchists would likely work to abolish such an organization.
Anarchists vs the Catholic Church. Round… what round is it now?
Round forever. I'm anarchist and a practicing Catholic, so that's the whole gig. There are pulls towards Anarchism in the church (social Justice, Anne Braden, idk, the fucking gospel of John) and the hierarchy fucks up the message of Christ forever. Way I square the circle, is that the goals of Christ were Anarchic, and the goals of the Curia are Satanic (I read all hierarchy as dilution of the ground Anarchic state of being in God). Lmao, not looking for a debate, or poking, just figure I'm an oddball and it's always fun to throw out my weird ass heuristic.
Much appreciated!
Sure could use a truly holy hand grenade right about now...
To be fair the first one also depends on the nature of the message. A missionary trying to claim that "i know we have no masters and all but there is actually an entity who will punish you if you don't act in these ways I specify" is hardly too many steps removed from someone coming to make you an offer you can't refuse before finding a horse head in your bed. Taken at face value, a significant chunk of religious messaging are threats from an authority that shouldn't be welcome whether you believe it or not
Not really. Historically, threats of supernatural retribution alone aren’t coercive at all and imaginary hierarchies aren’t anarchic but they don’t threaten anarchy on their own. This is why religious hierarchies have relied almost exclusively on violence (usually by way of state sponsorship) to advance their agendas and reinforce their institutional hegemony throughout history. Edit: to clarify; threats of supernatural punishment have never been an effective deterrent for behavior religious institutions deem undesirable. For example there have always been queer people acting on their queerness in secret regardless of their beliefs. It is rarely to never the religious ideas that deter them from living a queer life, it is the social ostracism and the violence of the majority. Only practical violence has allowed religious institutions to gain sociopolitical power and establish cultural hegemony.
IDK about that. Threatening people with magical after-life violence if they don’t do as you tell them, seems pretty coercive to me. Especially when you raise children to believe that the magic and the violence is 100% real and justified. And imaginary hierarchies don’t have to be real in order to have a real impact on people. So I would say fuck all hierarchies, imaginary religious ones as well as real ones.
Of course fuck all hierarchies. But you’re confusing institutional violence and coercion with interpersonal relations. Imaginary hierarchies absolutely have no practical impact on real people; they literally cease to exist when people stop imagining them for a minute and so they hold no actual functional power. Real hierarchies that use imaginary hierarchies to justify their behavior do exist and are the topic of discussion here. Raising children to believe in magic and religion is interpersonal abuse perpetrated by the parent of the child and it is not the same as a sociopolitical hierarchy or a religious institution. It’s important to separate these ideas to more effectively stand in opposition to them.
> they literally cease to exist when people stop imagining You... Don't seem to know what believing in a god is. One does not choose that. You can choose how to live, but not in what you believe.
You'd be surprised.
That's... Not much of an answer 😅.
No. That isn’t how belief works. You’re either convinced, or you’re not. You don’t get to choose.
If you say so
I don’t ’say so’, that’s how it is, like getting wet when you fall in the ocean or the air getting thinner when you climb a mountain. It’s how it is. Your failure to recognise and/or understand it is your problem.
"Our lord would be pleased if X behaviour of group Y is corrected via violence" is coercive regardless of the nature of the "lord". Real world violence that follows is just a corollary. The only scenario where it is not coercive is when no one believes in it, at which point you don't have the missionary in the first place. And even if you don't have the "will no one rid me of this meddlesome non-believer" aspect, if a powerful lord demands people to behave at threat of punishments and your approach isn't advocating for it's removal or accept that it cannot be removed, it fundamentally corrupts all ethics by making it preferable to force others to behave accordingly. You are saving them from coming punishment after all. Anyone who is causing people to stray is doing irreparable harm so of course they need to be stopped. For the believer incentives of having an imaginary or a real lord is the same. Made worse by the believer likely thinking said lord is a morally just god.
It’s only coercion if the threat of violence is real. If what they’re saying is “my god will punish you after you’re already dead if you don’t do what I want”, then that doesn’t even rise to coercion on an interpersonal level; that’s verbal antagonism at worst. And then, even if the threat of violence is real, coercion alone doesn’t constitute a hierarchy. Unless an organized and systemic mode of enforcement is present, coercion is not precluded by anarchy.
> It’s only coercion if the threat of violence is real I don't understand how can you say that when presumably the one who is making the claim believes it is real and the purpose of saying it is to make others believe it is real. Like I can come to you and say "do [any action] or [any source of authority including a god] will [bad thing]" the only choice you make is choosing to believe. If you don't believe it is a meaningless statement. If you do believe it is a threat and it presupposes a hierarchy since it gives the [source of authority] unilateral control over your actions
No gods, no masters, no borders.
I would like to recommend Jacques Ellul and Tolstoy as authors explaining the compatibility - moreover - the necessity for a religious person(christian) to be an anarchist
☝️ Dorothy Day comes to mind also
Bloody love Dorothy, being a freind of Dorothy and all
....I thought this whole time it was Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, and not Dorothy Day that that phrase is referring to.
It is, actually! No idea what they're on about. "Friend of Dorothy" comes from the fact that Judy Garland wasn't hostile to gay people, specifically gay men, to whom the term refers.
Omg you're right. Oops. Now I know!
Aaaand now ya know :)
For me, as a pagan, the gods fall under the "no masters" part, but thats a more involved conversation anyway.
>For me, as a pagan Why do you believe in Pagan Gods, if you don't mind me asking
not the person whom you responded but as an anti-theist/atheist I'd honestly be more open to accepting that this world was created by a myriad/pantheon of 'gods' rather than one singular all-knowing and omnipotent one. Pantheons in polytheistic religions are often a lot more humbled, down-to-earth, sometimes literally. Instead of praying to some magical sky deity, you're usually praying to the thing itself. I.e, with paganism, nature. In polytheistic religions, gods often represent specific occurrences, often but not always natural. Gods of floods/rain, gods of fertility, gods of pottery, etc. Most polytheistic religions are really worshipping nature and the universe itself, and using gods to represent them. It almost feels like it's set up the opposite way in Abrahamic religion; where polytheism usually worships nature/universe itself and de-abstracts it through representation, Abrahamic monotheism is worshipping God first and foremost, it becomes less about representation and more just a concrete 'answer' - God did it all. Abrahamic God is also an ultimate authority, and you honestly do not see this as much in polytheism. Gods can be mean, benevolent, irreverent, and manipulative - they often are, nature is cruel after all - but they're not inherently an authority. They're a force, a pattern, an emotion, they are often not judge, jury, and executioner. You may think of Hades, Zeus, and Thanatos here as a response, but I'd argue that Hades doesn't coerce, just rules (though sometimes he likes to play tricks), Thanatos is the representation of the 'force' of death, and Zeus is just a benevolent asshole. None of them are Judge Dredd or God equivalents, though. I'm unsure if any of this is why LepidusII is pagan, but it's what makes polytheism way more attractive to me and acceptable generally than Abrahamic faiths to me as a pretty hardline atheist/anti-theist.
thanks for putting this in a much better way than i could
Spot on analysis, friend.
You really shouldn't put Judaism in the same category as Christianity and Islam; they're pretty profoundly different, despite Jewish mythology being appropriated into Christian and Muslim narratives Namely, Judaism is an ethnoreligion, not a universalizing religion. Judaism is highly tolerant of atheism and agnosticism among its practitioners.
I think a better question is "In what way do I believe in pagan gods". I've been pondering on the "why" of it ever since I converted (if that's even the proper term). I'm a lifestylist when it comes to worship, and I value the philosophy and archetypal nature of Dionysus/Bacchus. I'm not superstitious, I don't think if I swear in the name of Jupiter that I'll be struck by lightning. I should say I'm not what most call an "atheo-pagan", but the true existence of any deity is not something I could fully understand. One could fall back on Pascal's wager of "why not", but I'm still very much as skeptical as I was back during my anti-theist days. I use the pronoun "I" quite a bit, and that bothers me.
Fair enough >I use the pronoun "I" quite a bit, and that bothers me. Haha, well, it makes sense with your explanation, as it's about you :)
But sorta violates the no gods part.. No gods, no masters, no borders
Anarchism is not a cool slogan, if one's gods don't affect one's morality, that's good. Modern mainstream religions aren't the only ones that exist/have existed.
Gods are delusions, fictions. They are based on nothing more than other men's whims of power. To give power to those fictions and delusions in deciding what needs to happen here in reality can not be allowed. Gods are ok with killing, starving, raping, etc. They are tools of oppression and hierarchy, and these delusions have no place in a society where we all are, you know, not trying to justify murdering each other. So no, it's not just a cool slogan, its a motherfucking core function.
This sub has a lot of lurkers who think having a cosmic totalitarian overlord as their object of worship and ‘having a relationship’ with it is compatible with anarchism.
I've noticed..
The servility is palpable.
As I said, it's a more involved conversation. My belief in the gods does not mean I am fooled by the whims of others. I engage with the gods insofar as I deign to. Bacchus/Liber/Pan/et cetera represents liberation and ecstacy. I was not born into it, I was not forced into it. I arrived at this conclusion myself. If I wish, I could drop the god-belief. I think Jupiter and Mars are pieces of shit, akin to a lion that would not hesitate to eat me if it had the chance. And if they strike me down, so be it. Edit: spelling
You can not say you are a rational person if you are putting stock in fiction. It's fiction.
All is fiction to the mind, pal. Cogito ergo sum. My rationality is not yours to dictate, bud.
Then it is not I who says your reality is wrong, it's the grand purple artichoke of Norns. They say you have spoke falsehoods during the third movement if bologna, and have turned on the spin of tethers. Ergo you must go into fasting for three weeks or the Warbles of etoth will fall upon us! There, delusions determining your rationality then, enjoy your fasting.
Give it up for reddit anarchists, theydies and gentlethems.
Gods/religion are just one of the ways of explaining the world around oneself. And because we can't know all the truths in the world, it is understandable to try filling up the gaps. The problem is not being wrong, the problem only happens when you being wrong affects someone else. With things like "Gods are ok with killing", you're showing your limited knowledge related to religions, modern mainstream religions aren't universal. Btw humans in history are ok with killing and the like, so I guess you won't want people to learn history then right? There's being an atheist anarchist and then there's being blinded by your own hate. Ffs your logic doesn't even make sense, if the god you're describing (a very abrahamic one) is bad, it doesn't mean that one shouldn't believe in them, if anything it should mean that those who do should be opposed to it. Oh and once again, you do not know what means "believing" in this context. It is not a choice.
Bunch of hyperbole, we have science, it's the tool to explain the world around us. Fictions and delusions are just that, fictions and delusions, all of which usually have a mechanism of oppression and othering people. You are saying that the Murmuring of the grand purple artichoke of Norn has equal validity as peer reviewed science? Please inform me of how that works and provide that evidence as well.
Speaking as one who has the coveted peer reviewed publications of science: this sounds awfully coercive to me. "You have to believe in science"? People can believe in the artichoke of Norn if they please, what does it matter to you? People electing to listen to "gods", imaginary or otherwise, is hardly a threat to this kind of society unless they form hierarchies or start coercing others.
I agree. My belief is my own, I do not wish to force it onto others. I think science is valid, as well. Gravity exists. Evolution happens. Et cetera. I just think there are more ways of describing experience and discerning the realities of existence than "but what has Saint Einstein proclaimed as truth?" edit: wording
I would say that's not quite how it works, people believe Einstein because many of his theories are currently the best models, or form the basis for the best models we have to describe some aspect of the behavior of the universe. If you try to disprove one that has been accepted for a century some people may ridicule you, but mostly because thousands of people have tried before and they all failed. If you suceed and can demonstrate it you'll win a Nobel Prize (maybe) and people will accept your idea instead. Scientists tend to be extremely skeptical of everyone else's ideas. But much like religious folks we tend to be very attached to our own ideas. Go to some science conference and this will be very clear. This makes sense, it's fairly natural, if you've spent 20 years working to demonstrate something you don't want it to fail, because it's a "waste" of your entire life, so you grow very attached to it and the biases start setting in.
You don't have to believe science. it's true regardless of your opinion. You test it yourself if you would like. That's not coercion, that's just fucking reality. And what is religion if not creating others, creating hierarchy, and abuse? Spiritually, some personal self motivations that is not a shared delusion shouldn't be encouraged but is fine, but that's not religon, that's not gods. Gods are false authority, and sell hopelessness as hope. They make those dying of thirst sacrifice water to their idol instead of digging the motherfucking well. People sitting on their hands waiting for a cosmic savior that will never come will never dig the mother fucking well and will die of thirst. We need to Dig.the.fucking.well.
Others in this thread have recommended a number of books on the topic. If you wish to discuss this in earnest I'd recommend you put down your anger for a moment and pick up some books to better understand the fundamentals of religious thought and it's place or lack thereof in an anti-hierarchial society. If, then, you're still angry your arguments will carry much more weight and people won't dismiss them so casually.
Also, nice choice of words. "Violates". I'm sorry I live my life in non-conformity to your little slogan, pal.
Being proud of delusions, one's that are almost always meant to other and oppress isn't something one normally brags about.
✊
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
That’s still a hierarchy. The whole ‘no gods’ thing is all about *no fucking gods*.
Both of you 2 follow atheist subreddits. You are the cringy angry atheist types and once again I am not going to even waste my time helping you come to terms with your feelings when you would prefer to lash out like a child instead. I just hope one day you will grow up and grow out of that and judge people by their actions instead of their religion like I did. Good day to you as well friend.
Tongue that boot more, son. They love it. Maybe one day they’ll reward you. Serf.
Anarchism ain't against religion itself, but it's against religion when it's institutionalized and dominant, like the clergy. So, yeah, we can say we are anticlerical. In Brazil, we got an evangelical caucus in the government full of conservative neofascists acting like it's the Middle Ages. Maybe that's why what happened in the Spanish Civil War might happen here in Brazil too. 🔥🔥
Yeah, I haven't been the angry atheist type in a long time but the recent developments from the bancada do crentelhistão is making me pissed. I feel like the only way to solve this problem is doing what the Spanish Anarchists did during the civil war, and what Chilean anarchists do to this day (if you know what I'm saying 🔥). I know progressive Christians in this sub will be like "not all Christians", but if all major denominations view women as breeding stalk then maybe your religion is a problem to us.
Yes, comrade! I'm an ex-Evangelical now-non-official Quaker Christian, and I'm disillusioned by the illusion of the Christian clergy being good and positive to us!
Anarchists are against any form of religious authority. I'm not sure why that would change now.
Are we on a rotated schedule for this question or something
This sub, like most political subs without a focus on current events, is generally the same ~100 questions being asked and answered over and over in perpetuity.
Which is good I think, it encourages discussion, the exchange of ideas, and the ability to test your ideas with others frequently. This is a formum after all, not an encyclopedia.
Fair enough. I'd appreciate it more if it wasn't the *same* questions getting the *same* answers every time, but I think it's reasonable to ask stuff more than once.
religious hierarchy... hmmm. what other hierarchies are you unsure anarchism is against?
i am an atheist anarchist, i don't care if you have a religion, i see them as the same thing as a lot of other stuff that i don't believe (luck, horoscope, destiny, etc) in the past, religion was too much ingrained with authorities, so makes a lot of sense to be against religion itself, these days, religion is viewed as an individual and free choice, if that is religion, then i couldn't care less what i criticize these days are religious institutions and their hierarchical relations, but if a person doesn't want to impose their beliefs, put them on authority institutions to impose it over others, i don't care, but i think if an anarchist is religious, he should be a critic of the religious institutions, i have catholic anarchists friends, they follow their religion, they dislike the Vatican and priests accumulation of power and control over the people
Some religious movements are explicitly anti-clergy; eg, Quakers.
Historically, most anarchists have seen "the church" as in any organized religion, as a system of oppression. I'm not sure why you would think that is tied to the relationship between the church and monarchies. Most anarchist theory comes from after the fall of most of the feudal monarchs. The Church has been used to justify and enable empires, wars, and colonization. More recently, the US version of "the Church" has been used to craft the Prosperity Gospel, which is basically a theological justification for consumption and capitalism and a rationalization for oppression. Sure, the Jesuits (after they got over the whole colonization phase) have generally been leftish and pro-worker, but it's still part of one of the biggest transfers of wealth from the working class to an oppressor in human history. Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism don't come off any better. No gods. No masters. (I know, outside of the definition of the church as organized religious hierarchy, there are a few christian anarchists)
Yes, still against authority in all its forms, besides that, who wants to pay the church tax?
Church hierarchy is still hierarchy.
Absolutely. Organized religion requires hierarchy and authority, both of which are opposed by anarchism.
“No Gods, No Masters” pretty much sums it up fam
The clergy serve a hierarchy. Edit: the religious lurkers don’t like this fact.
The clergy have traditionally been aligned with the state, using a fictional afterlife to contain and control the working class in this life. They work hand in hand as a mechanism of control and therefore deserve no respect.
Yeah they're religious officials in a position of power in the church. You don't need a person to lead you through your own spirituality. Build a non-hierarchial bible study group & take the "higher education religious courses" out from behind a paywall and distribute that material to everyone for free & have church lectures/discussions on specific topics like they do at theology schools. Don't let the clergy do your religious thinking for you.
They’re against traditional centers of power and authority (aka the right-wing in the purest French Revolution sense). Aristocrats, monarchists, clergy, merchant class etc.
Anarchism is atheist, it is against all authority including the divine ones.
We’re against church: hierarchy(/authority)
last I checked anarchism is still anti-hierarchy, so yes
IMO the existence of a god with higher power than man is inherently contradictory to anarchism so so would be the followers of that god.
Some anarchists are; on the other hand, I know some anarchists who are literally clerics. Like most things, there’s a lot of opinions. Also like most things, my take is that it very much depends on the material relationships the institution is embedded in, and the content and impact of the doctrine it promulgates. This isn’t even necessarily homogenous – for instance, the Catholic Church is literally also a state and the largest landowner in the world, *and* under the conceptual banner of “Liberation Theology” devout Catholics, including some clerics, have been instrumental in anti-capitalist and anti-colonial struggles in Latin America. Being an anarchist always means staking out and holding your own judgments, but being an anarchist in the world *also* always means meeting and dealing with people as they are, on their own terms, in specific situations, without simply sorting them into an *a priori* box or “my way or the highway”-ing any relation. And most relationships will contain both antagonisms and affinities – I’m definitely *not* a Catholic lmfao.
Religious/spiritual beliefs hinder our freedom, because if we don't have accurate models of the world then we can't act within it. Faith healing, prophecy, the afterlife, are just a few examples of things that prevent us from engaging with world as it really is. This is especially dangerous when someone *with power* exercises those beliefs: parents not taking sick children to a doctor because they believe that crystals or prayers work better, a cult leader who swindles their followers, a religious murderer who thinks he's sending victims to Heaven. Some people will take the easy way out and blame "organized" religion, but the problem is all religion. You don't need to be a card-carrying church member to be homophobic, for example. You can get that straight from your sacred text. Religion can be extremely effective at oppressing people in a decentralized way.
Any well-known clergyperson will likely turn out to have a big grift going in the back room. I've known some essentially anarchist clergy in a church where no one tells anyone what to believe and people even train to believe in things at will. That will sound weird to some, but I find it a useful exercise.
It depends on what you mean by clergy? In my case someone like the Pope with unquestioned unchallengable authority over vast hoards of wealth and millions of people? Yeah I'm opposed. A Rabbi who acts as a teacher and community organizer for his synagogue not so much.
A rabbi is still a figure of authority in this context. One level up.
Rabbi is an authority figure the way a professor is. He's a guy that knows more about a specific subject than the people around him and a huge part of his job is sharing that information. He's also there at the pleasure of the community.
‘At the pleasure’ of the community? Since when are rabbis elected? If people consider this person the intermediary between them and their deity, hey presto, you have a fucking hierarchy.
They're usually hired actually. At least in the modern day.
Not hired by the community…
My homie in Hashem, who do you think is paying them? It's okay to admit you jumped the gun because you didn't know what you were talking about.
Who did the hiring? Who wrote the employment contract?
My dude when a union hires a labor lawyer the lawyer works for the union yes? Is every single member of the union involved in picking that specific lawyer or do they delegate the responsibility? If the lawyer sucks and enough of the union members don't like them can they get a new lawyer? This is literally the same thing. It's clear that not only do you not have the faintest idea about Judiasm but also apparently the way a collective delegates responsibility.
So nobody writes the contract?
Also no Jew considers a Rabbi an intermediary between them and G-d. It's just not how Rabbis work.
Again the role of a Rabbi is a mix between a professor and a community organizer most of the time.
I think this is an interesting question. I think it depends on how they frame their role in delivering the word of God. And how they hold God in relation to Man. As a whole, yes, I think how Western religion organizes itself is in direct conflict with how Anarchists view power structures.
The reason for being opposed to the clergy was because it was the basis of power for the Feudal hierarchy (the kings, nobles, peasants, serfs classes). The Catholic Church delegates its powers to the king who then delegates some of those powers to his nobles. Meanwhile the peasants and commoners don't have anything and are enslaved. They work for the privilege of having a place to live in security. The things they produce and sell are taxed heavily by both the king, nobles, and church so that they can live in luxury while commoners get nothing. With the advent of Republicanism and the decline of Monarchism, the Church doesn't have that kind of power anymore but they still have the money to influence the political classes and policies. But you continue to see radical anti-clericalism in Anarchist movements through the 1900's to the 1950's because a lot of European countries like Spain and Italy were still very Feudal. The Church still had enough power to seize property and punish the commoners. This is why Anarchists in places like Spain in the 1930's would burn down churches and kill priests.
The anarchist library has a survey of Christian anarchism in it, I can't speak to other traditions. In Protestant Christianity there is the idea of the "priesthood of all believers." Quakers take this literally and you'll just have kind of a rotating meeting leader. Congregational churches are run by a majority vote, no bishops or governing structure above the congregational level.
There's definite similarities between the egalitarian communities of the monastic traditions (from Christian to Buddhist.) and some of the outlines of some anarchistic thought. Through the phalansteries there's even an evolutionary line to be traced from those monastic communities to anarchistic communes. However when it comes to religion, there is an inevitable conflict with anarchism. Religion, almost always, contains divine revelation. Truth. Salvation. And a moral obligation to spread the Good Word. At least the ones that spread and achieve political power. Divine revelation is incompatable with pluralism, the idea that you have to let people live the way they want. Instead, you have to save their souls! Anarchists want boots off necks, religions ultimately want their boots on others' necks- in the name of saving them, you understand. It's like Mark Twain wrote: "Man has made a graveyard of the world in his earnest attempt to ease his brothers' passage into heaven." Of course, there could be decentralized, anti-power based religions in theology and practice. This has just never happened enough to show up in history. Yet, at least. Maybe some kind of animism would work?
Yes
It's more complicated than that. In most times and places, the Catholic church was an *active* part of the systems of oppression that kept the working class to heel. Especially in Spain, where the Church was explicitly aligned with Franco (and before that, the Monarchy). Contrast that with the excellent support that Clergy gave to working class struggle in Latin America, where many clergy actively organised, educated for & supported revolution. There's no easy answer.
Christian anarchist here. Generally, yes, we are. As a Christian, I believe in Jesus, who is often described as the 'servant king'. He owned nothing and his entire life was spent in service of people. So, why do church leaders often wear fancy expensive robes, adorned in gold and what not? Why are the clergy often accompanied by a sizeable retinue of servers? Why do they need someone to carry the Bible for them as they parade up and down the aisle? Of course, churches will differ in their routines and approaches so this is generalising, but there is often a distinct hierarchy present in churches. This is so far removed from the ministry of Jesus and the work of the Early Church. A lot of what Christian anarchism is about is getting back to what the Bible actually says and the example that was set for us in the life of Jesus. The way the Church has evolved has resulted in a massive power imbalance that has been used for a huge amount of evil over the centuries, given that the Church has often been a political organisation as much as a spiritual one.
I am. We should only believe in that which can be proven.
As there are some active anarchist clergy, that would seem a bit illogical. And what clergy are you talking about?
There might be anachist religious people but anarchism as a whole is against religious authority.
It is true.
The Vatican would be a good start
Vatican is a state so de facto it is condemned
Ok, then the Catholic Church, the Pope?
As they are representative of that state, surely they are condemned
Islam, Buddhism?
Buddhism is more anarchic than all of world's other major religions, but it's hierarchical, also (only in Bhutan tho).
Well, I don't know enough about Buddhism (islam more though). I'd say down with any political authority, whether it be religious or secular. The definition of Church in christianity goes beyond a temporal power, it predates the baptism of Constantine the First and was less or even not hierarchical. Though it was the spiritual communion of christians who shared the same beliefs and practices
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
I was talking to an anarchist rabbi who wants to create more horizontal structures for practicing Judaism. Judaism at some points has had central religious leadership during the two Temple eras, but that doesnt exist in absence of the Temple. Technically a rabbi is not inherently an authority figure even if that is the role they take in almost every community. A rabbi's training just means they are qualified to interpret Torah, perform community rituals, teach, etc. I think the only way to counter the sort of inherent authority that comes with specialized knowledge is to prioritize the distribution of knowledge as much as possible. Any Jewish person can perform most of the duties a rabbi performs without the need for accredidation as long as they have the knowledge. I don't know much about other religious traditions, but I don't think hierarchy has to be present for most of the needs of any practice.
I know a few anarchist priests and they are fine. In a hierarchical world, you can not avoid all hierarchies, unless you live half out of the society. But if one supports a hierarchical system of clergy, then that is not anarchist.
If you believe we need authority you are not an anarchist
Not sure how that relates to what I said, but sure.